Aurora

Strictly speaking, gods are nothing more than vast, self-sustaining lattices of soul energy. Mortal souls are bound and sustained by the body they belong to, and begin to rapidly degrade if the body is sufficiently altered or damaged – but divine souls exist apart from such things, capable of maintaining cohesion without ever requiring a physical form.

To a god, a body is little more than a container; and in fact, the soul of a god is typically far too large and complex to be truly contained within the bodies they wear. The soul of a city god, for instance, spans the full breadth of the city’s influence, while the soul of a nature god fills their physical domain. The human-sized bodies they don could never contain the full magnitude of their existence; they are merely a small facet of the entity’s totality.

When a deity incarnates, they craft themselves a vessel to house a small part of their soul. This incarnation can readily act and communicate at a scale that largely eludes the vast deific “oversoul”. Gods have, at times, implied that, while discorporated, they do not strictly “think” as mortals do, and that the act of incarnating allows them a clarity of mind they do not otherwise experience. This benefit is secondary, however, to the sheer physical might the god can wield when made manifest.

The god’s incarnation is tailor-made to serve the god’s specific purpose, and they are not bound by the limits of mortal species – only by the limits of their own creativity. In times of conflict, it is not uncommon for these incarnations to be carefully-crafted war machines – many-armed titans of bronze and iron, lightning-fast living weapons, winged commanders rallying armies behind their banner. But the process of incarnating is time-consuming, and in times of rapid crisis, the god cannot always afford to wait.

And so, Sentinels were crafted.

Silent and still until and unless they are called upon, finely-sculpted stone guardians stand in every major city on the continent, designed to suit the aesthetic tastes of the god themself. Through careful name-magic enchantments during the course of their crafting, these statues are bonded with their god, so that if the divine feels the need to intervene, they can slip into one or more Sentinel statues as easily as one would slide on a glove. At times, city god’s incarnations have led armies of sentinels into battle, moving with coordination unknown to mortal armies – for there is only one mind, one will, directing the full force of the god.

Some gods describe older sentinels are having an “echo” – a fragmentary, rudimentary mind. As soul energy has a tendency to collect in old structures over time, it is hypothesized that, as sentinels age and slowly accumulate unformed soul energy, the control of the god leaves a ghostly impression in this unformed soul, an echo of the god’s will to protect their people.