CallumStephenDiggle
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Concavia: The God Duneos.
🕑 Added 2025-09-17 11:46:35 +0000 UTC✨UPDATE: I’ve reworked all of the other gods’ design language so that they all have a consistent style. I’m keeping the multiple arm and face motif going throughout, hence the updated design for Duneos.
I drew this over the weekend and I’ve decided to line up all the gods and goddesses together, so that people may become familiar with the whole pantheon. I figured by drawing one character profile at a time like this it doesn’t take much time, but in the end it will be a pretty Impressive spread. Along with the divines, I’ll draw each of the mortal races of Concavia, arrayed in a line beneath the divine ones, so the differences in size can be seen and so faces can be set to names.
Now, to talk about Duneos:
Duneos’ name is drawn from several Proto-Indo-European roots meaning storm-cloud, might, sky, heaven, brightness, and shining. He is the god of the realm between Leuada (the sun) and Concavia (the land).
Duneos is associated with the oak tree, his worshippers often leave offerings in oak groves. Oaks are more likely than other trees to be struck by lightning, which likely fostered this link. Their wild, twisting branches also recall the shape of Duneos’ lightning in the observer. From this sprang the epithet “the Striker,” by which many peoples and cultures know him in their own tongues.
Some cultures now divide him into two or more deities in their own oral traditions, sometimes as father and son, sometimes as the sky itself and the storm prince. Yet the Alves remember their Father as he truly was, and they taught this truth to the Nunacairn of Talend.
Another of his epithets is “Sky-Father,” for he fathered the race of Alves, from whom the magical bloodlines of mortals stem. Those able to wield “the Craft” (magic) are most often found in a people’s royal line, which bound Duneos to sovereignty itself and won him the title of King of the Gods.
As already told, Duneos is the patriarch of the Alves, who were brought into the world by Florawah, his loving wife.
Duneos, like all the gods, does not always walk the world in the form you see before you. The divine ones often go abroad in the guise of natural things. Firalah may pass as a rangale of deer, and Florawah as a cloud of dandelion puffs borne on a light breeze. Duneos himself might appear as a thunderhead, the eye of a storm, or a long flash of lightning. Yet the form in which he is shown is his true divine manifestation.
After the war of heaven, which brought the Age of Silver to a close, all the gods’ forms were destroyed except for Mehter and the sleeping sun god Leuada. Their souls dispersed, seeping into the works they had shaped in Concavia, and their will became scattered and unfocused. Yet, though their essence lingered everywhere in a dreamlike haze, they could still be stirred at times by a worthy prayer, spell, or offering. Duneos’ will or omens could be read by holy men through augury (the reading of the flight of birds).
Comments
Callum Diggle
Thanks Charlie, it means a lot! Woodir is next and he has a similarly simple design with big eye-catching shapes.
Callum Diggle
Hey man, thanks! I think demh₂- is the PIE root for “house”, “build”, “domesticate” and “tame”, that kind of thing if I’m not mistaken. For Duneos I was actually pulling from *dheu- / dhuH- which has to do with rising in a cloud, smoke, or swirling, which gives that storm-cloud sense. Then there’s dyew- which is the big sky/heaven/brightness root, the same one that gave us Zeus, Jupiter, and Dyaus. And finally deu- which carries the idea of strength or might. So instead of there being one single root that means both storm-cloud and bright, it’s really more of a mingling of related roots that overlap in storm, sky, and strength imagery, I then found out the phonetics of those root words and loosely blended them for Duneos’ written name.
Charlie Horse
Wow this design is eye catching because it is so simple in general while being so complex in detail. I'm not sure it would even occur to me to go 'feathers' top to bottom without some kind of chest armor and belt and the usual. Somehow it seems very believable to me. I like it.
Daniel Bensen
Nice. I like the Age of Silver reference. What PIE root did you use? *demh₂-? I couldn't find one that meant both "storm-cloud" and "bright."
