- The Lord of Secrets
- "...the common Prince should be careful before he or she falls to the temptation of Othal. His secrets always come at a cost - knowledge for knowledge, blood for blood. Only the wise have seen through the tricks of the Lord of Secrets and struck a worthwhile bargain..."
- — Encyclopedia Imperia, 2nd Edition
Othal, the Lord of Secrets (also known as Qualos, Athderin, Athedrin and endless variations revealed to scholars who insist they have discovered a "truer" way to describe their Patron) is one of the five Lords of the Pentacle and a member of The Great Pantheon. He (she? it?) is perhaps the least prominent of the five Lords, whispering dulcet half-truths into the ears of scholars and kings, encouraging a ravenous hunger for knowledge, guiding them to the precipice of some profound cosmic truth then withholding it until a terrible service has been performed. Most who worship Othal or contract with its angels will gladly pay whatever price is demanded, so consumed are they by their thirst for understanding.
In this respect, Othal is perhaps the most direct mirror within the Pantheon of Adalna, patron of the Mage Imperium, who built a far more public creed around the sharing of knowledge, exacting worship, not service from her followers.
Summary[]
Othal is a being obsessed with truth, so much so that he paid a dire price (some say his sanity, others say another god) to formulate and understand a series of secret questions -- answering them is his only goal, and something in these questions seemed to convince him that Valdos and Dalthad offered the best chances for answers.
Qualos has few angels; some say they may not even be his in the sense of drawing their power from him -- they are strange, shadowed things to match their secretive master, unnerving even to other angels. Qualos deals in secrets -- a piece of knowledge is valuable to him if it is not shared widely, and all the more if it is coveted: his mortal servants are most often cloistered scholars, madmen and the first psychics.