Amaunator

Amaunator 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 Netheril.

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 either 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 to 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 and 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.

Amaunator tended to ignore the spirit of the law in favor of the letter of it. 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.

After his return, he gained the memory as a youthful deity and maintained this perspective as something valuable enough to urge his followers to do too.

Abilities
Amaunator's sight 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.

Amaunator could grant his Chosens the ability to shed searing light from allies who drew from their inner resources to invigorate themselves.

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 recipient was receiving an invitation to 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 do it 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 uniform, and appeared holding a legal tome and a scepter, the scepter of the eternal sun.

He once owned an oak staff with astral diamonds at the base and a sun-shaped one on the head that was worth 23,000 gp.

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.

Once he came back to life, he created the astral dominion Eternal Sun and lived there with Siamorphe and Waukeen.

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 same adherence was also extended to traditions.

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. He also wanted people to be organized individuals who met their commitments and were always on time.

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.

Relationships
Amaunator was the judge over the Pantheon Contour in the Netherese pantheon. He was named the god of time on the basis of a mispunctuation. He never acted on this claim for he did not want to be on bad footing with Mystryl who was the goddess of time in practice.

After returning, he was served by Siamorphe as his exarch and lived with Waukeen on his astral domain Eternal Sun.

Apparently, he found Sune attractive.

Worshipers
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.

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 Mystryl'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 his 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.

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.

Post-Spellplague Era
After the Spellplague, Amaunator became an established greater deity of the Faerûnian pantheon. He fulfilled the role of timekeeper among the gods.

He had people who primarily worshiped him as Lathander, his youthful aspect - something Amaunator actively encouraged.

The city of Elturel benefited from a shining globe that was sometimes accredited to Amaunator. However, it was unclear whether the god had anything to do with the sphere. The only one who knew the answer was the High Observer of the city.

Post-Second Sundering
In 1486 DR, Lathander returned according to his Chosen Stedd Whitehorn. By the year 1491 DR, Amaunator and Lathander were once again worshiped as separate beings. It is unknown if they were actually separate beings by this time or one was the aspect of the other.

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.

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

Connections
Amaunator