Aiki I (/aˈiki i/)

Aiki I (Lüota: Father Earth) is the god of earth and stillness in the religion of Ni Hüre Lena. For the worshippers of Ni Hüre Lena, the Wemu. Aiki I is a divine antagonist—the master of The Four Helmsmen and the god who will unmake the world if the peoples of Eden will not stop moving.

Appearance & Personality

Aiki I is most often presented as a stunningly handsome human-sized man with olive skin, shoulder-length brown hair, and deep brown eyes. He is usually well-muscled from head to toe, with broad shoulders, a chiseled abdomen and thick, sturdy legs. He rarely wears anything except sweat and a loin-cloth. And though he is occasionally depicted covered in dirt, as if he’s just come from tending a field or garden, he never looks messy or “disgusting.” Instead, he is made to look rugged and hard-working.

He can be a kind, benevolent deity, but only to those who follow his command to be content with the place one is given in the world. To everyone else, to all those who would seek progress and change in the world, Aiki I is a tyrant—a megalomaniac who believes that creation was far better off before the contributions of Phina and the coddling of Aiki Wawo.

Mythology

Creation

Aiki I was not present in the creation stories told by the o‘ki of Imire; the sect of Ni Hüre Lena added him to the creation myth of the Imire to help explain their misfortunes.

In the Ni Hüre Lena version of the myth, chronicled in full in “The One About the Four Helmsmen,” the universe was created by four co-equal deities. Mira, the goddess of water and order, created the oceans. Aiki I, god of earth and stillness, created the continents. Phina, goddess of fire and chaos, created the volcanic islands of the Pacific. And Aiki Wawo, god of winds and change—in an attempt to end the quarrels of the other three—enveloped them all in the sky.

Jealousy

Aiki I loathed all three of his fellow deities, but he hated Phina most of all—Phina, who had used the fire of her volcanos to make land of her own. And the halflings who called Phina’s islands home? Aiki I saw them as an infestation in need of obliteration.

Vengeance

According to the “The One About the Four Helmsmen,” Aiki I first sought to punish the halflings by pushing them off-course during their exploration of the Pacific. When that didn’t work, when the halflings couldn’t be happy with the slice of heaven they’d been given on the northern cost of Australia and decided to keep exploring the vastness of that continent, he sent his Four Helmsmen after them—one after the other, until a Calamity brought the world to an end and left but a fraction of life in the collapsed universe to start over in Eden. And the Wemu of Ni Hüre Lena believe he will strike one more time, bringing an end to the postapocalyptic paradise of Eden as well, if the Wemu cannot convince their fellow Edenians to just. Stop. MOVING!