Elven Gods

A depiction of Ridhain

While their origins and purpose are often veiled in a web of terror and myth, the Elven Gods - known to their kin as the Eldashan - are undeniably real. Five entities that, while unable to garner the total cosmic authority of Atharen’s creators, are truly harrowing and mighty in their own right. These five carry names: Lotheric, God of the Brine, Tyrnac, God of Glass, Ridhain, God of Mold, Veratelle, God of the Thicket, and Lachrann, God of Fungus. The information below will detail these entities as best as they are scholarly known.

History

As much of the history of the Elven Gods is fairly mythological, this section will be concise, intending only to state the little-documented but factual portions of the Eldashan's history.

To begin with, it is important to note that the history of the Eldashan begins immediately alongside the history of the Elves, who some say were born in the same grove as they... though such tales are fantastic and far from proven. What is known is that they were there from nearly the beginning, and their appearances were always followed by the reverence of a grin.

While the Eldashan did not create the Elves, they opted to act as mentors and guardians over them, and by doing so gained prominence they had never even thought to seek. Within a few hundred years since the arrival of their Norai kin, the Eldashan became synonymous with Elven life, permanent fixtures that were universally adored for the kindness and mediation they brought to their young followers. They became so prominent as to phase out much of the Living Gods from worship, with most Elves only truly retaining piety towards Malek and Venadak, opting to follow the Gods who had shown a great deal more interest in their lives.

The Eldashan thrived from this. Their once benevolent intentions over time began to shift towards the sustenance of their revered state, and they settled into permanent domains that they ruled with all the pride of ascendant beings. As the Elves began to expand across Mornoth, they expanded their roots along the edges of their kin's borders, and fiercely embroiled themselves into any interaction with what they viewed as a 'lesser race'. The Eldashan became key in the subjugation of humans and other races, fervent in their support of the Elves over all others, who they viewed as their children who they had nurtured from tribalism to civility.

And so - all too embedded into Elven society - the Elven Gods faced all the same collapse, weakened once by the fall of Silor and again by the Bleeding. They fell from having a pool of followers similar in size to the Living Gods to a few dissident groups in lands far removed from one another, forever bludgeoned by the Bleeding that has bled into their being and corrupted their body and mind. The Eldashan is far weaker than it once was, no longer capable of the same Godly might that secured a thousand years of Elven dominance. They are already mourned, for they have all but passed on, only continuing to sustain themselves largely through pure stubbornness and spite.

Nature

Brief but important to mention is that the Eldashan is comprised of powerful Adac, and in this classification they are well known to be the Living Gods' most powerful creations. Some have often mistaken them for Lesser Gods for their incalculable power and influence, though this is not the case, as it is doubtful that they wield a Divine Spark. Regardless, the line of power between the Eldashan and the most powerful of spirits is blurred, at least if one excludes the Living Gods and their inverse.

Lotheric

Lotheric is the God of Brine, and alongside his twin brother Tyrnac he is often regarded as the most powerful of Elven Gods. While recent events have left the majority of the Eldashan weakened, Lotheric has thrived post-Bleeding, reveling in the pollution of the Straits of Adena, inviting the filth into his corded veins. Many believe this corruption and rot has driven him to insanity, with the Brine-Lord’s actions becoming more vile over time. Lotheric, vengeful of the fate of his pantheon, frequently assails the rivers and coasts of Daravin with violent floods that drown the human inhabitants and draw them into the bay, where they return as blighted and damp undead. Covered in unnatural tumors and bloating, these beings return to the shores of the Empire with weapons of glass and disease, endlessly ravaging the Empire’s undefended.

Lotheric is often depicted as a partly rotted man, muscular and robust yet afflicted with corrosive disease, wearing a tattered skirt, crown-like bangles above his elbows and a collar of rusted chain mail. In Ald’norai records he is described as a strict, austere being, representing the ocean’s abrasive depths rather than their benign surface.

In terms of symbology, his symbol is an anglerfish, with gnarled teeth and often set in a material that imbues the religious ornament with the appearance of rust.

Tyrnac

Tyrnac, along with his brother Lotheric, is one of two Elven Gods to remain in Mornoth. During the cataclysmic destruction of Sil-Elaine by the Bleeding, the rolling devastation razed much of the coastline and interior of the realm and mired it in an arcane, reflective veil. This effect altered much of the Sil'Norai home to become ‘the Mirrorlands’, terraforming swathes of the nation into a silver waste. This had a surprisingly benign effect for the dying God, who took shelter in the still-heated glass and the silvery leaves of the crystallized trees. A new habitat was formed for him, and in a way much of Sil-Elaine became an extension of himself. The remaining spirits native to the region were weak and susceptible to influence, and so he became like a father to their vulnerable flock.

Tyrnac, though powerful, is a mysteriously quiet thing. He was once regarded as the most benevolent of all the Elven Gods, and was the true patron of the Ald’norai. Interestingly, this reverence was only reinforced by a sense of similarity: Tyrnac holds great power over flame, a Pyromancer only outmatched by an Elemental Lord. In battle, he was brutal to the foes of Silor, charring masses of foes, subduing slave revolts. He was always, though, a shadowy reflection in a mirror - a lurking, watchful force. Despite the anguish of his flock at the hands of the Dranoch, he does not act to liberate them, either due to weakness or negligence. Instead, given the weapons of Lotheric’s watery corpses, it appears he coordinates with his kin for the sole purpose of vengeance and spite.

Tyrnac has an indescribable appearance, given that he is most often alluded to as a reflection or a silhouette. Some powerful Elves throughout history have claimed to see him, however, stating he is a writhing mess of glass protruding violently from whatever inanimate avatar of flesh he wishes to assume. His religious symbology is most often a small mosaic, usually with images of the Elven pantheon, bound by his mediation.

Ridhain

Ridhain, God of Mold, is the most feared and reviled among the younger races for his sheer brutality towards them. He is known to act as a corruptive and sinister force, weeding his way into communities all across Atharen's human Kingdoms with infestations of black mold that rot through even the grandest structures. Ridhain is often regarded as a mindless force for entropy, seeking the slow breakdown of whatever lies adjacent to him. He is known to be capable of degrading the minds of others through physical symptoms, victims growing mold from their skin and flesh before slowly losing their mental faculties until they are incapable of the most basic of cognitive functions.

Most often, this will be done to entire settlements consecutively, with outsiders landing in towns seemingly centuries lost, decayed into piles of molded structures and rotted corpses, but with far more recent ongoings. The pure degrading force that Ridhain is capable of is terrifying to many, and the seemingly arbitrary way in which he chooses his victims brings a feeling of looming dread upon many across Atharen’s northwest, particularly in Radenor, which he calls home.

Appearance-wise, Ridhain can and does appear through almost any manifestation; he takes on avatars of mold and rot, emptying their consciousness and replacing it with his own. He has no set appearance in this way, though he tends towards horrific abominations of spliced entities if only to revel in his intimidating form. Ridhain has no canonical religious symbology, as he is only truly worshiped by cults with varying effigies and symbols to describe him.

Veratelle

The God of the Thicket, Veratelle does not represent bark or roots, but overgrowth; weeds, the incursions of invasive species, uncontrolled reclamation by nature. A forest so consumed by sharp branches so as to entirely block off intruders. She - for she is often represented as a woman - exists as a looming warning against the excesses of unrestrained industrial imperialism, and so her death at the end of the Age of Tyranny could not have been more fitting.

Veratelle once presided in the Heartland Mooring of Sil-Elaine, in the form of a great black Vainwood tree one could witness from near anywhere in the realm. Unprotected and so near to the Bleeding’s impact, her spirit was frayed and then burned, the vessel of the tree writhing and corroding. While Veratelle’s physical form remains, it looks almost like a cocoon-like husk in the shape of a withering tree, over a thousand feet high yet sustained only by the settling of the dust into place. Still, around her gravesite are haunting whispers and visions of the forest’s old grandeur, a sorrowful reminiscence left by a God long since lost.

Lachrann

Lachrann resides in the Kingdom of Vendigad, and has become almost synonymous with the land. As the God of Fungus, she is seen as a symbiotic force that grows and thrives from others, but also - at times - helps others to grow and thrive as well. Lachrann's influence can be found all across Vendigad in a thousand different, subtle ways, though the key is that subtlety. Though she holds the largest domain of any of the Elven Gods that remain, Lachrann is - alongside Ridhain - far weakened from her original state, and in fact she is dying. After the Bleeding she was forced to move from the coast of Daravin and Mithira to Vendigad, uprooting from her historic home to trek across hundreds of miles westward. Upon arriving in the Hyr'Norai Kingdom she was on the verge of death, but was restored by one of the greatest feats of Elven magic in documented history, with thousands of Hyr'norai coming together to keep her alive.

In return, Lachrann took root in Vendigad and melded with the land, her fungus helping to absorb the vast majority of the Bleeding's fallout to keep Vendigad fertile and bountiful. It is because of her that the Hyr'norai live so elegantly and in a land so untainted, but the already ill God found herself poisoned in turn. Blighted with the noxious magic of the post-Sundered land, Lachrann draws ever nearer to a deathly slumber, and no magic has been able to cure the ailments that have seemingly become part of her very being. Widely loved in Vendigad, this seemingly imminent death has caused a great deal of suffering for the Hyr'norai people, who view her as the last surviving monument of their former glory. In many ways, her presence in Vendigad is what legitimizes Vendigad as the new home for the Elves, and the thought of her death poses an existential threat to Elven identity itself.

Lachrann has probably the most consistent and well-defined appearance of the Elven Gods, as she is the most interactive with her flock. She appears as a mass of fungus-covered tendrils, clinging to the soil and the trees, with a heart of burgeoning bulbs at their core that form and re-form into images of a multitude of beings; animals, spirits, Elves. Most common is the form of an Elven woman, and though the Elven Gods scarcely speak, her voice is said to carry with it the tone of a stern mother.

Lachrann's symbology is a tree blooming from another, sometimes with more things blooming successively afterwards; her mythological concept is that of symbiosis and growth, and how life perpetuates life. As such, she is known to have many such symbols, varied across cultures and time. Lachrann is frequently worshiped by both Hyr'norai and Fae'norai alike, with Sil'norai tending towards the more vengeful members of the Eldashan.

The Forbidden Sixth

Legends tell of a sixth Elven God, ejected from the pantheon so long ago that she is nearly unverifiable. This God, known to some as Veravend, is spoken of in Eldhan tablets from the First Age and in mythical whispers by the Korkann Druskai. While contemporary Hyr'norai scholars tend to deny Veravend's existence, the Druskai - her creation - are undeniable evidence of her former presence in the world. They say she was the God of the Unknown, who dwelt in the almost opaque black depths of the sea, where she entangled with a darker fate. Betraying her brethren, she created the Druskai to besiege the Elves and act as her minions in an age enduring war.

While Veravend is clearly no longer active on Atharen, there has never been any discovery leading to the confirmation of her death. Instead, Elven sources from the end of the First Age and the early Second Age still speak of her as a looming threat, extricating herself from the dangers of warring with her peers and instead shifting her methods and goals to other, more sinister - but certain - ventures. It is said in terms of presentation that Veravend was a beautiful Hyr'norai woman in appearance, but with a true nature rivaling the terror of the unknown; limbs and other organs and appendages that could not be related to, in a morbid blend that made her unforgettable to view.