Yurir Magnusson

Yurir Magnusson is the a diety of the Dwarven Pantheon, creation and son of Magnus Allfather. Dwarves, especially those of the Clans of Magnus, revere him as the Rune-Giver, who received the knowledge of the First Runes from his patriarch and in turn created the discipline of Runecrafting which he gifted the knowledge of to mortal dwarves. His descendants and creations form Clan Yurirsson, one of the Twelve Clans of Magnus, though he has some scattered followers in most other clanholds, married in from Yurirsson or inspired by their work in the trade he created. Many strongholds boast at least a few of his followers, either in the form of Runecrafters or his lesser order of Auguries.

Yurir is a lawful neutral deity whose followers are granted access to the Artifice, Knowledge, Magic, and Rune domains. His holy symbol is a hammer engraved with the first-rune Ur.

History

Yurir Magnusson was created early in the history of the dwarves by Magnus Allfather, who forged him to be the prefect of the lands that would become the clanhold of his followers. He personally directed the excavation of Khaz Yurridduum when the Allfather gifted him the First Runes, and developed the art of runecrafting within this fortress, which became the capital of Clan Yurirsson. There he also founded the Forge of Wills and the science of Runecrafting, which he oversaw personally until mortal masters of the craft emerged, before retiring to Khaz Urheim to live out eternity with his family and further his trade.

Relationships

Yurir Magnusson is on good terms with mortal dwarves and lives on in Khaz Urheim with the rest of his pantheon. His role in the city is as an advisor and augury to his brother Erim Magnusson and to his father, and he is known to continue to experiment with the divine. He is prone to travel in ways that many of the other Dwarven Gods aren't, occasionally risking the Astral Plane to reach other planes or attempt to find the lost Library of Akasha.

San Sylvester has been known to seek out Yurir's advice when stuck on hard problems of the arcane.

Appearance

Yurir is a gargantuan being alike in proportion and visage to the dwarves, albeit on a much grander scale. He is somewhat pale and has along mane of white hair and similar beard, both of which he allows to lie straight and unbraided. He wears a leather apron smeared with Runic Dykem and carries or wears a loupe for his left eye.

Realm

His divine realm is in Khaz Urheim, a fortified city in the Atlas Mountains which bridges Ahren and the Bardo. While the location of this city is said to be embedded in the soul of every dwarf, as a practical matter only the dead seem to remember it, and the location is lost to both living dwarves and some of the best scholars in all Wisteria. It is possible that the material portion of the stronghold does not have a static position, but appears only as needed.

Providence

Yurir takes little intervention in the affairs of mortal dwarves despite his position in their worship. The surest sign of his providence is the sudden recovery of knowledge thought lost - be that finding a book that was mis-catalogued in a library or dwarves recovering an abandoned stronghold with its libraries and writings intact.

Servants

Yurir serves Magnus Allfather in his fortress, and is served by those dwarves who have earned their divine rest with him in Khaz Urheim, along with the Secondborn, dwarf-like stone golems of giant size.

The Dwarven Church

Yurir's church is a supplementary worship alongside that of Magnus Allfather. Except in his clan's hold, his is a rare worship, usually marked only by professional runecafters, diviners, and wizards. As such outside of the lands of Clan Yurirsson his places of worship are more likely to be a personal shrine or a guildhall chapel than a full-blown temple.

Worshippers

All Atlassian Dwarves worship Magnus Allfather, and some of those (especially in Clan Yurirsson) worship Yurir in addition. Rank within the clergy is highly structured and determined by status and promotion from above, up to and including the primate of his cult, the Runic Grandmaster. Every guild to arcane practice or artifice will have at least a small chapel dedicated to him.

Clergy

Priests of the Rune-Giver wear elegant robes with braided piping, usually in grey and blue, symbolizing mythirl and Runic Dykem. They adopt particular manners of the decoration and braiding of their hair and beards that makes them stand apart from other folk, including other clergy - namely, that they do neither, which is unusual even for lowborn dwarves, but instead comb their hair out in a straight but orderly fashion. His clergy have specialized roles, administering his ceremonies to the small communities that follow him. In areas where the population of worshippers can support non-pastoral clergy, his clerics serve as artificers or auguries, sometimes leading whole guilds of either practice.

Temples & Shrines

Like much the rest of dwarven architecture, temples and shrines to the Rune-Giver are often masterworks of masonry or stonework, which in wealthy communities are often further embellished with precious metals or gem-mosiacs, depicting geometric proofs of some of the primary teachings of the craft. Such structures are usually subdivided internally, with an area for public ceremony and worship (which is rare) and an area for the sole use of the clergy and those who serve the clergy in liturgical preparation, and full temple complexes almost always include an outbuilding or suite of rooms known as the rectory, where the priests serving a particular temple have residence.

Such full temples often house laboratories or are attendant to consecrated foundries as is the case at his principle temple, the Forge of Wills in Khaz Yurridduum.

Holy Texts

The Secrets of the First Runes is a lengthy and dense text of the secrets of runecrafting, which deal with foundational knowledge in the craft and are supplemented by countless volumes of additional commentary and further research through the ages. It is a large volume, some 300 pages when written on velum. These copies are dear and expensive to produce according to the dwarves, as well as being considered secret knowledge and jealously guarded, therefore found exceptionally rarely outside of the dwarven holds. Duplicating these documents and providing them to non-dwarves is absolutely haraam.

Church History

Among the Clans, the church waxes and wanes in power over the centuries, as the focus of dwarven life shifts between isolationism amongst the clans (when worship of the children of the Allfather is more prevelent) to those times of great crisis when the clans stand united and Magnus is more widely pronounced. The church does not lament these shifts in its influence, but stands ever-ready to prove themselves as the true paragons of dwarven ingenuity.