Lore

Brell Serilis, the Duke of Below

God of the underworld, earth, and the deep places — patron of dwarves, gnomes, and the work of stone and forge.

Brell Serilis is the god of the underworld, of stone and the deep places, of the forge and the patient labor that turns raw rock into things worth keeping.

The pantheon styles him the Duke of Below; his children style him simply Father. Where the gods of sky and forest argue over the open world above, Brell holds the older work — the foundation under everything, the cave that the city forgets it was built on, the ore that no one above ground knows how to find.

The dwarven and gnomish people consider this distinction central; the surface, in their theology, is what happens when one stops paying attention to the deep.

Origins

The dwarven creation story holds that Brell descended into the unfinished world before any of his peers had decided what to do with it, and made the first tunnels because he wanted to see what was already there. He found, in the dwarven telling, that the world had been shaped from the inside out — that the sky and forest the other gods would later quarrel over were the thin upper crust of something much larger and more interesting.

He carved out the first cities of the deep, set forges in them, and seeded them with the people he most enjoyed: dwarves and gnomes, made for the work of stone and the work of small clever things.

The two peoples were intended, in the older accounts, as complementary specialties of a single underworld civilization — the dwarves to build, the gnomes to invent, both to inhabit.

Other races' theological texts treat the deep-creation story with skepticism. The dwarves and gnomes do not care; they have the cities to show for it.

Conflicts and alliances

Brell's traditional opposition is with the air-aligned and sky-aligned deities, whose realms he considers the soft top of a much sturdier whole. The conflict has rarely turned into open theological war — it tends to express itself as territorial disagreement over which of the elemental planes is most foundational.

He has a long, quiet good relationship with Tunare, with whom his interests overlap in the soil and the roots; the two cults have collaborated on cross-realm projects since the early ages without a recorded falling-out. He maintains a more strained relationship with Bristlebane, whose worshipers are accused, periodically and probably accurately, of pickpocketing his halls.

His most active enmity in the modern age is with the deep horrors — fear-aligned things, whose intrusion into underworld zones he considers a personal affront. The dwarven and gnomish military traditions have organized themselves accordingly; any deep zone the surface considers cleared, Brell's people consider provisionally cleared.

Domain

Earth, the underworld, mining and metalwork, the patient virtues of craft, and the small clever inventions of his gnomish children.

Brell's sphere also covers stewardship — keeping a thing in good order, finishing what was started, knowing the value of the work that no one above ever sees.

The cult emphasizes that the work is its own reward. Public recognition is not part of the Duke of Below's theology; the foundation that holds up the city is foundational whether the city notices or not.

Followers

Dwarves are nearly universal in their worship of Brell, and the great cities of the deep — chief among them Kaladim — are organized around his temples. Gnomes worship him with their own emphasis: less ceremony, more invention.

A specialty branch of dwarf paladins worships Brell as a martial deity in his own right, an alternative to the Marr line favored elsewhere.

Crafters of every race — smiths, miners, tinkerers, jewelers — invoke his name as a matter of professional courtesy. For class restriction mechanics see /wiki/deities/brell-serilis.

Planar realm

The Plane of Innovation is Brell's plane in its modern, gnome-flavored expression — a vast workshop-realm of brass machines, steam vents, ore carts, and contraptions whose purpose is sometimes only legible to their builders.

The plane is loud in a way few planar destinations are; the Duke of Below considers noise a healthy sign of work being done.

Earlier traditions hold that Brell's truer hall lies deeper still, beneath the workshop, in a forge-chamber whose fires were lit before the world had a sky. The Plane of Innovation is the public-facing court; the deep forge is the private one, and mortal expeditions have not reached it.

Notable myths

The shaping of the dwarves, in which Brell sets the first dwarven souls into stone bodies and teaches them the use of hammer and anvil
The first gnome, a quieter and more mischievous tale in which Brell makes a smaller, cleverer cousin to the dwarven line "to keep them honest"
The pact of the deep roads, an early-history agreement said to bind dwarven and gnomish travelers to mutual aid in any cave dark enough that neither could see the other
The forging of the under-cities, in which Brell sets the foundations of Kaladim, Ak'Anon, and other deep settlements before any mortal hand has been laid to the work
The refusal of the sky, in which Brell — invited to take a higher seat among the elemental court — declines on the grounds that he prefers his own ceiling