Gods of Kickassistan: Trzynobog, The God of Threes

Trzynobog 

(tchey-NOH-bog)

Lord of Three, Master of Trios, Patron of Historians, Speechwriters and Prognosticators, Keeper of things that come in threes.

Neutral Alignment

Hail, rule and reign, O Trzynobog!
He who comes, he who goes and he who stays behind!
We pray to you, beseech you, praise you in 3s, 27s & 9s,
And ask, beg, cajole you for your wisdom,
To see the path behind dearly,
The path ahead clearly,
And the path we're on so far.

Number of Stooges? Three.

When traders first brought word of the far off land of Wolcz (volsh) to Ur-Hadad, their descriptions of Wolczik tribesmen resplendent in blue robes over mail armor on the backs of tall steeds, the tribesmen's long mustachios trailing, flagging in the wind, quickly won the hearts and minds of a romantic element among the city's disparate peoples. A few years later, when the first Wolczik tribesmen (called "flatlanders" by that brand of Jingos that will always remain biased against foreigners of any stripe) arrived in Ur-Hadad, a sea of well-wishers met the Wolcziks' ship in the harbor. In a cultural misunderstanding that will be remembered for the rest of recorded history, the Wolczik chief, upon setting foot upon the dock, proclaimed: "We accept your surrender. Bring us your king and your highest priest, so that I might be absolved by the God of Threes for killing the lord of so great a village." Thus it was that Ur-Hadad's love affair with Trzynobog and its mockery of his doctrines began.

Number of Marx Brothers most people
can name? Three.

And to the uninitiated, the mysteries of the God of Threes may seem comical. The Wolcziks's worship of the deity seems to have originated in the worship of some foreign deity, which the tribesmen then syncretized into  Trzynobog. Most likely, the deity that would become Trzynobog began as the Three Fates, particularly due to Trzynobog's worshipers' fixation on his aspect of lord of the past, present and future. In his home country of Wolcz (if a god can have a "home country"), Trzynobog is the chief deity and orders his subordinates into divisions of three; the first rank below Trzynobog is comprised of the god of horses, the god of growth and the god of the harvest (and death).

Number of SW movies that count? Three.

Quite simply, Trzynobog is the deity of the number three (in a mathematical sense, ordinal sense, really, any sense of three-ness that you can think of; also, multiples of three like 6 or 9 -- the "three-ness" of these numbers determine their holiness, making 27 one of the holiest numbers, being 3x3x3) and of things that are always present in threes (or multiples thereof, such as the past, the present and the future, or dozens of eggs -- 3x4 -- the hours of the day -- 3x8 -- and so on). Thus many things can be interpreted as being part of Trzynobog's portfolio as it is understood by his faithful and thus do they back up their claim that he is first among all gods. His priests incant mathematical formulae tailored to enumerate the various incarnations of the Holy Digit as it appears in the world as part of their rites; the mathematical significance of any appearance of any of these Sublime Multiples is always celebrated.

Coincidence? Of course not!

Within Ur-Hadad, the worship of Trzynobog has become partially institutionalized. The large temple on the Avenue of One Thousand Gods devoted to His Name and Holy Digit is a large, three-sided pyramid with a suitably unpronounceable Wolczik name (27 letters long, a series of letters that seem to be a random amalgam of consonantal clusters only occasional punctuated by vowels, it is completely unintelligible to those not fluent in the Wolczik tongue), but it is known (appropriately) as the Third House (the First House supposedly came before and the Second House will come in the future) to all of Ur-Hadad's citizenry. This site on the Avenue of One Thousand Gods was ceded to the Wolczik chieftan that fateful day on the docks, for there was no high priest of Trzynobog to absolve the chieftan for killing the Pascha of Ur-Hadad and so the Pascha gave the chieftan the site, so that the city might one day have its proper high priest. To this day, an annual celebration at the docks of Ur-Hadad re-enacts the "surrender" of Ur-Hadad to the Wolczik (now, the ethnically Wolczik community in the city) chieftan, but it is claimed that the high priest of the Third House is still not sufficient to forgive the chieftan of killing the Pascha (or, now, the Grand Vizier). The Festival of the Deferred Surrender begins on the 27th day of the 6th month and lasts for 9 days and is well-regarded throughout the city as "a damn fine time to be alive."

Trzynobog was long the deity of fortune-tellers in Wolcz and he has kept that portfolio in Ur-Hadad, but he has also added scribes and historians (since they record the past) and speech writers. Rather, it should be said that speech writers added themselves to the list of those mortals seeking the God of Threes' patronage after the brilliant speechwriter Ston Hurchi learned that by including lists of three things into his speeches, his points were made succinctly and powerfully. During Hurchi's heyday, he responded to his contemporaries' commentary on the "Hurchi Three" by saying "There is no 'Hurchi Three.' Three is, has been and will be. No one man may claim ownership of the Holy Digit; I just know what to do with it." Hurchi's supplication to Trzynobogi doctrine quickly earned him a sainthood from the faith, and special protection for all speechwriters who would forevermore be able to claim the God of Threes as their patron. Today, Hadadi nobles and merchants often retain Trzynobogi-trained speechwriters to improve the public's opinion of them.

 Adventuring clerics of the God of Threes are some of the most self-assured clerics on the planet. Their god, they reason, is a god of more things than other gods, primarily due to the spurious logic of the mathematical significance of the Sublime Multiples, and therefore more important. Rarely do these travelling priests proselytize, convinced as they are of the primacy of their god, preferring to act rather than preach. Whenever a player of a cleric of Trzynobog rolls a multiple of 3 on any die (3, 6, 9, 12, 15, 18 and so on) but does not appropriately draw attention to the mathematical significance of the number, his disapproval interval increases by one. Similarly, every third time (and thus sixth, ninth, twelfth and so on times) the player rolls a Sublime Multiple and praises Trzynobog for the event (even if it's a failure), his disapproval interval decreases by one (as if he'd sacrificed to the God of Threes).