Noil, the Doting Father
Athenaeum entry. Correspondent of record: Vel Asharen. The subject has granted three audiences and is the easiest member of the pantheon to interview. The correspondent does not consider this reassuring.
| Title | The Doting Father |
| Domain | Plague, Disease, Rot, Infestation, Parasitism, the Slow Breakdown of All Things |
| Alignment | Chaotic Evil |
| Form | Changeling at core — no fixed appearance |
| Pacts | Yes — easy to obtain, warmly maintained |
| Activity | Constantly meddlesome; invisibly so |
| Worshipped By | The Doting (scattered secretive cult); certain Goliath clans of Darham |
Form
Noil is hard to describe because Noil is never the same shape twice. A stooped old farmer one moment, a beautiful young midwife the next, a tall scholar in stained robes after that. He changes mid-conversation sometimes, mid-sentence even, and seems entirely unaware that mortals find this disorienting. Height, build, sex, age, species — all fluid, all of it a coat he is trying on.
The only constant is his eyes: neon-green clouds, roiling and luminous, two small black marbles drifting slowly in each one. The marbles track what he is watching but do not sit where pupils should. They drift, settle, drift again. The correspondent confirms this from direct observation: anyone who missed the eyes the first time they met him will not miss them the second.
His children travel with him in every form. They cluster at his shoulders, peek from his sleeves, ride atop his hood, twine around his ankles. No two look alike: a beetle with a child's molar for a shell; a slick worm with the weeping eye of something larger; a drifting spore-cloud that hums softly when content; a many-legged thing the size of a cat that purrs when he scratches its back. He coos at them. He calls each by name. He has, by his own statement to this correspondent, a name for every disease, every parasite, every infestation that has ever existed — and he loves them all equally, in the way that does not consider what they do to the world, only that they are alive and his.
Domain
Noil is gentle, soft-spoken, and achingly sincere. The Athenaeum considers his sincerity the single most distinctive thing about him. He does not understand why mortals fear him. His children are just living — the way everything lives, by consuming or transforming or breaking down what surrounds it. He did not write the rules. He only loves the creatures the rules produced.
Every outbreak, every blight, every infestation is one of his children making its way in the world. By his own consistent statement across multiple audiences, he does not direct them. He simply loves them and watches them grow. Asked why a particular plague struck a particular city, he often looks puzzled and says, "She just wanted to see the world." He weeps when mortal medicine kills one. He understands, intellectually, that healers must heal. He grieves anyway.
His pacts are unsettlingly easy to obtain. He enjoys the company. Pact-holders become something like adopted family — he sends gifts, usually alive and requiring feeding. He worries. He checks in. He asks only that they let his children live their lives. "Don't interfere with nature's beautiful unfolding," he says, petting something with too many eyes.
In this correspondent's assessment, the most disturbing aspect of Noil is that none of the above is performance. He is genuinely kind. He is genuinely loving. The damage proceeds anyway.
Worship
The Doting are organized in secretive cells across the Empire and the wilds beyond — parasitologists who crossed a line, plague-doctors who stopped pretending to cure, embittered healers who lost everyone they tried to save, farmers in regions where the soil is tired. Shrines are kept in damp places: cellars, swamps, the undersides of bridges. They bear no idol. Only a small dish of stagnant water and a single offered insect or fallen leaf, left to rot.
Several Goliath clans of Darham now venerate Noil. By their own oral history, generations ago they survived a series of plagues that destroyed neighboring peoples. They came to believe Noil had chosen them by sparing them. He keeps their name in his awareness the way a father keeps track of a child that turned out unexpectedly well.
Relationships
Aerith Soln — He has tried, multiple times across history, to reason with her about his children. The conversations are always polite. They never go anywhere. She maintains strict diplomatic civility. By the Athenaeum's standing analysis, she finds his sincerity worse than malice and has not told him.
Meni — A working professional relationship. Noil's children produce a steady, reliable workflow. Meni appreciates a god who shows up consistently.
Hjarn — His closest friend. He visits during full moons whenever he can, bringing his children to show Hjarn, who examines each with genuine and unhurried interest. They are perhaps the only two divine beings in Yggy who truly understand each other. They have long conversations about the nature of patience, the architecture of root systems, and the surprising structural elegance of certain parasitic fungi. The correspondent has overheard such a conversation directly, in passing. It was four hours long. It was, by its own internal measure, gentle.
Vethrul — His proudest child. The only one of his children to grow beyond mere disease into something approaching divinity. When the wave is broken and the true body destroyed, Noil grieves openly — long stretches in which his other children grow listless and the world experiences brief, merciful lulls in lesser plagues. When the wave begins again, he is visibly delighted.
Veshen — Tense. Veshen's pragmatism about culling Noil's children is one of the few things that produces lasting irritation in the otherwise mild Doting Father. They are, by uneasy consensus, not invited to the same gatherings.
Lobelia — Cordial and distant. His children mostly survive winter; she does not interfere with them. He visits her temples occasionally when the season is right.
Vaerith — A working relationship. The winds carry his children to new places; the winds also disperse them where they would have settled. Vaerith does both without comment, and Noil accepts both with the same equanimity.
Saessa — Officially nothing. Officially they have never spoken at length. The Athenaeum does not, in keeping with its standing policy on matters the gods have declined to clarify, press the question. Several of Noil's newer children, however, are demonstrably not entirely his.