Lurexios, the Waxing Ridiculous
Athenaeum entry. Correspondent of record: Vel Asharen. Fourteen meetings. In each of them, the subject began a conversation that contained at least one pun before this correspondent had removed their traveling coat. This entry was delayed by three months because the correspondent was, upon reflection, not ready to write it yet.
| Title | The Waxing Ridiculous |
| Domain | Moon, Tides, Navigation |
| Alignment | Chaotic Neutral |
| Apparent Age | Variable — changes with the moon phase, meaninglessly |
| Pacts | Yes — offered enthusiastically, often before being asked |
| Activity | Constant, loud, present at every full moon and several that aren't |
| Worshipped By | Sailors, navigators, tide-fishermen, harbor workers, the persistently optimistic |
Form
Lurexios appears as a tall man, luminously pale in the way that suggests the moon rather than illness — silver-white at the temples, with hair the color of light on open water that he does something elaborate with on principle and something different with every time. His eyes are the soft gold of a rising moon and always, without exception, mid-laugh.
He dresses ostentatiously. The specific nature of the ostentation varies — always something silver, always something that catches light from an angle that doesn't quite correspond to any nearby source, usually something with far too many crescent motifs embroidered onto it. He claims he designed the embroidery himself. Nobody has been able to confirm whether this is meant as a warning or a boast.
He is loud. He is present. He is relentlessly, exhaustingly, fundamentally there — the opposite of his sister in almost every measurable way. Where Lobelia withdraws, Lurexios advances. Where she speaks in near-silence, he projects to the back row. He stands too close and asks too many questions and laughs at his own jokes before delivering the punchline, which he will then deliver anyway.
And the jokes are, without exception, about the moon.
Domain
Lurexios is the god of the moon, and he takes this very personally.
He manages the lunar cycle with meticulous and somewhat aggressive precision — the full moon rises when it should rise, the crescent appears exactly where it should appear, the tides respond to the moon's pull to the minute. Whatever else he is, he is profoundly competent at the actual job. Harbormasters across every coast in the known world plan their schedules by his work. Navigators stake their lives on the positions he maintains. The tidal charts have never once been wrong.
He is aware of this. He considers it hilarious. He considers the fact that the world's most reliable celestial body is governed by him — him specifically — to be the best joke the universe has ever produced, and he will explain this at length to anyone who will hold still.
His navigation domain is what separates him from being merely a celestial curiosity. He attends to the stars used in open-water navigation the way a master craftsman attends to good tools — with genuine love and zero patience for carelessness. Sailors who disrespect good navigation practice find their stars slightly wrong on the next clear night. Not dangerously wrong. Just wrong enough to make a point. It is, by general consensus, a very Lurexios solution.
The tides are his most direct expression of power and his most obvious sense of humor. They answer to him completely. He has used this, over documented centuries, to make exactly one piece of landmass unreachable during a council meeting he found tedious, to express sympathy to a coastal town following a flood by pulling the sea back unusually far for a month, and — on at least one occasion this correspondent is aware of and declines to detail — to be funny.
Worship
His temples are common in port cities and harbor towns, built in view of the water because he insists on it. They are, architecturally, among the most beautiful structures in the world — tall windows aligned to catch moonrise, pale stone that glows at night, crescent-shaped archways that produce a specific quality of light the faithful find deeply moving. The exterior is genuinely magnificent.
The interior contains an enormous and growing collection of moon-related puns that his clergy have dutifully transcribed at his request. The collection occupies three walls of the primary nave. There is a fourth wall. The clergy pray it will not be needed.
His clergy are a pragmatic and slightly exhausted group who genuinely love him and have simply made their peace with the fact that he is not going to stop. They focus on the navigation records — Lurexios insists on extremely good navigation records — and on the tidal safety services that operate from his temples. Coastal communities depend on his clergy for tide warnings, sea-storm watches, and the open-water charts that his god maintains and they distribute. The work is serious. The god is not.
He grants pacts readily and without requiring much in the way of formal request. Sailors who find themselves genuinely lost will, by documented account, occasionally hear a voice from the direction of the moon that either resolves their navigation problem or makes a joke about it first. Often both, in that order. The pact terms are straightforward: serve the sea safely, keep a good chart, and don't mock the moon without appreciation.
Relationships
Lobelia — His sister. He loves her completely, in the loud, relentless, utterly unmanageable way he does everything. She finds him exhausting in the way that long winters find spring — bracing, then overwhelming, then quietly necessary. He would level a coastline for her without a second thought and has, on at least two occasions, leveled a coastal deity for her without being asked. He does not talk about those two occasions. He talks about everything else.
He is also the only person in the pantheon who has looked at the Korin situation and taken notes in the way that implies future action rather than current concern. His clergy are not certain what form the action will eventually take. They are fairly certain it will involve a pun.
Vaerith — Winds and tides are collegial forces, and Lurexios and Vaerith have a long working relationship built on mutual professional respect and the fact that Lurexios has never once made a wind-related pun in Vaerith's presence. Vaerith considers this sufficient basis for friendship. Lurexios considers it a personal sacrifice and mentions it every few decades.
Veshen — The year and the moon overlap in their tracking of time. They meet occasionally at astronomical events significant to both, confer briefly, and depart with the specific efficiency of two people who have learned through trial and error exactly how much of each other they can tolerate. The lunisolar calendar is their joint production. It is very good. The meetings that produced it were, by both accounts, very long.
Noil — A comfortable detachment. Lurexios provides light for the night; Noil operates in it. Neither crowds the other. On one documented occasion, Lurexios asked Noil if the darkness was afraid of the moonlight. Noil did not answer. Lurexios recorded this as the best straight-man delivery he had ever received.
Krorus — Lurexios has asked Krorus if he has a moment — or, more specifically, if he technically has all of them — on more occasions than this correspondent would like to recount. Krorus, according to his own brief comment on the matter, finds Lurexios "interesting in the same way a loose thread is interesting: you are not sure whether following it will unravel something important, so you don't."