Odin

Odin is an elusive figure, slippery in thought and action. He walks sideways through city vaults and doorways of perception. He lives at the edge of your awareness, just out of the corner of your eye and tip of your subconscious. He walks the ceilings of your skull and the zeitgeist is his leyline. Odin knows you in an intimately startling fashion that invokes flight or fight, either of which can mean sex or revolution or both. He is the mouse that stalks the cat and is amused that the cat should think anything different, but doesn’t mind playing the game for a time. He strolls the alleyways of the poorest ghettos for hidden truths and helps himself to the tables of the rich, both spread and dinnerware. With a wink he can unlock chest or heart. A causal crook of the finger summons tavern ale or spell most destructive. He belongs in the shadows, and if you don’t want to meet him then you shouldn’t fucking be there.   Patronage: Where there are downtrodden and the oppressed, there are devouts of Odin. When corrupt nobles orphan the innocent over taxes, there are devouts of Odin. When people of questionable moral character get caught in bed with the spouses of others, there are claims of being Odin. To be a devout of Odin is to recognize a bad idea when you see one, but figure if you had any better options you’d have long ago chosen those. If there’s a patron deity of lost causes, hopeless causes, or contracts without an escape clause causes, its Odin. Rebels against law or society fly the raven’s banner, a hand gesture generally accepted to be rude at best. Every street beggar in every capital proudly recognizes him as their king, even if a not so insignificant number of them have unknowingly wrestled him in an alley over the choicest bit of dry cobblestone to sleep off a hangover. Overly ambitious mages claim him as their patron in their youth pledging their talents or service, never suspecting the bill may one day come due. Deserters, lower than the lowest, with nowhere left to turn seek the only god who would have them, who sees their guilt as pain and cowardice as suffering.   Worship: To hedge a bet on a prayer, devouts are known to burn a slip of paper with a secret written on it as an offering. Legend says that when Odin learned of this he was aghast, wondering how many secrets he’d missed out on over the countless years, burned to a crisp, because he couldn’t be bothered to setup a mailing address at one of his temples. Bars. Temple-bars, something like that. Less pyro-centric methods of prayer include so called prayer coins; coinage one prays on, seals the prayer with a kiss on the coin face, and tosses it to a beggar. Once an entire town’s population of Odin devouts was laid up in bed for weeks with mono. Whenever anyone needs just the tiniest bit of luck to make it through another unbearably hard day, and it actually happens, it's customary to bless Odin’s cups that they may runneth over in thanks.