In Valdara, the theologians who would have narrowed the definition of gender never gained their foothold. Those who argued the body was fallen and required redemption through procreation. Those who imported the philosopher’s hierarchy of perfect male and deviant female. The council that would have codified a single answer where the regions held many. Their works were studied, their schools were taught, but the Faith never adopted them as doctrine.
What the Faith kept instead was its Basilean inheritance: that the divine transcends gender entirely, that the soul takes a stance along cosmic poles rather than fitting one of two molds, and that the wisdom of the allodial regions — Wendish, Numidian, Skanne, Sahilian — did not contradict doctrine.
What follows are the eight gendered stances those traditions named — each carrying its own creation story, each honored in the region that first recognized it, and eventually became kingdom wide.
Of the Sun — Valdaran / The Faith
Of the Moon — Valdaran / The Faith
Way of Deeds — Skanne
Of Two Natures — Wendish
Male+Female — Achaean
Without Gender — Aryan
Of a Fluid Condition — Aryan
Transformed — Arzawan / Basilean
As a folklorist, I have always been fascinated by how older cultures explained, organized, and honored the full range of human experience — especially those parts that modern thinking sometimes struggles to name.
What I found was that nearly every culture that recognized more than two genders had a creation story — a folk tale that explained how and why this person existed as they did.
That discovery shaped how I approached gender in Grimmloch. I asked myself: what if those ancient stories, like all the other folklore and fairytales, first came into the Waking World from Grimmloch itself? What would a world look like in which those genders were not exceptions, but native, honored, and fully real?
These names were carried into the Waking World through the dreams of those who crossed the Gates of Horn and Ivory, taking root in each culture as living tradition — shaped by each people, but never wholly severed from the dreaming realm that first gave them form.
I hope one of these feels like home for your character.