Ythrik, the Second Guess

Deity of Paranoia, Distrust, and the Broken Oath

Ythrik is the most effective of the Discordant's children and the one its own siblings avoid.

Where Askarath breaks armies and Gravenmaw lets buildings fall, Ythrik goes after the thing all of them are made of: the assumption that the person beside you will do what they said. Remove that and nothing needs to be attacked. Guilds dissolve on their own. Alliances audit each other into paralysis. No tyrant can rise, because no tyrant can staff a chancery.

The faith is entirely sincere that this is liberation. It is also entirely aware of what it costs, and says so — Ythrik's clergy are the only Discordant priesthood that routinely warns people away from conversion.

Grayspire did not need converting. There, a handshake tonight may mean a blade tomorrow, and Ythrik arrived to find the work already done.

Domains:

  • Paranoia: Suspicion sustained without evidence, treated as a defensible strategy rather than a disorder. Ythrik's power gathers where people are checking on each other and vanishes where they have stopped bothering.
  • Distrust: The withdrawal of assumed good faith. The faith distinguishes this sharply from hatred, which it regards as a form of closeness.
  • The Broken Oath: A promise deliberately failed to prove that promises fail. The faith's hardest rite and the one it requires of its clergy.

Manifestation and Symbols:

  • Ythrik is depicted as a figure looking over its own shoulder at nothing, the background always empty, always painted with great care.
  • Its sigil is two hands not quite meeting — a handshake arrested a finger's width short.
  • Its presence shows as verification. People begin checking arrangements that have held for years. Nothing is found. The checking continues, and the checking is the point.

Doctrine and Influence:

  • "They cannot conscript a people who will not stand next to each other."
    • The founding argument, and one that is difficult to refute on its own terms and easy to hate.
  • "Break one oath that matters, so you never again believe in the rest."
    • The initiation. Ythrik's clergy have each destroyed something real, and are required to name it when asked.

Worshippers:

  • The harbour factions of Grayspire, where Ythrik shares crowded ground with Nivenne — one god counting the debts, the other ensuring nobody believes the count.
  • Survivors of betrayed causes, who arrive certain and are usually told to go home.
  • Almost no institutions, which is exactly the outcome the faith is aiming at.

"Check it again. You were right to. That is all I ever wanted from you."