Urso

Urso (pronounced Er-so), the Bearfaced King, is the stolid god of the hunt. He urges his followers to treat nature with respect, to protect the balance of life, and to make sure that civilization never encroaches too far into his domain - respecting the balance of the needs of men, and the needs of beasts.

Once a mortal, Urso was deceived by Corthannach into slaying his precursor, the original god of the hunt. He tracked his quarry and found the god in the body of a hart. He shot the hart with his bow, blessed by Corthannach, fatally wounding the god of the hunt. Upon his death, the god's divinity burst forth. Corthannach intended to absorb it but before he could, Urso, realizing the deception, interposed himself between the divinity and his deceiver and absorbed it for himself. Corthannach saw this as the ultimate betrayal, and through the millennia has sought to claim from Urso the power he feels is rightly his. Urso, in turn, despises the savagery and disorder that Corthannach represents, believing in the sacredness of the hunt, and seeing the beauty in the great circle of life. The two oppose each other at every turn. Corthannach even went so far as to steal the lycans, Urso's gift to mortals, twisting them into crazed, possessed creatures. Urso has managed to slowly turn some of the lycans back to his grace, much to the chagrin of Corthannch.