Tuesday, March 8, 2022

Gods of the World: Matuipan

Those who come across statues sculpted in the very barks of the trees or mountainsides in the valleys know already whose faces they are: Matuipan, the Endbringer. While being neither male or female, Matuipan is the divine herald of violence.

In the piercing eyes of Matuipan, however, violence takes the form of necessary endings: an interruption in the flow of things so that other things can start anew. It is unclear how they came to represent such an ambiguous aspect of violence, but their worshippers generally affiliate themselves to numerous doctrines that sometimes contradict each other, resulting in a rather chaotic theological state of affairs.

It is said that Matuipan was the original Endbringer, the one who would bring an End to the world itself so it could be born again stronger from the ashes of its prior existence. Among some peoples, they reside in a plane called Kingdom of Ends, while some say Matuipan committed the ultimate violence through which they attained illumination: they took the fall in the Aberon Road and ended their own divine life.

Besides Endbringer, the deity is also known as the Linecutter, the Reconnecter and the Keeper of Judgment, though each of these aliases is attached to very specific lore depending on the civilizations that thus worship them.