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kavkem:mythology:maenona

<fc #ff0000>WARNING</fc>: The following material has not yet had a chance to become canonical.

Maenona is a benevolent but distant deity in the kavkem pantheon and original author of the gentle darkness of the night and the universe as a whole. She is the mythological character that corresponds to the Threadwielder Zalaagra - although necessarily only loosely, as Zalaagra has little interest in Nekenalos. Indeed, she is generally not considered to have any active dealings in the current lives of kavkema, but Nekenalos is often said to be guarded in part by a contraption of Maenona's design (Maene͡ivu).

Her name is likely derived from manonas (to fundamentally maintain), possibly portmanteaued with e (we).

Mythological depictions

Taaravahr

In the pure Taaravahr faith, Maenona is a metaphorical or literal sibling to Tamas̈elu, Maenona is universally considered an introverted counterpart of Tkanetar's. This manifests in various ways. Typically, she is the deity of darkness, ice and wind. Frequently she commands water and rain, as well as any set of creatures the particular religion chooses to attribute to her.

Even when she is not considered literally distant from Nekenalos, she is typically considered too peaceful to interfere even to defend the weak from the strong, and kavkema express their thanks to her largely as an appreciation that she fills a void that could otherwise be home to more corruption.

Maene͡ivu

In most kavkem mythologies (with the exception of Vahrs̈elos), storm clouds, their torrential rain and the wind associated with them, are all the work of Maenona's machinery (or, in the case of Nitish Ynas, represent Maenona directly). Most notably, lightning (plural ks̈yraa, singular ks̈yra) is exempt from the bundle - indeed, it is lightning that Maenona's machinery supposedly tempers. The causality is reversed: Lightning begins to form first (imperceptibly) and the storm clouds only second.

The distinction between the dark storm clouds and bright lightning makes sense to the light sensitive kavkema, of course. Additionally, lightning is associated with fire, whereas the rain brought by the storm clouds douses the fire. These are clearly two very distinct metaphysical processes.

That's not where the differences between kavkem intuition and human intuition end. Notably, from the kavkem perspective, lightning always strikes up, not down (although it may do so invisibly), and represents an attempt of the planet's to connect to Mekiva, like a mythological umbilical cord. Indeed, ks̈yra itself, as a word, derives from ks̈iro, the word for 'umbilical cord', which in turn inherently derives from taks̈o (electromagnetism) and kiri (cord). Both concepts are unsettling to kavkema, although ks̈yra naturally more so - as the word itself might suggest, being a portmanteau of ks̈iro (umbilical cord) and yra (energy).

The storm clouds that the Maene͡ivu provides form to prevent lightning from connecting all the way to the sun. What might happen if lightning were allowed to cross the vast distance between Nekenalos and Mekiva varies from interpretation to interpretation - it might be as relatively benign as to serve as a bridge to allow kiikama to freely travel down to Nekenalos, or it might set the entire planet on fire.

kavkem/mythology/maenona.txt · Last modified: 2022-01-02 19:31 by pinkgothic