The Yoruba Pantheon of Gods
Oludumare- The Dual Being, the Primal Urge, the Creator of the Cosmos, the One True God
Esu-The God of Chaos, part of the Dual Being, Oludumare
Orunmila- Oludumare’s first servant, the Witness of Fate, the Witness of Creation and the Oracle of the Orishas
Obatala-Orisha of Justice and Reason
Yemoja-Orisha of the Fresh Waters and Mother of Creation, wife of Olukun
Olulukun-Orisha of the Salt Waters, husband to Yemoja
Sango-Orisha of Thunder and Lightning, Master of War, son of Olukun and Yemoja, husband of Oya
Oya-Orisha of Energy, Commerce, and Gatekeeper to Death, wife of Sango
Ogun- Orisha of Technology and Master of Iron
Osun-Orisha of Beauty and Sexuality
Nana Buukun-Orisha of Magic, and of Thought
Osonyin-Orisha of Green Things
Oko-Orisha of Farming
Ososi-Orisha of the Hunt
Oke-Orisha of Rocks, Boulders, Caves and Mountains
Ori-Orisha of Destiny

 

 

The Kongo Pantheon of Gods
Nzambi-The Creator, Dual Being, One True God
Lungombe-The Anti-Creator, Dual Being, One True God
Nkesi-The Gods and Spirits
Kobayemede-King of the Dead, God of Diseases
Mariguanda-Gatekeeper between Life and Death
Ma’ Lango-Goddess of Water and Fertility
Nkuyu-God of Woods, Roads, Guidance and Balance
Chola Wengue-Goddess of Richness and Pleasure
Kimababula-God of Divination and Winds
Watariamba-God of the Hunt and War
Ma’ Kengue-Spirit of Wisdom and Justice
Sarabanda-God of Work and Strength
Lubaniba-Spirit who sparks communication between the Veils of the world

Other Gods
The Interloper-A self-manifested younger God, who wishes to restore the balance by becoming the only servant of Oludumare, the great enemy of the Orishas
The Younger Gods-A multitude of Gods who arose from the energies created by the worship and faith of humanity who constantly challenge the rule of the Orishas



Glossary of Terms, Definitions and Entities
Irunmoles-The original beings created by Oludumare to aid in creation, from whence the Orishas were derived.
The Orishas-Messengers of Oludumare, who are worshipped as Gods
Ajogun-The beneficial and detrimental forces of the universe, which are controlled by Esu
Ase-The heart of the Yoruba religion, the individual Omo Orisa’s personal spiritual power which blooms and blossoms throughout his or her life as a result of moral behavior, good deeds and service to the Gods. 
Dark Ase- A perverted form of ase which is the result of Alade’s rejection of the Gods and his growing despair.
Ile-Ife-A fabled and mystical land created from the substance of the dreams of the Orisha to hide and house the Omo Orisa
Omo Orisa-Race of beings created by the Orisha to maintain the balance of forces on the Earth, who live in Ile-Ife
Mwbiri-Central African Demon which possesses people.  It thrives on despair such as addiction, and abhors good living, a sure way to drive it out, while rewarding destructive behavior with enhanced strength and physical prowess
Kpelekpe-Were-Hyenas from Yoruba mythology, able to compel their victims to voluntarily place themselves in a position to be devoured by them
Machlyes-A mythical Libyan tribe of hermaphrodites, who possess strange and unusual powers
Bokor-A Vodun priestess who serves both sides of the balance and who is also the leader of the Makaya division of mysteries with the highest rank of initiation coming from the Vodun sect originating in the Congo region of Africa
Nephilim-A race of half-angel, half-human giants, mostly eradicated by the Gods, the angels and humanity
Quandisa-A female figure from Northern Moroccan mythology, who was once worshipped as the Goddess of Lust, but due to the War of the Gods, has been reduced to seducing young men and driving them insane.   She is a servant of the Interloper and a very skilled temptress
Leopard Society- A secret society of shape shifters in West Africa, vilified by Westerners for being  cannibals, but who were actually not human at all.  They were supposedly all hunted down and eradicated by the British and the French colonialists
Borfima-A special medicine which was used as a catalyst in the ritual which created the original members of the Leopard Society

Chapter 1.  Truce
     I stood there looking at the dead leopard beneath me, watching as its body shifted back to it human form in death.  I had not even fed upon its demise, so disgusted I had become with the senseless waste of lives that the prideful Leopard Society had caused by their refusal to submit to an obviously superior power than their own.  In the last few weeks I personally had slaughtered dozens of them, and who knows how many Sunshine had eaten, leopards being the natural enemies of hyenas.  After each battle, after each slaughter in which I grew in strength as I bathed in their death and in their despair I soon saw their numbers begin to dwindle.  Theirs was not a condition contracted by bite; it was created by a combination of genetics, biochemistry and magic and in this world where we had all been exiled to, they lacked the means to increase their ranks in significant numbers, at least not enough to replace those which I and my group were killing.  I watched Shawn standing to the left of me as he inhaled great clouds of crack smoke, fueling his Mwbiri given strength, which had allowed him to rip apart shape shifters with his bare hands while reveling in the madness of his battle rage.  He was oblivious to the slashes and bites that would have eventually taken their toll on him had I not used my power to heal him.  Lulu also was eager to make up for her failure in recruiting the leopards to our cause, by unmaking as many of them as she could get her hands on.  She was very familiar with the Leopard Society, being originally from the Congo, and she was cognizant of the spells used to bind the human and leopard forms together because in fact, it was her own ancestor who had first created them for the Society a millennium ago.  Samantha, because of its sensitive nature, stayed away from the actually fray, but helped us by shifting our members to where they were needed and also it eavesdropped upon the leopards for us effectively, allowing us to plan an effective strategy.  But most importantly it provided Lulu with her constantly supply of bourbon which she insisted she needed to survive and to keep herself strong.  And as for my beloved Sunshine, well she was poetry in motion, a killing machine of such perfection that often I forgot to feed, so enamored I had become of her beauty and her ferocity.  She was relentless, her appetite unending and as she slaughtered the leopards she sang love songs and smiled at me whenever she had a moment.  I reached down and lifted the head of the leopard I had just killed, seeing only a young man whose life had been wasted because of the stubbornness of his elders and at that moment I made a decision.  I shifted my position in space to a secluded alleyway strewn with split bodies, where Lulu was eyeing her handiwork and got her attention.  “What’s up black tar baby?” she said, “Don’t worry I’ve got everything here under control.  Go on back to watching your psycho girlfriend,” she cackled and took a shot of bourbon.  “I can see that,” I said, admiring her work.  “I was drinking in the slaughter from way the other side Lulu, good job.  But that is not why I am here.  I want you to contact the Elders of the Leopard Society and tell them I wish to meet with them personally.  This war must end.”
“Why the hell for?  Isn’t the point to create slaughter, madness and mayhem so you can drink deeply of it?  Isn’t this darkness what you need?”
“Yes, but the food has no value anymore.  This is cannon fodder they are sending now.  I need true power". 
“What do you intend to do?”
”I am not sure yet but nonetheless get the Elders to agree to meet with me.”
“Fine, I just hope you know what you are doing.”
“I do.”
“Good.  So what are you staring at?  You want something else?  Like a shot of bourbon perhaps?  Or a punch in the mouth?”
“No thanks, but I do have a question.  Why do you have to drink bourbon to survive?”
“Ah, well that is a long story.”
“Well are you doing anything right now?”
“Not really, as you can see, everyone here is dead.”
“Good.  Then I will help you clean up while you tell me the story.”
“Alright Lucius, I’ll tell you the story.  It will feel good to talk about it to someone.  Have Samantha send me a fresh case of bourbon.  This will take some time.”  I mentally signaled Samantha and shortly thereafter a case materialized in front of us.   Lulu and I sat down on a pile of dead shape-shifters, we each took a deep swig from her bottle, and then she began to tell me her tale.

Chapter 2.  Lulu’s story
        Nzambi in its wisdom had formulated a plan to achieve balance within the cosmos and it is through this infinite wisdom that balance was attained and creation achieved.   That one chooses to call the Dual Being, The One True God by a different name is of no consequence and in Lulu’s world Nzambi and Oludumare were one and the same being.  Lulu’s real name was Mbilia Nsimba Kimpanzu and she had been born in 1685 on the banks of the Congo River in an area called Mboma, the youngest daughter of the BaKongo King Nzinga Elenke Kimpanzu of the House of Awenekongo of Kibangu.  Theirs was an old and royal house who had in the past eschewed all things mundane, preferring to spend their time in intellectual and spiritual pursuits and leaving politics to the other royal houses.   But destiny has its own idea of how things should play out and in 1669 her father found himself elected king and was soon inundated with the problems arising from the growing deprivations of the Portuguese colonialists who were making further headway into the interior.  With their strange ways and strange customs came a strange new religion which they had begun to forcefully place upon the necks of the people like a yoke.  The people became cattle for the God of these White men and it was for this reason that the Bakongo elected Nzinga Elenke Kimpanzu to be their king.   For his family were mighty servants of their Gods as well and in their studies they had achieved a knowledge and power that was unmatched even by the Portuguese and their faceless God.  Mbilia like other members of her family, had excelled in her studies from young age, quickly surpassing all of her peers and impressing her teachers with her quick mastery of the various magical skills which had been entrusted to them by the Nkesi who they served, much as the Omo Orisa served the Orishas.  For this was a family of scholars and pious men and women who also knew the truth about creation; that all things were one.  When Nzambi had created the first four hundred and one messengers, two hundred and fifty-six had been chosen by Orunmila to become the Orishas.  The remaining one hundred and forty-five had not simply vanished as other pantheons would have them believe; instead they had taken their own rightful places in Nzambi’s creation and had manifested themselves as the Gods of other pantheons.  These were not newly born Gods, like the younger ones who were causing so many problems were, but true parts of the original energy used in creating this world and inseparable from the other two hundred and fifty-six that became the Yoruba pantheon.  They became the Kongo Gods and much as the Orishas blessed the Omo Orisa with ase, these Gods blessed their chosen people with the knowledge and wisdom to seek out the mysteries which lay just beyond the veil. The Bakongo people were mighty practitioners of secret arts, renowned by all the great nations of the world for their powers, and indeed their skills were sought out by wise men from all nations.  And though they were not supernatural in origin themselves, the Bakongo people utilized the manifest forces of the universe, what the Orishas called the ajogun to do their bidding.  With it they had built a mighty empire, one based, not upon war, but upon the intellect and the passions which inevitably drive humanity to strive for greater and greater heights.  Their wisdom was known and prized as far as Egypt, which over the millennia had sent many of its own scholars to come and study at the feet of their greatest philosopher-kings.  Mbilia’s father, King Nzinga Elenke Kimpanzu, was one such king.  A philosopher-king possessed of mighty powers both sorcerous and clerical, he had spent his entire life in deep contemplation of the mysteries of the universe and in faithful service to his Gods.  He had imparted this love of knowledge and fidelity to the Gods to all his children, though in Mbilia it seems, the Gods had found favor, as she was rewarded by her diligence and skill, with greater understanding of the ajogun and an incredible ability to manipulate them as well.  As for the king, his days were now spent in council with his advisors and military leaders, debating what they must do stop the swift progress the Portuguese were making into Africa and the inevitable clash that was bound to occur between their cultures.  His generals of course advocated an immediate expedition to go and crush the intruders, while others counseled diplomacy or even bribery.  The king however, stayed silent preferring to listen to everyone, but refusing to act as of yet, for he knew something that the others did not; there would be no diplomacy, and there would be no defeating these White men whose only pastime was war.  They would not relent until all of Kongo was theirs and they would enslave the people that they believed to be subhuman.  Other sages before him had met this rapacious race, and his Gods had warned him to prepare the kingdom for the residual effects of the Gods’ war with the Interloper, the God of these invaders.  The key to defeating them and pushing them back into the sea lay not in strength of arms, but in the strength of their magic of which these would be conquerors seemed to have none whatsoever.

          Despite this, the king was still hesitant to confront these invaders for he did not understand from where had originated their madness and malice towards his people.  Their arrival upstream from the Kongo Kingdom had spread a slow poison throughout the empire as the population did not immediately react and slay all these invaders and wipe them off the face of Africa as they should have done before their numbers and superior arms could be brought into play.  They began to not only subdue the empire but to seduce it, bringing with them a murderous war that could not possibly last.  The Bakongo lacked the mundane weapons to fight these men on their own terms, men who had spent their entire lives bringing war to other nations, and as the people themselves began to fall to their seduction and joined their ranks as auxiliaries, the strength of the people’s will to resist began to become depleted.  Many of the great clans capitulated and all of a sudden the Portuguese had gained a permanent foothold into Kongo lands.  Mbilia’s father, the king, was tormented by the betrayal of his subjects and began to turn his face away from humanity and more and more to the Gods to which he served so faithfully.  It was this faith that saved the kingdom from falling immediately, as different parts of the Kongo Empire were dismantled and absorbed by these White men.   But the king was both a mighty sorcerer and a priest, and by calling upon powers nurtured by years of study and granted to him by his faith in his Gods, he caused an interdiction to come forth from the Earth itself, barring the invaders from crossing into the last bastion of the kingdom. His fellow priests and priestesses added their own prayers and the combination of their powers kept the kingdom and more importantly their Gods, safe from the howling anger of the Interloper, who lurked just outside the fringes, bludgeoning the barrier in his hunger to absorb the worship of the Kongo Gods into himself and seed their lands with his chosen race.  Mbilia also added her powers to the fray, having grown into a beautiful fifteen year old girl, fully initiated into the Makaya sect who had taught her to control her formidable powers.  She had fulfilled the promise she had shown as a youth and it was her strength now which anchored the safe haven for her Gods, leaving the others free to maintain the interdiction.  Though her love for her father at times made her wish for another role, for in his actions as king she could feel his profound loneliness and she yearned to go to him but could not.  Her mother had died giving birth to her and her father had remained celibate since.  But now the stress of a war and a kingship which he had not asked for was taking its toll and Mbilia was unable, because of her own duties, to comfort him as a daughter should.  It was because of this that a weakness developed, a crack in the mighty magical fortress that together they had all created formed, a weakness that the Interloper in his vigilance would be quick to exploit.

       The Gods of the Kongo pantheon had come together in a conclave so that they could begin to decide a realistic plan of action.  They were all aware of the precarious position in which they now stood, having seen for themselves the rapaciousness of the Interloper, and what he believed was his divine mandate from Nzambi to become its only true servant.  At present, they stood in the midst of singularity which they had long ago created as a nexus for all of them to be able to meet and focus their powers in the event of the very situation which they now found themselves in.  Located in the space between one second and the next this place was almost impregnable, though the Kongo Gods could never have known that the Interloper’s greatest power lay in his ability to manipulate time itself and their haven was not as safe as they believed.  All of the Gods were present and accounted for now; Kobayemede, God of Dead and Diseases, stood ramrod straight, his skeletal face staring into the void of the singularity, while his pale and statuesque wife Mariguanda, the Gatekeeper between Life and Death watched him with concern.  The chubby Goddess of Water and Fertility Ma’ Lango was laughing at some comment that Nkuyu, the hairy God of the Wood, Roads, Guidance and Balance had spoken, the two frivolous deities oblivious to the danger which awaited them.  Chola Wengue, the Goddess of Richness and Pleasure was visibly disturbed judging by the way her feathered scalp was standing up on end.  Other Gods such as Kimababula, the God Divination and the Winds, had a resigned air to him as he knelt casting the bones of a dragon in the hopes of seeing a less bleak vision, while there was Watariamba, the God of War and the Hunt, who had somehow drawn Ma’ Kengue, the Spirit of wisdom and Justice and Sarabanda, the God of Work and Strength into his silly faction of Gods who wished to drop the interdiction and sally forth into combat with the Interloper.  As all these Gods remained in their own thoughts it was only Lubaniba who remained focused and indeed was slowly formulating a plan that would enable not only their survival, but ensured their continued strength and ability to affect the world of humanity.  Lubaniba was the Spirit which acted as the bridge between the Veils of the world, the power that allowed the Gods to communicate between worlds with mankind and even with the One God.  This power allowed it to see beyond the bounds of reality and into all possibilities and it was in this myriad projection of every possibility that Lubaniba had discovered the one which would allow the Kongo Gods to not only survive intact but to also grow strong so that in time they could return to challenge the Interloper and reclaim their rightful places.   But sacrifices must be made, and looking at the Gods assembled here it wondered whether or not this was possible.  But as Lubaniba contemplated how it would approach this critical task; it smiled as it remembered the visitor it had received a few days before. If what the unexpected visitor had told the Spirit was true, then it would take only a few subtle movements on its part to persuade the rest of the Pantheon to undergo this transformation.  The power that Lubaniba had been gifted with by this being would seal this great work and the Kongo Gods would be safe until such a time when they were strong enough to return in power.  As Lubaniba returned its focus to the conclave and the various Gods who stood waiting for someone to speak, the Spirit could not help but wonder what Esu had to gain by in aiding them, and what, in the end, would the price of his friendship?