Korr is the god of the Reach’s hardest occasions, and the one most often misunderstood by outsiders who hear the phrase god of war and expect a conqueror. He is not. The Reach has had wars, but the Reach has had more defences — small isles standing against larger neighbours, households standing against debt-collectors, families standing against illness — and Korr is the god of the standing, not the winning. His symbol is a broken shield because his teaching is that the shield breaks, and that what matters is the body behind it, and that the body is honoured whether or not the line holds.
He is the patron of soldiers, watchmen, and harbour-guards; of nurses and surgeons; of parents who have lost children to fever or accident; of veterans who came home from the conflicts of their youth and never quite came all the way back; and of any reach-folk who have stood in front of something dangerous so that someone else would not have to. The temple treats his order with particular care. The priests of Korr are, by tradition, the priests most likely to drink heavily, and the temple does not shame them for it.
His altars are stark. The main figure is a single warrior, gender indistinct, standing — not in motion, not in attack, just standing — with a broken shield held low at the side. The shield is always already broken in the figure; no temple shows Korr with an unbroken shield, and no temple ever has. The broken edge is positioned toward the worshipper. This is deliberate. The teaching is that the worshipper stands behind the break, and that the worshipper is what the worshipper is asked to be.
His priests wear dark red wool — the old reach-colour for blood that has dried — with a thin grey cord at the waist. The cord is symbolic ash. Many priests of Korr are veterans of the small reach-conflicts of their youth; some are nurses or surgeons retired from harder work; a few are parents who lost children and chose to stand in temples afterward rather than break entirely. They are not the most learned of the temple’s orders. They are, by reputation, the most patient with the grief of others.
The Long Wake is Korr’s principal feast and one of the year’s quietest. It begins at sunset on the sixth of Stillmonth and runs until dawn on the seventh. Every temple of the Seven lights one lamp at sunset for each member of the congregation who has lost someone to violent or untimely death. The lamps burn through the night. Veterans and soldiers gather privately, in small rooms, and drink in silence. At dawn the congregation breaks bread together without speaking; the meal lasts perhaps half an hour; people leave when they are ready and do not announce that they are going. The temple does not preach on the morning of the seventh. The priests are usually too tired.
The Long Wake is not, in temple theology, a celebration. It is a holding. The bereaved are held, for one night, by everyone else who is also bereaved. The temple is, on this night and only this night, a roof and not a teacher.
Folk-rituals of Korr are the rituals of communities that have lost people:
- A reach-household that has lost a member to violent death sets a small broken plate on the mantel for one year. The plate is whole before the loss; the family breaks it themselves, ceremonially, on the seventh night after the funeral. At the year’s end the plate is wrapped in cloth and buried at a crossroads, by custom, by a child of the household
- A soldier returning from any conflict — small or large — is, in many Quiet Reach villages, met at the dock by an unrelated child bearing a cup of clean water. The child does not say anything. The soldier drinks. The cup is then taken back to the temple and washed. This is not a temple-mandated rite. It is a village rite. The temples have learned not to interfere
- A parent who has lost a child carries, in some reaches, a small iron token — flat, palm-sized, with a single notch cut from the edge — for the rest of their life. The token is given, when they are ready, by a Korr-priest who has lost a child of their own. The notch represents the broken shield. The parent does not take it off. Other parents, on meeting one in a tavern, will sometimes show their own. Nothing is said. This is enough
Korr is not invoked for victory, conquest, or revenge. The temple will not perform his rites for any matter that requires winning. He is the god of standing in the gap, and the gap, in his teaching, is enough.
“My granddaughter was three. Fever, in the long winter. The priest of Korr came from Pike’s Reach in his red wool, and he sat with us, and he did not speak, and we did not speak, and after some hours he showed me the iron token in his pocket and I showed him a piece of plate I had been carrying for thirty years. It was the first time I had taken it out in the village. He did not flinch. He nodded once. He stayed until morning. I never learned his name. I think about him most weeks.”
— from a sworn statement filed in the Crescent Market record-rolls, Pike’s Reach, 412 AU