I don’t know if this has been brought up before, but after re-reading both series, atrocity tales, and Bakkers interviews it seems to me that the Three Seas gods are not their own. They are instead either the Inchoroi’s which they have brought with them world to world, or something that the Inchoroi planted in the 5 Tribes of Men and belief created them. If we look at the Interview Bakker did with Pat, Bakker seems to confirm parts of this.
Pat-Were there ever Nonmen in Eänna? And if not, why not? They certainly seem to have had both the time, capability and inclination for an invasion before the Inchoroi showed up. Instead they just fortified the passes. Why?
Bakker-…When the Inchoroi began using Men to master the Aporos and produce the first Chorae; they gave the first sorcery-destroying spheres to the Sranc, only to discover that the creatures were far too reckless. Having fixed and morbid habits of ornamentation, the Sranc rarely valued the spheres, and were thus prone to lose them. So the Inchoroi began giving them to the Men of Eärwa, hoping to incite them to rebellion. But the Halaroi had no stomach for rousing a feared, and most importantly, absent master, and so rendered the deadly gifts to their Nonmen overlords. The Inchoroi then looked to Eänna, where the Men were both more fierce and more naive. They gave the Chorae to the Five Tribes as gifts, and to one tribe, the black-haired Ketyai, they gave a great tusk inscribed with their hallowed laws and most revered stories–as well as one devious addition: the divine imperative to invade the ‘Land of the Felled Sun’ and hunt down and exterminate the ‘False Men.’
And in the Appendence in the TTT we have, “The Chronicle of the Tusk, which records the coming of Men to Eärwa, generally refers to Nonmen as Oserukki, the “Not Us.” In the Book of Tribes, the Prophet Angeshraël alternately refers to them as “the Accursed Ones” and “the sodomite Kings of Eärwa,” and he incites the Four Nations of Men to embark on a holy war of extermination. Even after four millennia, this xenocidal mission remains a part of the Inrithi holy canon. According to the Tusk, the Nonmen are anathema:
“Hearken, for this the God has said,
These False Men offend Me;
blot out all mark of their Passing.”
From this we can guess that either the Prophet Angeshraël is really the Inchoroi Aurax in disguise or he met with Aurax on Mount Eshki before he lowered his face into the fire. But it’s the fact that he is giving the 5 Tribes their “Most hallowed stories” and not this devious addition that is intriguing. From the books, we know that the Tusk is stories about the gods of the world and how to properly worship them, so does that make the gods of the Three Seas the gods of the Inchoroi? And if they are the gods of the Inchoroi do they truly ever worship them because it doesn’t seem like they do anymore.
What makes this even more plausible is the fact that before Kian was defeated by the First Holy war, they had declared several Jihads to conquer the Nansur Empire and to destroy the Rouk Spara, or “Cursed Thorn” which they call the Tusk. The central tenets of Fanimry deal with the solitary nature and transcendence of the God, the falseness of the Hundred Gods (who are considered demons by the Fanim), the repudiation of the Tusk as unholy, and the prohibition of all representations of the God.
Bakker further says in his interview with Pat, “…Damnation is not local. There is a right and wrong way to believe in Eärwa, which means that entire nations will be damned. Since the question of just who will be saved and who will be damned is a cornerstone of The Aspect-Emperor’s plot, there’s not much more that I can say.”
This gets more intriguing when you consider the exchange between Aurang and Titirga in the False Sun.
But Aurang continued his shining scrutiny of Titirga. A transgression that Shaeönanra found unnerving.
“Do you not fear damnation?”
A careful look from the Hero-Mage.
“The Nonmen…” he said evenly. “They have taught us how to hide our Voices. How to bypass the Outside, find Oblivion.”
Eyes like bladders of ink, each reflecting the tripods across their shining curve. The fluting of gill-tissues along the neck. “You worship the spaces between the Gods…”
“Yes.”
A rasp like the screams of faraway children tangled in the wind. Inchoroi laughter. “You are already damned. All of you are already damned. “
“So say you.”
A deep chested rumble. Popping mucous. “So says the Inverse Fire.”
Aurang could very well be implying here that the two surviving Inchoroi did indeed worship the gods. Or maybe they were not even real gods until the Inchoroi gave the Tusk to the 5 Tribes, and the 5 Tribes belief in the stories made the gods real since it seems that belief can shape reality in Earwa.