Many humans foolishly believe the gully dwarves to be heathens with no gods of their own. This is a blatant untruth. The gully dwarves worship a single goddess known as La’treen (Humans often mispell this as "Latrine."), who has a deep interest in their welfare.
She often appears in the aspect of a small female gully dwarf who smells of rat stew, usually called "Treen", which is by far the most common name among female gully dwarves. She has also been known to overshadow kender and gnomes and particularly ugly half-elves. Without any doubt she is one of the most powerfully inept goddesses ever.
La'Treen has according to legend kept gully dwarves alive for a long time. She has made them her Chosen People six times (always told with one finger raised), rescued them from slavery by occultists, kept them alive in a desert for five years (all fingers and toes raised) on rat stew that mystically appeared over night, took them to the Promised Land of "Where-gully-dwarves-live", sent her daughter goddess-made-flesh Treen to them, died in a flood to save them from an evil kender mage (Wait a minute, kender can't be mages! Can they? They can! Oh, La'Treen save me!!!!), and prophecied the 2nd coming of the Takhisis, of which no one belived her. Some gully dwarves go door-to-door asking for money and if you have been saved by the goddess La'Treen because the END is near -- they have been doing this for approximately seven-hundred years. Then they are paid to go away.
Here is a portion of the gully dwarf oral tradition, recorded by this humble scribe:
Way back long, long ago, La’Treen created the the big blue stuff up there and the the flat brown stuff down there. La’Treen smart gully dwarf! And there weren’t any thingummies, and it was dark an’ scary. And then La’Treen made the waters .* And La’Treen said, Let there be there be funny shiny stuff: and there was light. La’Treen saw the light and that it was good: and La’Treen divided the light from the not-light thingummy.** And La’Treen called the light-thingummy Day, and the not-light she called Night. And that was the eighth day.
And La’Treen said, Let there be a hard stuff in the middle of the water, and let it sep’rate the water from the water. And La’Treen made the hard stuff, and sep’rated the water which was under the hard stuff from the water which was above the hard stuff: and it worked. La’Treen smart gully dwarf! And La’Treen called the hard stuff ground. And that was the sixth day.
And La’Treen said, Let the water all go together in one place, and let the ground appear***: and it worked. La’Treen smart gully dwarf! La’Treen called the dry land Ground; and alla the water she called the Sea: and La’Treen saw that it was good. La’Treen said, Let the Ground have funny green stuff and the funny plants that have food, spec’ially mushrooms: and it was so. And the Ground did alla that: and La’Treen saw that it was good. La’Treen smart gully dwarf! And that was the first day.
And La’Treen said, Let there be funny funny bright stuff in the sky: and it was so. And La’Treen made two big lights; the biggest light to rule**** the day, and the little light to rule the night: she made the stars too, cause she had a little light left over, and she didn’t think it would taste good in the rat stew*****. And La’Treen put them in the sky so she could see, and to help her decide when to eat, and when to make stuff and look for rats ******: and La’Treen saw that it was good. La’Treen smart gully dwarf! And that was the fifth day.
And La’Treen said, Let the water be full of funny thingummies with scales*******, and funny thingummies that fly. And La’Treen created BIG fish, and every other funny live thingummy: and La’Treen saw that it was good. And La’Treen smiled at them, saying, Make more of yourselves, so there will be even more funny thingummies! La’Treen smart gully dwarf! And that was the twelth day.
And La’Treen said, “Let their be Rats!********”: and it was so. and La’Treen saw that it was good. And La’Treen said, “I’m gonna make a lotta gully dwarfs! They’ll be just as smart as I am, and they’ll rule all the other stuff I made, especially those ugly humans -- gosh, that was a mistake, and the elves are even worse!” So La’Treen made gully dwarves just like her. And La’Treen said to them, “Make more gully dwarves! And everything else here belongs to you, because you’re the best thing I’ve made yet!” And La’Treen saw every thing that she had made, and it was very good. And that was the seventh********* day.
So that was how La’Treen made everything. And on the third day La’Treen stopped making things, because more gully dwarves, means more rat stew, and she spent the whole day cooking. And La’Treen told the gully dwarves, “Eat anything you like, except each other.” After a bit, La’Treen realized she had forgotten something. She had made only girl gully dwarves, and they had to do all the work themselves, so La’Treen created boy gully dwarves to do all the work. And that was the best thing she had done yet, so she stopped making rat stew and started making weird things like flying lizards and horned horsies.
Now the snake was the sneakiest thingummy La’Treen had made, and it decided to give La’Treen a hard time. And he said to one of the boy gully dwarves, “So what if La’Treen says not to eat each other? Do what you want.” Now the gully dwarves were Lawful Good**********, so they told La’Treen what the snake said. And La’Treen was pissed. And La’Treen said to the snake, “Because you tried to make my friends eat each other, for every day from now on, we are gonna to eat you.” And from that day forth, gully dwarves have liked snakes more than any other food. Pass the stew, please!
Notes
* Some experts believe this refers to her urinating for an extended period of time, but it seems unlikely as the the smell would never have gone away.
**She hadn’t yet decided to call it dark.
***I know she did it the day before, but she did it again that day. It isn’t logical at all, but all gully dwarves tell it this way, so I assume it must be true. Besides, gully dwarves never were logical in the first place. Neither is religion, so you can’t have everything. If you are seeking a logical religion, I advice you to consider agnosticism.
****La’Treen apparently didn’t realize that the lights were made of fire and rock and couldn’t rule anything, but I urge my readers to remember she was a gully dwarf and should be forgiven for her stupidity.
*****I know she hadn’t yet created any animals, let alone rats, but that didn’t stop her from making rat stew.
******See the previous note. Remember, La’Treen is a powerful goddess, but she has explained how she did this only to the gully dwarves who are her Chosen People, but none of them are coherent enough to explain it.
*******Most gully dwarves claim that she was tired of rats, even if she hadn’t created them yet.
********Many gully dwarves say that this was her greatest creation. She was certainly impressed!
*********Some versions claim it was the nintieth.
**********That was a long time ago. Now they are nearly all chaotic good or neutral.
Now that you have learned what an exceptionally powerful goddess La'Treen is, please consider the state of your soul and send rat-money to the following address:
Treen, High Priestess of La'Treen
The Big Temple Place
Xak Tsaroth, Abanasinia, Krynn
