Kor’Tunni, the goddess of magic is a complex creature. Likely she was before ascending to the upper tiers of the divine hierarchy, and the portfolio has only made her more complex.
For example, Kor’Tunni is the self-appointed guardian of the Aether. Few actually realize that the divine realms exist in pockets in the Aether, which itself is the source of all magic. Even the Pit exists in a pocket realm of the Aether. While the Pit is notoriously difficult to escape without magic, on occasion the walls of the realm get thin enough to allow a person to slip from the Pit to the Aether. Now without magic, that’s pretty much a death sentence. As one will either starve to death, floating in the Aether, or be eaten by the predators that call the realm home.
As guardian Kor’Tunni can actually prevent a lesser god, and their servants, from entering or leaving their realm. She rarely does so, and almost always it’s an “invitation that cannot be refused”. This gives her unrivaled leverage that no other god can match. It should be no surprise, if she calls, the god answers. Immediately. Or faster.
The best example of her complexity is her relationship with the mortal casters of the world. It is no secret she loves the dragons, considering them all to be her children. During the last Dragon Rage, when the world’s dragons suffer a mystical madness and rampage all over the world, Aeruus, Kor’Tunni’s husband, gave his paladins, his favored champions, the secret of dragonslaying. I’m sure he had the best of intentions, as a world full of insane dragons would lead to countless deaths.
Kor’Tunni however took it as the deepest betrayal. She censured paladin magic altogether. Entire orders collapsed in an instant. She has barely uttered a word to him since, and the censuring was just over three centuries ago. For his part, Aeruus always makes requests in person, as it gives him opportunities to mend things face to face. It has yet to melt the glacier between them. And the mortals have had to make due with templars, a hybrid of martial might mixed with clerical teachings and magic.
One would wonder then, why she allows mortals magic at all. The answer is as simple as it complicated. Mortals have, by virtue of their curiosity, ingenuity, inventiveness, and more often recklessness, have expanded magical knowledge, growth and power exponentially more in the centuries they gained access to magic than the dragons did in their entirety of eons with it.
To censure the humans would in effect cripple Kor’Tunni. For every new spell they create, is a new spell in Kor’Tunni’s library. This fact ensures that mortals will always have access, if not always full access, to magic. They may threaten reality from time to time, but even those dangers are new lessons the Kor’Tunni hadn’t thought of, and is magic that she has access to even if others do not.
Currently the goddess is concerned. The Aether has suffered a storm of sorts, and pockets of it have ripped all over the cosmos. There are strangers from another realm currently sailing through the Aether. While the pocket islands they encounter, leftover from the empire that once existed there, are mostly void of life, the strangers have made extraordinary use of the knowledge left behind. The strangers have now become raiders, and it is only a matter of time before they find their way to Duir’Aion, or a way into a divine realm.
The Pit too has had more rifts open than before. The Scar has several permanent such opening, and the infernals have noticed. Not only that, but the surviving victims of the Martyr Compact, the rune elves, the ash dwarves and the twisted dragons have begun to make forays into the world that betrayed them, bring with them dark magic that hadn’t been seen outside the Pit.
Finally Kor’Tunni has sense a presence, however brief. It was a moment, as if something was stirring. Whether that something is awake now or returned to slumber is unknown to her. The fact that it is keeping its existence from her is beyond disturbing. Only a Titan on her level would be able to do that. And only her twin is on that level…
A Darkness Rising 