Azha & Azharun, together known as the Twin Suns, are sibling deities associated with the two suns that cross the skies above Tarisia. Children of Taris, they embody fire, youth, passion, anger, duality, dance, and performance, and are particularly revered as patrons of the Asura.
Overview
According to the oldest creation stories, Taris birthed Azha and Azharun after her first five children, The Five Pearls, were born lifeless beneath a darkened sky, their names long buried beneath the sands. The Twins’ living fires illuminated the world beneath them.
Azha is traditionally depicted as female and Azharun as male. Every three days the two cross one another in the heavens, an endless celestial dance that has continued for as long as the sages have gazed upward. Azha is always named first, as she is said to lead her brother across the sky. There are, naturally, several religions devoted to explaining why.
The Twins are rarely portrayed as serene gods. They are young, beautiful, passionate, competitive, and possessed of all the restraint one might expect from immortal siblings made of fire. Their endless crossing has inspired dances, gladiatorial contests, festivals, romances, feuds, and more than a few traditions involving combinations of the above.
The Asura have long claimed a particular kinship with the Twins. Fire, passion, physical prowess, and performance feature prominently in many Asuran traditions, and depictions of Azha and Azharun frequently bear Asuran features. Other peoples portray them rather differently. Gods have always been remarkably accommodating in this regard.
The Burning
It is said that when the Old Kingdoms betrayed Taris and buried the Life Bringer beneath Casshern, her children burned with rage.
The Twin Suns blazed a thousandfold brighter. Forests burned. Rivers vanished beneath steam. The earth cracked beneath their gaze, and those who had stolen Taris from the world discovered there were considerably worse places to hide from an angry god than beneath two angry gods.
Or so the stories tell.
Whether Azha and Azharun truly changed after the Fall is another matter. The Old Kingdoms were already dying, Sorcery had wounded the world, and those who survived had no shortage of explanations for why the heavens themselves appeared determined to finish the work.
In Wrend, beneath the long shadows of the Temples of the Twin Suns, there is no doubt. The temple priests teach that Azha and Azharun remain furious over the betrayal of their mother. They bow to the Illuminators, capricious Thrones who claim to walk as living avatars of the Twins, demanding great sacrifices of blood to temper their fiery wrath.
Wrend still stands as a bastion of life against the unbearable heat and desolation of the Barren Valley. A fact which the Illuminators regard as compelling evidence that the sacrifices are effective.
Azha and Azharun, as usual, have declined to comment.