Ateel
“Why do you resist so, little Chosen? My beloved Master merely wishes that all hearts love Him as they should, as was meant to be. That the tears of the anguished are dried, and that all sing His praises from Ice’s End to the tip of the Old Empire. HE demands our bottomless affection, and HE shall have it!”
– High Priestess Astraia, Voice of Ateel, AUC 2,734, Just Prior to Battle with Figulus Gnaeus, His Wife Drusa, and the Illusionist and Chosen Will-worker, Eurydice
The gods of Terra display a huge disparity in how involved with the World of Muscle and Blood they are. Some, like the Magna Mater (“Great Mother”), seem to lack any conventional notion of consciousness, existing solely within the gifts She bestows upon Her children, the kithgi, and the very earth beneath their feet. In that sense, the Great Mother has existed for an unthinkably long time, since the formation of the world of Terra at least.
The God of Twisted Love appears and behaves almost exactly opposite the ancient and mighty Magna Mater – He may only have been extant for a mere 200,000 winters, or since Man possessed both reason and dark passions. Ateel is also by far the most involved with humanity, actively attempting to use his creations, the Children of the Crimson to reshape Terra as He sees fit. Unlike some other deities, this god doesn’t necessarily want to “rule” in a conventional sense. Instead, He seeks to transform the world into an emotional hellscape of slavering worshippers that devote themselves first and foremost to this God of Twisted Love in all manner of ways. In essence, free will would evaporate in this reality, as Ateel comes to dominate all minds and spirits.
Since at least AUC 2,658, Ateel has been hard at work enacting a grand plan to allow Him to, at last, manifest unfettered within the World of Muscle and Blood. Hence the creation of the Children of the Crimson, and needing to “win” the balance of nine scenarios. What Power made that requirement, and more importantly was able to enforce it on a being as mighty as Ateel, is unknown. In practice, Ateel rarely intervenes directly, much preferring the use of pawns and intermediaries. This seems in direct contrast to His “sibling”, Tygiren, called the Titan of the Abyss.
Ateel longed nursed a special dislike for the mortal Archmagus, Figulus Gnaeus. As of AUC 2,757, where Gnaeus first invented and then used the Act of ZED to destroy Ateel’s control over his most precious tools, the Children of the Crimson, that dislike has blossomed into a full-on hatred. The fact that Figulus was able to keep breathing attests to Ateel’s relative impotence in this plane, as well as the Archmagus’ own extreme resilience.