Gond is the god of invention, craft, and mechanical wonder—revered by tinkerers, smiths, and artificers across the realms. He embodies the divine spark of innovation: the restless drive to imagine, refine, and build anew. To Gond, progress is sacred, and the world itself a machine in need of endless improvement.
"Stagnation is the slowest death. If it can be made, it must be made better."
- Gond.
Appearance
Gond is depicted as a burly, soot-marked figure with calloused hands and keen, calculating eyes. His attire resembles a smith’s apron combined with a tool-laden artificer’s harness—each pocket home to strange prototypes or ever-clicking clockwork. His beard is braided with copper wire and gears, and his left eye glows like a furnace core—an ever-burning ember of invention. In divine visions, his presence is often accompanied by the rhythmic ticking of unseen machines or the scent of hot iron and oil.
Godhood
Gond’s origin is debated among scholars: some say he was born of fire and metal in the heart of a dying star; others claim he was once mortal—a prodigious inventor whose designs outpaced the minds of his peers and caught the attention of the divine. Regardless of his true beginning, his rise came not through worship, but through creation. While other gods shaped the world through will or word, Gond built - layering mechanism upon principle to bring the first of his marvelous constructs unto the earth.
He does not concern himself with morality, only utility and function. In this, he is both inspiring and dangerous. He believes that invention is inherently neutral, and that its impact depends on the hands that wield it. His divine workshops are ever-moving, vast halls of shifting arms and endless projects—some abandoned, some perfected, some unknowable even to the gods.
Gond respects ingenuity wherever it blooms. He has blessed goblins who crafted siege engines from scrap, and rebuked master artisans who simply replicated past glories. He often appears to mortals in moments of breakthrough—sometimes in dreams, sometimes in sparks.
Worshippers
Followers of Gond are known as Wondermakers or Visionwrights, and are found wherever tools strike metal. They dress in practical clothing covered in belts, buckles, and modular pouches, and often carry notebooks or schematics scrawled with designs only they understand. Gondar sanctuaries are loud, smoke-filled places of experimentation where failure is seen as sacred. Offerings include discarded prototypes, broken machines reworked into something new, or blueprints of impossible designs.
Tenets of Faith
- Innovation is sacred. The old ways must yield to the better-built.
- Test everything. Failure refines the future.
- Use your tools wisely. Creation has no allegiance.
- To replicate is to stagnate. Strive always to improve.
- Do not discard - adapt. A broken thing may hold the seed of a greater one.