I Created a God Solely to Destroy Him
Months later, I discovered that he had always belonged in the pantheon.
Here is the truth: Thyrron was not part of the original pantheon of Khassid.
I created him because I had already decided that a god needed to die. Actually, no. Death was not enough. A god needed to be unmade.
That distinction mattered to me. Gods die in fantasy all the time. Sometimes they return. Sometimes their followers preserve them, fragments of their power survive, or their deaths become temporary inconveniences with sufficiently dramatic consequences. I wanted something final. I wanted one of the gods to cease existing so completely that the others would be forced to confront a truth they had never seriously considered:
Aeru could erase them.
The only problem was that none of the gods already in the pantheon felt right for the role. They had identities, relationships, purposes, and places in the world that I did not want to lose, so I did the perfectly reasonable thing.
I created a new god solely to destroy him.
Khassid Needed Something to Happen
This began because I thought Khassid needed a defining catastrophe. I had created the world, its gods, and much of its early history, but I wanted an event that would divide everything that came before it from everything that followed.
I looked at two Dungeons & Dragons® settings that had done something similar. The Forgotten Realms™ had the Time of Troubles, when the gods were cast down and forced to walk among mortals. Dragonlance™ had the Cataclysm, when the history of Krynn was shattered by divine judgment.
Both events permanently altered their worlds. They changed nations, religions, cultures, and the relationship between mortals and gods. People living centuries later still understood history through the consequences of what had happened.
Khassid needed its own rupture. Not a copy of either event, naturally, but something of comparable weight.
That was when I decided a god had to be removed from the board. Since I did not want to sacrifice an existing deity, I created Thyrron and gave him aspiration, pride, and ambition.
Those portfolios seemed useful because they could affect anyone. Mortals aspire. Kings possess ambitions. Priests take pride in their faith. Artists want to surpass their previous work.
Gods aspire too.
A god of ambition could influence the entire pantheon, which made Thyrron perfect for the disaster I needed.
The God Built to Fail
The basic idea was that Thyrron would become corrupted. His aspiration would become an endless need for greatness, his pride would become vanity, and his ambition would become the desire to surpass everyone and everything, regardless of the cost.
Because those impulses existed among mortals and gods alike, his corruption could spread through both worlds. Mortals would become more grasping, prideful, and ruthless. Rulers would seek greater power. Nations would compete without restraint. Betrayal, tyranny, and greed would flourish.
Meanwhile, the gods would begin turning against one another. They would become consumed by influence, prestige, worship, and the conviction that their own domains deserved greater prominence. Even benevolent gods could become too proud to compromise or too focused upon their own purposes to recognize what was happening.
The gods would cause damage in their own realm while mortals caused damage upon Khassid, and the destruction would feed itself.
That was enough to get the Cataclysm moving.
At the time, I did not have some grand metaphysical argument about the relationship between ambition and greed. I had a god built to infect everyone and then be erased. That came first.
The deeper meaning arrived later.
The Wild Screams
As the destruction spread, I knew The Wild would suffer.
Originally, I thought of her as profoundly connected to Khassid. Every forest, river, mountain, animal, and living system was part of her domain. If those things were destroyed, she would feel it.
I decided she would scream.
A normal scream, however, felt wrong. I did not want her simply standing somewhere and making a noise loud enough to shake the heavens. Part of the inspiration came from an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer in which a terrible silence is finally broken by a scream. I remembered the emotional force of that release, but The Wild’s scream needed to work differently.
It would be metaphysical.
Every living creature would feel it instantly within the deepest part of itself. Mortals would not know what they had experienced. Animals would panic. Gods would fall silent. The sensation would pass through all of Creation as an anguish that belonged to everyone and no one.
Then another inspiration found its way into the scene. In the opening of Injustice, Lex Luthor forces Wonder Woman to call Superman. She screams, Superman’s eyes open, and he immediately knows something is wrong.
That became Aeru.
The Wild screamed, Aeru opened their eyes, and the Creator returned to Khassid.
Aeru Comes Home
I did not want Aeru’s return to become a grand battle. Aeru was not arriving to engage the gods as an equal opponent. Aeru was returning because the gods had nearly destroyed the world entrusted to them.
The Creator would silence the pantheon, admonish them, and demand an accounting. Some had deliberately encouraged the suffering. Tlaxitan had fostered domination, Kaemir had fostered betrayal, and Miné had fostered greed. Others had become consumed by pride, rivalry, and self-interest. Some had recognized the danger but failed to act.
All were responsible.
Then Aeru would turn to Thyrron.
There would be no struggle, no explosion, and no celestial duel. Aeru would simply unmake him.
That was important. A battle would imply that Thyrron had some chance of resisting, while spectacle would make the moment feel like a contest of power. I wanted the opposite.
One moment, Thyrron existed. The next, he did not.
No body. No soul. No divine remnant waiting to return.
Gone.
Even the memory of him would be stripped from mortal minds. Only the gods would remember that he had ever existed, and Aeru would force them to carry that memory forever.
The reaction mattered almost as much as the unmaking.
Esharra would be the first to respond. As the goddess of crafts, invention, and creation, unmaking would be fundamentally horrifying to her. It was not simply the destruction of a being. It was the absolute negation of existence.
Then there was Tlaxitan.
Tlaxitan embodies control and domination. He would stand tall and maintain his composure because that is what Tlaxitan does.
But someone watching carefully might notice his hands trembling.
The god of tyranny had just learned that his own existence was subject to a power he could never control.
He may have peed himself a little.
Divinely, of course.
Miné Thinks She Won
After Thyrron’s unmaking, Aeru turned toward Miné. She had played a central role in the catastrophe, and Aeru was prepared to erase her as well.
The Wild intervened.
After everything she had endured, she asked Aeru for no more destruction. Aeru listened.
Miné would live, but Thyrron’s temples, priests, and portfolios would pass into her custody. What remained of aspiration, pride, and ambition would become her responsibility.
I knew this was supposed to be a punishment. Miné, naturally, would interpret it as a reward. She had escaped unmaking and gained more. What greater victory could the goddess of greed imagine?
At the time, that was enough. It was ironic, it fit her character, and it gave Thyrron’s abandoned worshippers somewhere to go.
Then, months later, I finally saw what I had done.
Miné and Thyrron were two sides of the same coin.
The God Who Had Always Belonged
Miné is want and need directed inward.
I want this. I need this. I will acquire it. I will possess it.
Thyrron was want and need directed outward.
I will grow. I will achieve. I will rise. I will become more than I am.
Greed and ambition are not identical, but they share a root.
Miné recognized that Thyrron’s portfolio was related to hers, and she was absolutely correct. Her mistake was believing that relationship meant ownership.
Because she embodies greed, Miné could not simply acknowledge the overlap between their divine truths. She sought to possess it. She attempted to control Thyrron and draw his portfolio into her own.
In doing so, she corrupted him. Aspiration became arrogance, pride became vanity, and ambition became destructive excess. Because Thyrron’s influence reached gods and mortals alike, the corruption spread through both.
Suddenly, the entire Cataclysm made more sense than it had when I first wrote it.
Miné had not merely helped create disorder. She had tried to possess the outward-facing half of the same cosmic impulse she embodied inwardly.
Thyrron had not been a random god built to die. He filled a genuine metaphysical place within the pantheon.
I had created him solely to destroy him. Months later, I discovered that he had always belonged there.
The Punishment Miné Cannot Understand
That realization also changed Aeru’s decision.
Aeru did not give Thyrron’s portfolio to Miné merely because someone needed to inherit it. Aeru understood that the two halves should not remain divided between separate gods. Their division had created the vulnerability Miné exploited. As long as greed and ambition remained embodied by rival divine beings, the temptation to dominate the overlap would remain.
So Aeru reunited them.
Miné received want and need turned inward and outward: greed, aspiration, pride, and ambition.
On paper, this should have elevated her tremendously. Almost every mortal act begins somewhere within that combined portfolio. People want security, love, wealth, recognition, power, knowledge, achievement, or a better future. They need food, safety, belonging, and purpose. They aspire to become something greater.
Miné should probably be a greater goddess.
She is not.
The reason is Miné herself.
She is remarkably intelligent, but she is incapable of thinking beyond her own interests. She understands bargains, manipulation, power, and acquisition, but she cannot fully comprehend the outward-facing potential of the domains she inherited.
Aspiration can inspire civilizations. Pride can bind people to a community or a worthy cause. Ambition can create art, discovery, justice, and lasting institutions.
Miné sees them primarily as ways to obtain more.
She thinks Aeru rewarded her because her portfolio expanded. She does not understand that Aeru burdened her with powers requiring precisely the vision, generosity, and sense of responsibility she lacks.
She possesses the potential for greatness, but her own nature prevents her from reaching it.
Aeru does not need to place her in chains.
Miné imprisons herself.
And Aeru watches her.
Always.
The Truth About Worldbuilding
I would love to pretend that I planned all of this from the beginning.
I did not.
I did not create Thyrron because I had identified a missing half within the metaphysics of mortal desire. I created him because I wanted Aeru to unmake somebody.
I did not initially understand that Miné and Thyrron represented inward and outward expressions of want and need. I realized that months later.
I did not begin with a carefully constructed divine punishment in which Miné received everything she wanted but lacked the capacity to use it fully. That meaning emerged after the decision had already been made.
This is one of the things I love about creating Khassid. Sometimes I build an idea deliberately. Sometimes I make a dramatic choice because it feels right, only to discover later that the world has already begun arranging meaning around it.
Thyrron began as a sacrificial piece, a god created to be erased. Yet the more I understood the gods, the more obvious it became that aspiration, pride, and ambition had always required a place among them.
The god I created solely to destroy turned out to be necessary.
Perhaps that is the final irony.
Thyrron was unmade so completely that mortals no longer remember he existed.
But I understand him far better now than I did when he was alive.
Dungeons & Dragons® is a registered trademark of Wizards of the Coast LLC. Forgotten Realms™ and Dragonlance™ are trademarks of Wizards of the Coast LLC. This entry references those settings and works solely as creative inspiration and commentary. Khassid and its associated characters, cosmology, and lore are original creations of Darnell Coates.