Amaunator

Amaunator (pronounced ah-MAWN-ah-tor ) was the Netherese solar deity of order, the sun, law, and time. He was viewed as a harsh but fair deity, revered by many rulers, soldiers, and powerful wizards in ancient Nethril.

It was eventually claimed, following the Spellplague, that Lathander, the Faerûnian god of the sun, was an aspect of the long-dormant Amaunator. By the Year of the Ageless One, 1479 DR, Amaunator was worshiped both as Lathander and by his own name.

Description
Amaunator's avatar, whose skin shed golden light, looked like a lanky, silver-white haired, and short man with a white tenday growth of beard clad in a long, flowing, black or purple gown with silver or gold trims, the uniform of a magistrate. He always equipped himself with two tools: a scepter and a legal tome in each hand. The former was the scepter of the eternal sun, which doubled as his melee-weapon.

Personality
The Bedine believed in an entity called At'ar the Merciless. She was thought be a spiteful woman who enjoyed an adulterous relationship. This woman was the result of stories about Amaunator becoming warped over time to the point of the entity becoming unrecognizable. The real Amaunator was a cautious god who did not just try to write down everything to be certain about it, but made sure to go through the pain of contracting, signing, sealing, and notarizing everything as well, a trait similar to the Celestial Bureaucracy.

Amaunator was viewed as a stern and unforgiving deity dedicated to law order above all else. Though not concerned with balanced natural order like Silvanus, he instead advocated for kept promises, contracts, and even that political order be kept among the gods.

He had tendency to ignore the spirit of the law in favor of the letter of it, except when he favored the spirit of the law a lot more than the letter. From time to time, he was invoked as the god of time. The reason for this was that a mispunctuation in a legal paper with another god allowed him to consider himself the god of time. That said, during the time of Netheril, he did not actually act as one, because he did not want to be on Mystryl's bad side, the actual goddess of time, albeit an unofficial one.

His adherence to law was such that he knowingly did nothing to stop the fall of Netheril because he lacked contractual power to do so.

Abilities
Amaunator's sight was one that allowed him to discern whether someone was a thief or lawbreaker with a glance as well as invisible creatures and objects. He could also use his eyes to shoot flame strike or sunray every minute.

The Keeper of the Eternal Sun held sway over the sun. This gave him a plethora of protective abilities. He was completely immune to light, fire, and heat-based attacks while enjoying complete immunity to illusions, phantasms, cold-based, shadow-based, and darkness-based spells as well as any fear or other emotion-controlling magic.

The Yellow God was capable of dispersing magical darkness either with a touch or, as long as said darkness was within 120 yards (111 meters), with a thought. Another effect his touch created was the instant destruction of a touched undead who were affected by sunlight. Every 2 hours, he could fill an area of 10 miles (16 kilometers) diameter for up to an hour with sunlight.

When fighting, Amaunator's avatar used his scepter, the scepter of the eternal sun, in physical combat, but only when heavily provoked into one.

Manifestations
While male pronouns were used to describe Amaunator, he appeared fairly often in the form of a woman clad in a flowing, opalescent dress with an image of a balance of practically see-through gold on it. When this manifestation appeared to a person, this person could determine whether he stood in favor or disfavor of the god by looking at the scale. If it scaled to the left, he could be sure to spend the next seven years in poverty, debt, and servitude while losing his fortune. If the scale tilted to the right, the recipient of the manifestation could expect himself good fortune in the material sense. If the scales were balanced, the recipeient was receiving an invitation to become enter Amaunator's clergy.

Another manifestation of his were thirteen giant hyenas. These were sent by the Yellow God to punish people who deserved such or to avenge people who did not have the ability to it y themselves. When these hyenas appeared the offender was killed by them and the body was ripped apart to cover 1 acre (4047 square meters).

Favored animals of Amaunator were tan dogs, cream-colored cats, pure white wolves, birds of prey, especially sunfalcons and white stallions, which were sent to show his favor or disfavor. The Keeper of the Eternal Sun's favored monsters were, emerald dragons, sapphire dragons, steel dragons, golems, and takos. His favored minerals were topaz and any red-colored gem. His favored plants were yellow-eyed daisies, sunflowers, and golden lilies.

Possessions
Amaunator's avatar wore a magistrate's unform and held in each hand a legal tome and a scepter, the scepter of the eternal sun.

Divine Realm
Amaunator's divine realm, the Keep of the Eternal Sun used to be on Mechanus. He lost with the fall of Netheril enough followers to die of neglect. His death robbed his ability to maintain his divine realm and his corpse was ejected to the Astral Plane.

Activities
Amaunator preached that people needed to follow laws to the letter. The reason for this was the belief that laws were the foundation on which any society was built on and disrespecting law would inevitably cause the collapse of any society.

The Yellow God's also taught that people had to familiarize themselves with law to get an understanding how to act in a proper manner that saved them from getting punished.

His message also extended to hierarchies mortals made for themselves. The Keeper of the Eternal Sun told his followers to adhere to their superiors. The idea behind it was that faithful service would yield them rewards while failure to do so punishment. That said, people were told to keep tabs on their superiors' decisions. This was to increase the number of precedents to draw from and help to standardize rulings and with it the relevance of Amaunator's message.

Before Karsus's Folly
Amaunator was a greater deity during the days of ancient Netheril. He was the one who judged over the Pantheon Contour, an agreement between deities.

After Karsus's Folly
When Netheril fell, Amaunator's worshiper-base shrunk to Netheril's lower and middle class. These people abandoned his faith for they believed that he knowingly did nothing to stop the disaster. They were correct about it. The reason why the Yellow God did nothing was because he had no legal basis to do so. Per divine contract, magic was Mystrly's domain on which he had no right to infringe upon. With his worshiper-base gone, his faith continued to shrink over the time. He dropped from greater deity-status to lesser deity-status and from there to dead power-status over a millennium. His inability to maintain hid divine realm caused it to cease existing and the Keeper of the Eternal Sun became one of the corpses on the Astral Plane. This all would have happened around 661 DR, for the fall of Netheril was in -339 DR.

On the mortals' side, various theories were concocted to explain Amaunator's non-existence. Starting with having moved to somewhere else than Faerûn like another world or Kara-Tur's pantheon to having become or absorbed by something else like At'ar the Merciless or Lathander.

Belief in Amaunator lived on in at least three different ways. First, the Bedine belief of At'ar, the Merciless. This was the result of Netherese survivors telling stories about the Yellow God to the Bedine, which then were twisted over time into that of a woman who was married to Kozah but pursued an adulterous relationship with N'asr. This belief received no divine support and At'ar had no clerics. The second belief was belief in Amaunator himself. This belief in a dead deity experienced divine support and had active clerics. Provided the clerics learnt the art of a servant of the fallen, the dead god could supply those people with spells. The third belief was in one of Lathander's heresies, either the Three-Faced Sun heresy or the Risen Sun heresy. The former was the idea that the sun was an overgod who had two aspects that were possible objects of worship for mortals. Not all but some believed that Amaunator would return to resume his role as one of these two aspects. The second heresy was the idea that Lathander was the reincarnated form of Amaunator. By the 14 century DR, their radicals believed that Lathander revealing himself as Amaunator was close. Faced with this heresy, Lathander had three options, accept it and turn it into the effective truth, reject it and lose potential worshipers, or let it be and gain more worshipers at the cost of his authority losing its weight. He chose the last one.

Return of Amaunator
In 1371/1372 DR, high-ranked clerics and paladins of Lathander began to receive messages regarding a mysterious event called the "Deliverance", leading them to begin an aggressive recruitment campaign. It was not clear whether this had anything to do with Amaunator.

Amaunator's return was heralded by a fire genasi called Daelegoth Orndeir. The man was a believer in the aforementioned Risen Sun heresy and made it his goal to make it the mainstream branch of Lathander's church. He strengthened his base and power in intra-church politics, developed the Amaunator's eternal sun spell, and managed to get hold over the Shard of the Sun, a holy relic of Amaunator. He claimed he had seen visions that Amaunator's ascension was nigh and gathered his people to Elversult to witness the sign of the ascension in 1374 DR. The sign he referred to were the effects of the Amaunator's eternal sun spell, which he developed beforehand. This made people believe him and people flocked to the church of Lathander to join the church of Amaunator while the leaders of Lathander's church were not sure what to do.

Lathander was revealed to be Amaunator in the Year of Blue Fire, 1385 DR, just after the Spellplague. It was not clear whether it was the truth or he embraced a heresy and turned it into the effective truth.

In 1486 DR, Amaunator resumed his identity as Lathander. However, by the year 1491 DR, Amuaunator and Lathander were once again worshiped as separate beings. It is unknown if they were actually separate beings by this time or if Lathander was simply granting spells to the followers of Amaunator.

Worshipers
Members of the church of Amaunator were powerful political figures at the height of Netheril's rule. Amaunator's clergy were extremely hierarchical and rulebound. Each Righteous Potentate (high priest of a temple, called a "Court") oversaw all aspects of church functions. No one could perform or be relieved of their duties without the consent of the Righteous Potentate or one of his seven Monastic Abbots. Under each of the seven Monastic Abbots, there were an additional seven High Jurists (priests) who served relentlessly, performing whatever duties were assigned to them. Lower ranks of clergy members served beneath the High Jurists, and were known as (in descending order): Jurists, High Magistrates, Magistrates, Defenders of the Law, Lions of Order, Radiant Servants, and Clerks. Within Amaunator's church, there was an elite sect of clerics and holy warriors called Sunmasters, who later represented a branch of the church of Lathander known as the Brotherhood of the Glorious Sun.

Priests of Amaunator encouraged the establishment of lawful order and bureaucracy in the world at large. They were called on to witness contracts and apply a signatory stamp with the symbol of Amaunator to verify its validity.

Day-to-day activities
All clergy members had to learn, understand, and know how to reap the benefits from (or exploit) the laws of the land, the city, and the province they lived in. In order to completely understand the nuances of law and legislature, the clergy constantly drilled each other, practiced law in court whenever possible, and rehearsed law in practice courtrooms. They could not resist investigating the scene of a crime or taking part in the construction of new laws in their locale, and did so with great intensity and fervor.

Amaunatori served often in court as judges, to present cases, and to hear legal arguments and disputes. They were paid well to settle merchant disputes over contracts, agreements, and trade practices and made a comfortable living for themselves and their church as arbitrators of all sorts of commercial and personal claims not worthy of the attention of figures of power in ultimate authority.

Heresies
The church of Lathander was not without its notable heresies, including the Risen Sun heresy and the Three-Faced Sun heresy, both of which were prominently focused on the return of Amaunator. The former later proved true when Amaunator returned.

Orders

 * Brotherhood of the Sun
 * This order was an association of itinerant monks who served the faithful in the field, bringing the comforting words of Amaunator to the peasants and common folk and preserving order throughout the land. Although the Brotherhood survived the fall of Netheril and the death of Amaunator, it never coalesced around a proper successor. Instead, each monastery chose its own deity to serve, with most eventually gravitating to Lathander or Selûne, but a few choosing Sune. By the Age of Humanity, the Brotherhood of the Sun was known as the Order of the Sun Soul, and the group's original association with the church of Amaunator had been largely forgotten. The order admitted both men and women during this period, but retained its itinerant nature and ancestral focus on serving the common folk of Toril.


 * Brotherhood of the Glorious Sun
 * This order was a group of sun priests who believed Lathander to secretly be the incarnation of Amaunator during the Era of Upheaval. Divine spellcasters in the order who could manage to acquire an original holy symbol of Amaunator had the option to become sunmasters, and gained many useful powers relating to sunlight.

Temples
A group of Amaunator's followers existed in the catacombs beneath the city of Athkatla. This group of followers had been bound by divine contract to forever guard half of the planar rift device, an artifact so powerful the gods cursed it and split it in two. Millennia of guarding took its toll, and gradually the people grew weary of spending their entire lives in this catacomb, dying, and having their souls recycled to the next generation. Amaunator had not spoken to them in many years, and the people lost faith. Their bodies became sick and diseased as a symbol of their despair, and the hatred they focused towards the temple resulted in the formation of a Hate Incarnation, which repeatedly destroyed Amaunator's avatar.

In 1368 DR, when Gorion's Ward and companions entered the catacombs to retrieve the guarded piece of the planar rift device, Amaunator offered no resistance but also no help. Entering the temple, they found that the Hate Incarnation could not be killed in combat (a wound in faith could not be healed by fighting) but could be dispelled via healing magics. Amaunator's avatar then appeared and gaves the party the device, telling them to reconstruct it and deplete its power so it could be destroyed. After the party returned the depleted rod, Amaunator and his followers, renewed in their faith, departed.

Astronomy
Amaunator's belt was a constellation that appeared in the sky above the Spine of the World during the summer.

Connections
Amaunator