From the journal of Omal Lorian, scribe at the Library of Arien:

The Pantheon of Caern

Most of what is considered the Word of Az is what was spoken, written, or prophesized by Iberian (42 BI - 0 AI). Prior to Iberian, the races of Caern each had their own pantheon of gods.

In studying the myths of the Old Races (dwarves and elves) and the New (humans, halflings, gnomes, half-orcs, etc.), Iberian discovered too many similarities to ignore. All the races had myths around a mother or father god of creation. They all had myths around this Creation god’s Children. These Children represented some facet of the first parent deity (magic, war, trickery, love, for example). Each of these races also had oral histories built around stories of these Children, who often entered Caern as powerful (yet mortal) beings in order to affect the events of the world. They also shared similar stories of the near destruction of Caern during ancient times by these avatars.

Iberian proposed that in fact there is only one pantheon of Caern. He called this theory the Principle of Inclusion.

For example, if the Child of War was born into a dwarf-clan in the mountains of Inarra, he of course would not be born as an elf. Iberian used the collected stories of all the avatars to build a timeline, proving first to himself that no avatar of the same type (the Child of Destruction, for example) lived in Caern at the same time across multiple races. He developed a single pantheon that crossed all the races, naming the Creator god Az (the beginning and the end) and defining the ten different Children of Az.

Iberian was nearly killed numerous times because of his world-view. Most towns and/or regions had centers of worship dedicated to one particular avatar that lived near that place during his or her life. There were several well-organized human religions that recognized the Creator god and several of his Children, but they certainly did not mesh with the inclusive view proposed by Iberian. But Iberian was a powerful speaker, and the myths that he collected always seemed to support his theory. By the time of the War of Man, nearly all of Caern had accepted Iberian’s Principle of Inclusion.

When Elisia Llewellyn, the ancient elf-queen globally recognized as an avatar of the elf pantheon of gods, spoke out in support of Iberian’s world-view, Iberian’s place in history was confirmed. Following the end of the War of Man, a conference was held in Arien that canonized the pantheon. While it was a human-centric view of the gods, most races have accepted (in theory) the world view of Iberian.

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