One of my favourite games of all time is Cultist Simulator, an incredibly well-written videogame and whose devs I recommend you do not give money to in any way possible. Its writing is excellent, painting a vivid depiction of a familiar but strange 1920’s under whose skin lays a beautifully detailed occult world, not for the sake of empty worldbuilding, but as a way to talk about aspects of the human condition. For a while now I have been workshopping a mod for it, focusing on one part I find myself recently drawn: the Hour of Thresholds, the Horned-Axe, here are some of my thoughts on it.
A little context, for anyone unfamiliar with the lore of the game: an Hour is essentially a god, who are associated with some of the universal Aspects of reality, before getting their own symbolic associations and, forgive the very mechanistic associations of the word, “Domains”. The Horned-Axe is the oldest Hour in the setting, part of a pantheon of older gods, slain by the new ones similar to the Titanomachy of Greek myth. This pantheon was worshipped by the Carapace Cross, a grouping of sapient races with animal, primarily bug-like features, that are, at least in-part, the ancestors of humanity. This pantheon (the gods-from-Stone) is associated with ‘primordiality’, hearing, the Aspect of Heart, acting as antithesis against the cold, merciless enlightenment that rules the new set of gods. The Horned-Axes Aspects are Knock(the Aspect of Openings, often very metaphorical openings, and the Passage) and Winter(the aspect of endings, death, beauty and remembrance of the death), and her own personal motifs are cats, owl and hawthorn. She is worshipped as the Crone in a Maiden/Mother/Crone three-goddess belief of an in-universe organisation. Her main domains of activities is regulating when (supernatural) passage is ought to be granted to mortals and keeping the world safe from an infectious zombie spore hivemind Hour.
This is not little to go off for a whole mod, but I don’t think there is enough material here to prevent a mod’s writing from getting stale very, very fast. So here are some of my attempts to expand her symbolism.
First thing first- her association with Winter is quite weak and vague. The ending of attempts to cross a Threshold, her existence being a way to preserve the memories of the gods-from-Stone are probable, but even combined still feel too weak. However, Winter is also the aspect of ‘Silent Intensity’ and ‘Concentration’ and I think that might be a neat new tie- her judgement of whenever something ought to be afforded passage is an intellectual act, the result of wisdom(which then ties to her animal, the owl). Painting is also often associated with Winter, but I am not sure how to elaborate on that. Perhaps something related to artwork as doors for the supernatural or sealing spirits in them as something that her followers can do. Feels overly mechanical, but might work.
Her second associated aspect is Knock, for far more obvious reasons. However, one of my favourite parts of Knock, the equivalence between Wounds are Doors, is mostly missing from her writing, with exceptions towards two of her servants: Ghirbli and Vak. I could supplement it by elaborating on the views being the last living kin of her family/pantheon has wounded her. There are also rituals through which humans can attain forms similar to the Carapace Cross, however reframing as a process of flagellations, creation Wounds from which the Cross step back into existence might work. I also want to elaborate on why the Axe favours cats and owls. They are both predators who hunt vermin (metaphorically watching the Threshold). Cats are, famously, well known for being able to get into spaces that they really should not be able to (Knock) and while collaborating with humans, they are never servile to them (much like the Axe has a truce with the new pantheon, but is clearly still displeased about that whole ‘you murdered my entire family’ business), and owls are silent predators (and also associated with wisdom, reinforcing the Winter theme a lot). Ought to do something related to the myth of Cardea (the roman goddess the Axe is clearly based off) and the stories but I truly have no idea for what would be an actually interesting direction for that.
An interesting detail is that both the Crowned Growth (the aforementioned zombie hivemind god that the Horned-Axe prevents from ravaging reality) and the Sun-in-Splendour (the now dead God-King of the new pantheon) are drawing on the idea of the absolute, monarchic and patriarchal ruler, but the gods-from-Stone had no such equivalent (only one of them is ever called a ‘monarch’, but that avoids the male-coded, and it is only done twice, while the Thritige-kind of the Cross rejected the idea of the Great Man, the Ruler on a philosophical level). But that’s something to be better used when, and if, the mod brooches on the remnant-powers of the other stone-gods I think.
I guess at the end of this I have no real big conclusion to finish off, but I think my thoughts are better organised now. Thanks for reading!