"Guard us from the she-wolf and the wolf, and guard us from the thief, oh Night, and so be good for us to pass."
— A prayer to Ratri, the Hindu goddess of the night, in Lord of Light.
Just as there are gods whose domain covers light, the sun and the day, there are gods who rule over the night, darkness, and shadows.
A God of Dark may be an example of Dark Is Evil, Dark Is Not Evil, or anything in between. Their relationship with a God of Light may be adversarial, but in some cases they may have a relationship of in balance and harmony, peacefully overseeing different parts of the cycle of day and night, and will often have a close relationship as equals. Either they themselves or their followers are likely capable of Casting a Shadow.
It is also common for a God of Dark to be a God of the Moon for obvious reasons, but they may also be separate deities. Other domains Gods of Dark may control are death, chaos, inexistence, destruction and evil.
Compare The Sacred Darkness, which describes cases where dark and its associated concepts are portrayed as benevolent, necessary or sacred. Good Gods of Darkness typically overlap with this trope, although malevolent ones do not.
Examples:
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Comic Books
- MonsterVerse: The Kingdom Kong graphic novel features Camazotz, the Dark Titan, whose appearance is that of a desiccated giant bat who lives in darkness within the Hollow Earth and cannot stand daylight. After being freed from King Ghidorah's control, he seeks to forcibly usurp dominion over Skull Island from Kong and feed on the latter's atomic blood, permanently enshrouding the island within a perpetual storm which blocks off daylight and dooming the island's unique ecosystem to make it hospitable to himself.
- Marvel Comics:
- Avengers: No Road Home: Nyx is the primordial goddess of darkness from Greek Mythology, said to have originated in the Primordial Chaos that existed before the beginning of the universe. Millennia of jealousy and resentment towards the Olympians for being demonized while they were lauded as heroes despite their grievous shortcomings saw Nyx declare war on Olympus, only to be stripped of her powers and imprisoned. Filled with hatred, she decided to reclaim her lost power, return the universe to the primordial Void and recreate it in her image, but was stopped from destroying the multiversal House of Ideas by Vision.
- Amatsu-Mikaboshi, the Japanese god of darkness, was introduced in Thor: Blood Oath but revealed in Chaos War to be the embodiment of the primordial void that existed before the universe was created. Seeking to return the universe to a state of absolute darkness, the Chaos King almost succeeds in devouring all that exists before being tricked into trapping itself in a pocket dimension, Hercules burning out his new Skyfather powers to restore the cosmos.
- Venom (Donny Cates): This run introduces Knull, the creator god of the Klyntar and one of the oldest, most powerful and evil Gods of Darkness in existence. Throughout the Cosmos, Knull has been known by numerous names, such as the God of the Void, Abyss, Everblack and Lord of the Anti-Light. Knull was born in the Primordial Chaos, the nothingness between the end of the Sixth Universe and the beginning of the Seventh Universe, and he plans to return the universe back to how it was. Thanks to his birthplace he has vast control over the Darkness and the very Void itself. He has created a number of entities and species of Living Shadows, like Mister E, The Exolons, and most famously, the Symbiotes/Klyntar. His control over the Darkness is so vast that others with shadow powers are affected by his mere presence, such as Cloak and The Void.
- The Sandman: Overture: Night is the Anthropomorphic Personification of the emptiness that predates Creation. She is the estranged lover of Time and mother of The Seven Endless. While not evil, she is known for being rather narcissistic and tends to pick favorites while neglecting others when it comes to her children.
Fan Works
- Distant Shadows
: The fanfic has its own take on the Mobius Pantheon. One of them is a black female echidna named Havoc, who serves as the deity of darkness.
- Queen of Blood (SirWill): Solin and Dracul, the Gods of Light and Darkness respectively were bitter enemies. Thankfully, their successors, Taylor and Dragon, get along great.
Films — Live-Action
- The Mask: Loki is described as a night god which is presumably why the mask he created only works at night.
Literature
- A Batalha do Apocalipse: Tehom is the embodiment of darkness and chaos that existed before the Universe. She serves as the conceptual opposite and enemy of God.
- The Chronicles of Narnia: In The Horse and His Boy, Aravis mentions a Calormene goddess named Zardeenah, Lady of the Night, who is also a protectress of unmarried girls. Presumably she's based on Artemis from Classical Mythology, who is sometimes a Moon Goddess.
- The Heroes of Olympus: Nyx appears in The House of Hades, where she encounters Percy and Annabeth in Tartarus.
- The House of Night: Vampyres worship Nyx, the Classical goddess of night. Naturally, the protagonist is her Chosen One.
- Inheritance Trilogy: Nahadoth is the God of Chaos and Darkness. He was the first to emerge from the Primordial Chaos and created the universe with his younger siblings, the God of Order and the Goddess of Life and Death. He is not evil and is presented as a natural force in the universe, but is still dangerous in his own right.
- The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue: Addie's odyssey begins when she prays to the Old Gods to save her from an arranged marriage she doesn't want. Unfortunately, she doesn't heed the warning she received from the village wise-woman: "never pray to the gods who answer after dark."
- Lord of Light: Ratri is Goddess of the Night and has the power to create creating darkness.
- Malazan Book of the Fallen: Mother Dark is the Elder Goddess of Darkness and Queen of High House Dark. It is believed by the Tiste Andii that she is the creator of the universe.
- Pyramids: The night goddess Nuit appears in the night sky over Djelibeybi (a fantasy version of Ancient Egypt) as a cosmically massive woman with a mournful face looking down on the world. From the perspective of people standing on the ground, her face is upside-down.
- Shattered Twilight: In the book's backstory, it is mentioned that there was once a benevolent god of the night who protected the world from evil. He vanished during the Shattering, leaving darkness to be haunted by evil.
- A Song of Ice and Fire:
- The Great Other is the god of darkness, cold, and death. He is the enemy of R'hllor with whom he constantly battles for the fate of the world.
- Worshippers of R'hllor consider him to also be the god of the shadows cast by fire, light, and the sun, contrasting them with the shapeless darkness of the Great Other.
Live-Action TV
- Supernatural: Amara is the sister of God and the embodiment of darkness and destruction.
Mythology & Religion
- The Tasmanian god Rageowrapper is technically the god of the west wind, but he rules over the night and all the evil things within it.
- In African Mythology, Biri is the orisha of darkness and midnight.
- The Aztec god Tezcatlipoca is the god of night and chaos.
- Arab Mythology: Al-Qaum is the Nabataean god of war and the night, and guardian of caravans.
- Classical Mythology:
- Erebus and his lover/sister, Nyx, are the primordial deities of darkness and night, respectively.
- Hades is also a god of darkness and night, since the Greek Underworld was heavily associated with both of those things.
- The Roman god Summanus is rather specifically the god of night time lightning.
- Egyptian Mythology:
- Apep is the serpent embodiment of chaos and darkness. He constantly tries to devour the Sun God, Ra; solar eclipses are the result of his near successes.
- Kuk is the god of the primordial darkness before creation.
- Hindu Mythology:
- Ratri is the Vedic goddess of the night.
- Bhairava is the Shaivite god of the night.
- Norse Mythology: Nótt is the primordial night and the maternal grandmother of Thor. She is also described as a godess of dreams.
- Hoder, who is blind, is usually pegged as a god of darkness. His brother Balder seems to be the God of Light, which bolsters the symbolism.
- Pacific Mythology: Hine-nui-te-pō is the Maori goddess of night and death.
- Zoroastrianism: Ahriman is god of darkness, night and evils.
- The Princess Who Cried for the Moon: The night is caused by a woman named "Night", who causes the darkness, wakes up the nocturnal animals, etc.
- Slavic Mythology: Chernobog is god of darkness, chaos, famine, pain, and pretty much everything that's bad.
Tabletop Games
- Dungeons & Dragons:
- Forgotten Realms: Shar is the goddess of darkness and loss, and is one of the most ancient evil deities in the Faerûnian pantheon. She is often at odds with her twin sister Selûne, the goddess of the moon.
- Mystara: The Immortal (deity, functionally speaking) Nyx is the Entropic Immortal of darkness, night, and the undead. She is also notably the only Immortal of Entropy who is not evil, although her goals would be horrifying to most people.
- Eberron: The Shadow is a member of the evil pantheon The Dark Six. He is associated with Black Magic and corruption, and is believed to be the rejected Living Shadow of the god of magic and knowledge.
- La Notte Eterna: Garod is the Lawful Evil god of, among other things, darkness. He used to be a member of the ruling Triad of gods alongside Laon of the sun and Lanie of the moon. In the wake of the Celestial War, Laon's imprisonment, Lanie's death, and the fall of The Night That Never Ends, his star is ascendant and he is the most powerful and widely-worshipped of the gods.
- Pathfinder:
- Black Butterfly is an Empyreal Lord associated with darkness, distance, and space. She appears as a dark humanoid silhouette gleaming with images of stars and nebulae, and her personal realm is a quiet void whose physical surfaces are pockets of solid shadows.
- Desna is a goddess associated with stars and the night sky, making her a cross between this and a variation of God of Light.
- The land of Tian Xia has the god Tsukiyo, the most prominent Good deity to provide the Darkness domain to his clerics.
- Zon-Kuthon is the god of darkness and de facto ruler of the Shadow Plane. He's also an evil deity whose faith is centered around Cold-Blooded Torture.
- After her Heel–Face Turn, Nocticula became the goddess of artists, exiles, and midnight. Her followers are forbidden from completing works of art during daylight hours.
- Ponyfinder: The Night Mare is a goddess of darkness and the night. She began as a monstrous deity embodying the half-seen terrors in the shadows and the predators lurking outside the campfire's glow, and bitterly opposed the Moon Princess, a protective lunar deity. In the modern day, she has become more associated with tyranny and control, and seeks to usurp her old enemy as the primary deity of nighttime and the moon.
- Warhammer: The minor chaos god Obscuras has powers mainly based on shadows. He can even grant his followers the ability to see in the dark.
Toys
- Transformers: Hasbro introduced the concept of the Thirteen, the Super Prototype Physical God creations of the Transformer creator-god Primus. Megatronus (also known as The Fallen) is described as "a warrior of darkness" and guardian of entropy. In the Aligned universe (i.e. the universe comprised of Transformers: War for Cybertron, Transformers: Fall of Cybertron, Transformers: Prime and Transformers: Rescue Bots), he's explicitly described as being created as a counterpoint to Prima, the first Prime and warrior of light. Because of this, the two don't get along, with Megatronus mockingly referring to Prima as, "old man". note
- IDW Publishing's Transformers comics presented their version of the Thirteen as "merely" being powerful Cybertronians and instead introduced The Guiding Hand as their version of a Transformers pantheon. Mortilus, the grim and unsmiling one, was the Transformer god of death and darkness. According to myth, he sought to wage war on all life, forcing the other gods to destroy him and thus destroying death for the Transformers (in-universe, this is used by the religious-minded to explain why Transformers have such incredibly long lifespans).
Video Games
- Dark Parables: The main antagonist of Requiem for the Forgotten Shadow is Shadow God, who is responsible for imprisoning the goddesses of the Moon and the Sun. He is the first male deity seen in the series and rules a dark alternate dimension known as the Shadow Realm. He used to be a neutral entity but is now a God of Evil. According to the Maiden Goddess, he is jealous of the bright mortal realm and feels compelled to destroy it.
- Dragon Age: Among The Old Gods, seven (maybe actually eight) Gods that take the shape of Dragons, Lusacan is the God of Night. Also known as the Dragon of Night. He's also associated with the constellation known as Tenebrium, or "Shadow". Lusacan is one of the only two Old Gods that has not yet been corrupted into an Archdemon.
- Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup features Dithmenos the Shadowed, who shrouds its followers' surroundings in darkness. As you gain favor, you gain additional shadowy abilities, such as the ability to step into the shadows of other creatures, bleed smoke when injured, allow your shadow to copy your attacks, and eventually turn yourself into a Living Shadow.
- Dwarf Fortress: Some deities can be generated with the spheres coding for darkness.
- The Elder Scrolls:
- Nocturnal is the Daedric Prince of darkness and the night, and is also associated with thieves and luck. She is worshipped primarily by those who prefer to operate under the cover of darkness, mostly meaning criminals.
- Padomay is the Anthropomorphic Personification of change, chaos, and darkness. He is the twin brother to Anu, the personification of stasis, order, and light.
- Namira is the Daedric Prince whose sphere encompasses "The Ancient Darkness" alongside all things considered disgusting by mortals, and according to Khajiiti religious tradition, she is a piece of the Void that became self-aware after the birth of Lorkhaj.
- EverQuest and EverQuest II: Luclin is the Goddess of Shadows, Secrets, and Seclusion. While the other deities quarreled amongst themselves to claim parts of Norrath for their own mortal creations, Luclin chose one of Norrath's moons all for herself and sealed the moon in a magic veil that only makes it visible to Norrath during the full-moon cycle. She doesn't want adventurers to live on her moon and intends on eventually kicking everyone out so just her Akhevan race can worship her in peace.
- Final Fantasy XIV:
- Zodiark is the being the Ascians worship as the "One True God", with command over the power of darkness in contrast to Hydaelyn's light. All of the Ascians' actions are performed in service of reviving him so he can strike down Hydaelyn once and for all. Except, the truth is not that simple. As a primal formed from the sacrifices and wishes of the ancients to save the star, Zodiark commands powers over the rejuvenation and creation of life itself, as activity is the domain of darkness. His powers were essential to rendering the planet inhabitable again after the destruction of the Final Days. Hydaelyn sundered him and the planet when it became clear that the ancients were planning on sacrificing "lesser" life to return to their "paradise" without addressing the cause of the Final Days.
- Tsukuyomi is a kami worshiped as a god of the moon in Far Eastern culture. However, as the god presiding over night, he possesses powers over darkness as well, such as eclipsing the sun and moon to enshroud an entire nation in night. When Yotsuyu transforms herself into a primal modeled after Tsukuyomi, she declares her intent to spew forth darkness and drown Doma in eternal night.
- Invoked in the Eden questline. To correct the elemental imbalance preventing life from returning to the Empty, the heroes use the energies stored within Eden, the first sin eater, to summon primals that the Warrior then destroys to disperse the primal's aether back into the land. But since the energies of the Empty are too skewed toward Light, the heroes have to wrack their brains on summoning a corresponding primal when the only known darkness-aligned primal is Zodiark, as the eldest and most powerful primal. They wind up deciding to summon a primal in the image of another powerful being aligned with Darkness, the first-rung voidsent known as the Cloud of Darkness.
- Flight Rising: Shadowbinder is the goddess of the shadow element and thus rules over the Shadow Flight. She is a large, dark purple dragon deity who holds a strong rivalry with the goddess of the Light element, Lightweaver. Shadowbinder was created from the dark energies of the night while Lightweaver was formed from day, and both rule opposite sides of the ruins of an ancient civilization that seemed to have worshipped both the sun and moon(s)note if the names of the Sunportal and Moonportal are any indication, so they're the closest to Solar and Lunar deities for Sornieth.
- Granblue Fantasy: Several Primal Beasts (fittingly, those of the Dark element) have darkness as a side effect of their actual portfolio. For example, Celeste is the Primal Beast of death, and her presence is generally punctuated by the sky going dark. Similarly, while Lich is the Primal Beast of necromancy, part of her powers include inflicting various darkness-related status effects on her victims. While the Primal Beast Hades' portfolio isn't clear, upon being summoned he inflicts dark damage on enemies while granting the player's party improved Charge bar gain and is one of the most powerful of the Primal Beasts available to the player (thanks to boosting the effectiveness of any passive abilities granted by equipped weapons).
- Hades: Nyx, often referred to as "Mother Night" and "Night Incarnate", is the primordial goddess and incarnation of darkness and the nighttime.
- Heroes of Might and Magic Ashan: Malassa is one of the 6 dragon-gods and the Elemental Embodiment of darkness, in contrast to her brother Elrath the Dragon of light. She is believed to be the most intelligent of the dragon-gods, hoarding secrets and Things Man Was Not Meant to Know. Her worshippers include dark elves, Mad Oracles, assassins, and those who dwell underground. Although many who do not worship her perceive her as a malevolent force, she appreciates those who recognize that "Darkness" and "Evil" are distinct from each other, and she seems to believe in Balance Between Good and Evil, as she plays an important role in keeping Ashan safe from demons, but she has also sabotaged a plan by Elraths's servants, the angels, that would have left demons extinct.
- Kid Icarus (1986): While Medusa was a gorgon in the myths, the games portray her as the Goddess of Darkness.
- RuneScape: Zaros is the god of fate, control, and darkness. Though he himself is neither good nor evil, he has a shady reputation, as he allies himself with "dark creatures" and naturally subsumes the free will of people nearby. His aspect of divine dark isn't as prominent outside the contrast with his light counterpart Seren.
- Skylanders: The Darkness is an Eldritch Abomination serving as an Enigmatic Empowering Entity backing the Dark Portal Master Kaos. In the first game, it plays a major role as the counterpart to the Core of Light, the congregation of Skylands' elements that kept it at bay until Kaos blew it up and let the Darkness take over the land, with the player encountering many spawns of the Darkness over the course of the game as enemies. It had a sparingly few mentions in later games, with Swap Force featuring Petrified Darkness that transformed enemies into stronger and more evil versions of themselves and supplementary materials for Trap Team stating that the Darkness and the Dark Element were one and the same until SuperChargers where it reveals itself as a living being and an actively malevolent force by backstabbing Kaos and usurping him as the Final Boss. As a primordial, immortal force of evil that has existed for countless eons, it's the closest thing the franchise had to a god until the Ancients and Brain were introduced.
- Super Smash Bros. Ultimate: Dharkon is the embodiment of darkness and chaos, and one of the two main antagonists of the game, the other being his light counterpart Galeem.
Web Animation
Webcomics
- A-gnosis' Greek myth comics include Nyx, the primordial goddess of night. She mostly relaxes in The Underworld, having little to do with mortals or most gods — but as one of the first beings in the universe, everyone treads carefully around her.
Nyx: "Night that bends to her sway both gods and men", as the poets say.
Web Original
- Tales From The Gas Station: The Dark God isn't so much evil as he is inept. He's even kind of upset when the protagonist calls him on his title, stating that a thousand years ago, the God of Darkness meant something quite different.
Western Animation
- Aladdin: The Series: This is heavily implied to be the case with the demon Amook Munrah. He is never referred to as a god, but he draws his powers from the darkness (as well as fire), he loses them during the day (forcing him to be always on the move) and only other celestial beings (who eventually find a way to destroy him for good) have the power to keep him at bay.
- The Legend of Korra: Vaatu is the spirit of darkness and chaos, and the Evil Counterpart to Ravaa, the spirit of light and peace. Vaatu is one-half of the Big Bad Duumvirate in season 2 and his main goal is to plunge the world into eternal darkness.
- My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: Princess Luna governs the night, while her sister Celestia governs the day. More so than with darkness itself, Luna is primarily associated with the moon and dreams.
- Villainous: Black Hat is a Top God of Evil whose main domain is a dark depressing island (in the form of a black hat) with a black cloud (again, in a form of a black hat).
