_{To be curious is to invite certain death. To abandon curiosity is to die.}

_{^{The God of Knowledge and Curiosity}} | _^Kathetikon

The Aspect of Curiosity belongs to the sentient tome known as the Kathetikon, and it is the essential drive behind the acquisition of knowledge. It is not merely the act of understanding for practical purpose, but instead the very wellspring from which the mind drinks deep and generates thought--it is the obsession of the researcher, a hunger within the mind that is never sated. The Aspect of Curiosity concerns itself not only with the drive to acquire knowledge, but also the means by which knowledge may be obtained, stored, and passed on. It is the library where scholars gather to make real their thoughts and imprint their experiences on a medium that will outlast themselves. It is the gift of a teacher bestowing what they have learned upon another student, an ideological torch to banish the blackness of ignorance and e'er grow the insatiable flame of curiosity in the deepest recesses of the self. Even the gods themselves are subject to the capricious whims of curiosity: to be divine is to be singularly focused, after all, and though the gods are perhaps the greatest founts of knowledge regarding those topics that they preside over, they are also in and of themselves bound to and by what they know or do not know. Many things spark curiosity, from childlike wonder to all-consuming pride, and so it is that knowledge and curiosity are both cornerstones of what it means to be.

Curiosity is what enables mortalkind to hope beyond the shortness of their lifespans, to see goals far greater in scope than they might ever be. It is a tool to inspire and a burden to bear, it inspires them to works of wondrous creation and wanton destruction alike. It is both the source and the river itself: curiosity begets knowledge, and knowledge begets curiosity--always is there another question to answer, another phenomenon to record, another what if? bubbling away in the mind. The Kathetikon is itself the very embodiment of this natural curiosity, seeking to understand all things and record them within itself to answer the very question that lead to its grand apotheosis. To that end, the Aspect of Curiosity (and thus the Kathetikon itself) cares little about being the one to actually experience things: it cares only that all experiences are written and recorded, so they might eventually come to its grand library and settle within its pages. It is the Aspect of Curiosity that gives birth to writing as a whole, and so it is that the Kathetikon contains all things ever written (though the other divinities of course may hide that which they have written from its pages at will) and, some might say, all things that might ever be written. It is nothing more or less than the lexicon of all questions and answers committed to paper, and its powers are used to foster the acquisition of ever-more knowledge above all else.

The Kathetikon is utterly in thrall to curiosity, endlessly searching for new experiences and fragments of knowledge that it has not yet been able to record within itself--and it goes about its business with the sole intention of answering the many questions that living things might pose to the universe they exist in. While it always has some thing or another that it has focused its singular will and intellect upon, this is more an expression of its personality than it is an expression of its work: when interacting with mortals the Kathetikon seeks only to inspire them towards asking the questions that drive their curiosity, blessing them with the means to achieve those answers and record them that others might learn and continue its work. It cares not how this inspiration is doled out to the mortal mind, whether through terror or awe, through hatred or love, it seeks only to inspire every question that could ever be asked and record every answer therein. It cares not if the knowledge is dangerous, it cares not what the consequences of knowing might be: it drives all beings endlessly towards that knowledge, for its curiosity will not brook otherwise.

Mortals that attempt to read the Kathetikon's pages are, without some blessing from a Divinity, irrevocably driven mad by the fundamental truths it has already been able to record--but those who are driven mad are unable to contribute to the Book's greatest desires, and so it does not ever try to force madness upon those who would glean its secrets. It instead tries to seduce them gently, providing them with fragments and hints to guide them down the paths of erudition themselves--treading those paths that it, as a god, simply cannot or will not. Its devotees align their wills with the god's, and thus it treats them as an extension of itself, with all of the single-minded obsession that it brings to each and every thing it does. Bound so utterly by insatiable curiosity, the Kathetikon mostly expresses itself through a being known as Anagnostis, the Reader--a facsimile of itself without access to the worlds of knowledge contained within its pages. Anagnostis is a pure representation of the ideal, a naive child seeing all things through new eyes and experiencing them for the first time without prejudice or bias--accordingly, it is easily the most approachable (and safe) way to gain the attention of the enigmatic God of Knowledge.

It is said that once there lived a scholar in the highest mountains of Poietes, the Master of Incunabula of the Grand Order of Gnosis, whose dedication to his work took him beyond the pale of death until he had judged himself finally finished. It is said that this scholar had read every tome the Order had ever acquired, and memorised them so completely that they were often called the very memory of the world in which they lived. When that world’s sun died and the very breath of creation began to leave it, still they felt that they had not quite done enough–for if there was no being left to witness the apocalypse, what had their life (and death)’s work even mattered at all? So unwilling was this scholar to allow the wealth of knowledge they had acquired regarding their universe die with them that they are said to have sundered the very gates between worlds with the vast knowledge they acquired, travelling from theirs to a new and unfamiliar universe to preserve what they could.

In the next universe they were said to have continued their work as a lonely hermit, allowing themselves not even a moment of rest until they had learned everything they could about this next world. When the time came for it, too, to wither and die as is the fate of all life, they employed their various esoterica and codices of fundamental truths to forestall it and perhaps enable it to cling onto warmth for just a little while longer, but they were merely the shade of an obsessive individual that could not let go, and could not have hoped to have altered the fate of even a single planet, never mind an entire universe. Once more this Master of Incunabula watched as the pulse of life deadened and faded away once more, invoking again that selfsame magic and taking their library of knowledge to yet another world.

None can say for sure how long they travelled, fuelled by only the vaguest memories of their home and its wealth of knowledge, but in time they had seen enough universes rise and fall to have become little more than an impassive observer with no hope of ever changing the fates of the worlds they inhabited. Their role became simply that of a witness, one to record the deaths of entire universes so that they might cling to memory in their many books, until they happened upon a universe who had a final witness all their own. Her voice was a clarion call that awakened in this numb spirit a sense of purpose for the first time in many long eons, and she offered them–among others–the chance to sup from the wellspring at the very heart of creation in order to become divine.

The shade had long forgotten what it was like to truly live, and so answered the call with only a single goal in mind: to use the highest of powers to understand, to observe, to answer a single burning question that had denied them the peace of rest for millenia beyond counting or observation: could even a God prevent the eventual departure of all life and warmth in the cold and uncaring universes that existed? Would her earnest cry of hope and life and love be enough to rail against the eventual fate of all things? Though the spirit could not remember how to live, it remembered how to observe and record. It remembered how to read and write. And so when they drank deep from the ichor of creation itself and their incorporeal form brimmed with ambrosia, they took the only form they knew how: the books they so cherished. So was the Kathetikon born, they say, though all that have read through its pages have ever glimpsed even a hint of the question's end. Perhaps only Anath Homura knows the answer.

Kathetikon - True Form

Anagnostis - The Reader