#published gods i enjoy

[honourablejester]

Continuing on with ‘published D&D deities that I enjoy’, this time with possibly a slightly more unexpected deity:

D&D Deity Spotlight: Eldath

Eldath is the goddess of waterfalls, springs, pools, stillness, peace, and quiet glades. She is thought to be present at many such places, particularly those that serve as druid groves. Eldath is a goddess of comfort, healing, and calm. Her blessed waters heal the sick, cure madness, and comfort the dying.

Most rural places have a pond or a glade that locals ascribe to Eldath. Tradition dictates that it be a place of quiet reflection where others are left to their thoughts. A body of water such as a pond or a spring typically serves as a repository of offerings. If the holy site is a glade, a stream one crosses along the way might serve as the repository, or a prominent bush or tree in the glade might be the place where people tie offerings. Typical offerings are broken weapons or items that are remembrances of arguments, which the faithful discard while making a wish for peace in the future. Many of those who favor Eldath are pacifists or people who are troubled by violence they have witnessed or experienced.

Eldath's priests don't organize into large sects. Indeed, many are itinerant, wandering between various holy sites and shrines, seeing that the locations are cared for and that they remain places of sweet serenity. The faithful of Eldath are usually close to nature, and allied to druids, who count Eldath among the First Circle. It is taboo to strike a priest of Eldath, and killing one is said to bring great misfortune. Despite the measure of protection that this belief affords them, most priests of Eldath avoid conflicts rather than attempting to quell them. Those who serve Eldath are happy to preside over peaceful negotiations and to certify treaties, but they can't force others to engage in harmony.

--- Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide (2015)

I don’t talk about Eldath as much, although I do have one character concept for a semi-feral peace cleric of hers with amnesia. She’s a bit of a tricky fit for an adventurer’s life, given that many of her followers are pacifists, which … is a lot of work to make work in a D&D game. She’s maybe a goddess that you might think would work better for NPCs than player characters. But. I adore her. And the reasons for this are somewhat linked to my love of gothic horror.

‘Eldath is a goddess of comfort, healing, and calm’. ‘Her blessed waters heal the sick, cure madness, and comfort the dying’. ‘Many of those who favor Eldath are […] people who are troubled by violence they have witnessed or experienced’.

Eldath is a goddess of recovery. She’s not just untouched peace and pacifism, she’s a goddess of those who need peace because they’ve known violence. And I love that it’s specifically noted that her waters cure madness. Eldath is the goddess of those whose bodies and minds have been splintered and damaged by what they’ve experienced, and who now need a place of sanctuary and comfort and peace to recover. And not … not hospitals. Not places where the goal is to get people back up and back out and doing things again. She’s a goddess of nature and glades and places of ‘quiet reflection’, where people can be left to their thoughts. It’s not about healing you to get you back in the fight. Eldath makes places where people can rest. Can be at peace.

Which is, in so many ways, contrary to so many of the mechanics and even narrative needs of D&D. The whole point of healing in D&D is to keep people up and in the fight. Adventure, not rest, is the whole raison d’être of the game. But when you think of how many player characters are deeply traumatised. When you think of how many backstories involve straight up horror.

I feel like it’s not much of a stretch to imagine Eldath as a goddess who’s been very important to a character. Maybe you’re fit and well now, maybe you’re able to be out and about, maybe you’ve recovered enough to fight for yourself and others. But you needed time first. You needed peace. And you believe that other people need peace too, and you want to be able to help them find it. You want to keep … to keep places alive, safe, where someone can go to piece themselves back together. For however long that process might take, even if it’s forever. Maybe you can’t be a full pacifist yourself anymore, maybe you do believe that some fights need to be fought, but you also believe that there needs to be somewhere people can go where violence will not touch them. Where they can be safe. Where there can be peace.

So you guard the waters. So you love and long for the waters. So you help find the broken people, and you help guide them to the waters. You hold fast to the memory of Eldath, the Quiet One, and even if you have sacrificed your place beneath her gentle aegis for the moment, you still do your best to ensure that there can always be, will always be, a place of peace for those who need it.

She’s … She’s a good goddess for a peace cleric or a redemption paladin, definitely. But also just for anyone who at some point in their lives needed somewhere to put their shattered pieces back together. A sanctuary, a quiet lake, a place to wash the blood from their hands and wait for the shaking to stop. A calm hand on their shoulder while they grieve for everything they have seen and done and become.

Eldath. Eldath is such a good goddess. I love her. She’s such a good thing to have out there in the world. The goddess of still places and calm waters. The place someone can go to lay down their weapons and curl over and cry, a balm of stillness to soften the raw edges of the wounds.

She’s not the most logical choice for an adventurer, perhaps. But she is a balm for a wounded soul, and a place of rest for even a bright one, and so I’m very glad that she’s out there.

[arcanegifs]

rewatch the show yall. it gets even better if you do.

[mbirnsings-71]

Sigh. I may be rotating The Rivendell siblings in my head just a bit.

[zsbrainrot]

Happy Buddy Daddies Friday! This week you guys get a fic AND a drawing of Kazurei’s first meeting (based on the First Drama CD)

[smartie-arties]

Do YOU 🫵 like AUs? Do you like Dadgil? Do you wanna know about the lady in red from DMC 4?

Then please take a look at this little fic I'm making called infinity in the palm of your hand! It's about a timeline where Vergil stays with the lady in red instead of leaving her :3

[lacnunga]

Seems that it's a controversial opinion these days that, if you want your book to be good, there should be a Central Theme and Concept.

[aritany]

Can I ask what went wrong with your first agent? A lot of debut authors have been leaving their agents and I'm eyeballing the pub industry so hard rn

ultimately, she was the right agent for dead girls don’t say sorry, but not the right fit for… everything else i write.

[magpiesbones]

I STILL think about Paper Girls honestly. That series rocked. Believable teenage girls who were also INCREDIBLY fucked up and time shenanigans. It’s been too long since I read it for me to really analyze it but I SHOULD reread it.

[not-poignant]

I looked up "Love So Pure" after that ask and I've been binging it the last few hours instead of sleeping. I haven't laughed this hard in so long. I love Daeshik and the art and really all the characters. Thank you for telling us about it, I'm having such a good time.

IT'S SO FUCKING GOOD

(PLEASE READ PERFECT BUDDY / XXX BUDDY AS WELL IT HAS GENUINE LAUGH OUT LOUD MOMENTS)

dsalkjfasd you're gonna make me reread Love So Pure and I'm not mad AT ALL

Honestly my favourite m/m romances over the past two years have all been in webtoons. I feel like I've ascended lmao

[curedeity]

God help me stop writing and publishing beyblade fanfics for the rest of the year

[honourablejester]

I’m not done with the D&D deities, but I thought I’d take a little sidetrack to a Pathfinder deity that I deeply enjoy.

Pathfinder Deity Spotlight: Black Butterfly

The Silence Between flutters among and between the stars, representing distance, silence, and space. Often called Desna’s Shadow, the Black Butterfly is sometimes believed to be an aspect of Desna that has broken off and taken on its own life; her interest in distance and space certainly reflects Desna’s love of travel. The Black Butterfly finds the silence of the sea of stars useful for introspection and learning about oneself. Those who follow her take opportunities when they can to sit in silent meditation, in zones of silence and darkness when possible. Travel across large distances offers plenty to think about and contemplate, and the Black Butterfly encourages such journeys. She hates all evil, but she truly despises the powerful beings of evil that populate the Dark Tapestry, and her followers are expected to fight these beings and their followers without mercy.

The Silence Between manifests as the silhouette of a woman with butterfly wings, and white hair and eyes. Her wings contain a shadow—or reflection—of all of the Dark Tapestry and everything within it. Parted lovers, the isolated, the introverted, those who have sworn vows of silence or don’t communicate verbally, stargazers, explorers, and the melancholy are all found among the followers of the Black Butterfly.

--- Lost Omens: Gods and Magic (2020)

Technically speaking, the Black Butterfly is an Empyreal Lord, a demigod, rather than a main deity. She is linked to Desna, one of the primary deities, and a deity I do also love in her own right. Desna is the Song of the Spheres, an ancient goddess who created the night sky, a goddess of dreams, travel, stars and songs. I do love her as well.

But. I like the quiet of her smaller, darker reflection? I love the Black Butterfly’s emphasis on silence, on peace, on contemplation. Those long watches of the night where you come to terms with yourself and the world around you. If you’ve ever sat out on the back wall of your yard at night and just looked up at the sky and listened to the quiet? That’s her. If you like to go walking or driving at night just to see the world when it’s quiet, to enjoy your own company? That’s her too. Though cars aren’t a thing on Golarion, of course. But. A similar idea. Travel with yourself, with your thoughts, travel with the silence inside yourself. If you want a bit more of a contemplative, inward-facing experience, not Irori’s pursuit of perfection but something … quieter. More accepting. Then worship of the Black Butterfly might be for you.

On the flipside, however, is her antipathy for the beings of the Dark Tapestry. Because. The Dark Tapestry itself is essentially the void between the stars. And the beings that inhabit it are the Outer Gods. AKA the Lovecraftian gods. Because Pathfinder has those. By name. Nyarlathotep and Yog-Sothoth included. And the interesting thing is, I can’t find a source for it, but I’ve seen people discussing a theory that Desna, Black Butterfly’s parent deity, might be an Outer God, just a friendlier one. But. That aside. The Black Butterfly, this quiet, contemplative deity, this patron of parted lovers and stargazers and the melancholy, is also a driving part of the fight against Lovecraftian horrors.

And it makes sense. She’s the goddess of space, a flitting figure among the sea of stars, and the Dark Tapestry is the very fabric of space, and it’s corrupted. Or, at least, owned. By the cold, cruel forces of the Outer Gods. So it makes sense that she wants to reclaim it, or to make space among it, to make it so that at least some travellers may venture there without doom.

But it kind of means …

Do you want to play the quiet, mysterious traveller who shows up in a town afflicted by dark forces, the crawling cults of the dark things between the stars, to give their aid to people beset by horrors, and then vanish again, a drifter travelling ever onwards towards the next town or village where their services might be needed? Because that is what is asked of a worshipper of the Black Butterfly. To travel. To embrace silence. To know oneself. And to fight the strange horrors of the darkness between the stars. So. If that is an archetype you might want to play to? Here is your goddess.

I love her quite a lot. She’s calm, and quiet, and gentle, and she lets you play with the cool end of Lovecraftian fantasy horror. Heh.

[prosk8r]

not to be dramatic but if anyone wants to go insane about tracing adaptational differences in literally ANY given media PLEASE hmu

(I don't have to know it I literally just think the way things translate into different forms and the decisions/limitations inherent to different media forms is super super neat)

[springtrapsspringlockedbussy]

hey for that ask meme can you do 4, 6, 9, 14 for nolan & 1, 12, 21 for springtrap 🤔

i'll go in the order provided by anon:

the Reacher series of novels did inspire my characterization of Nolan so i think it's an incredibly safe bet to just fling him inside one of those detached novellas. tbh considering how he's written, i think he'd be slower than the pace of the novel but still end up pulling through at the cost of you know. getting shot to shit-

honestly. probably his ideals. im incredibly overprotective of my loved ones and regularly tell them not to worry about me so i know that i can deeply relate to nolan's plight of self-sacrificial. ofc it's not to the extent nolan has but it's definitely an attribute that makes writing him feel very personal when it comes to his relationships with characters

i uh. i don't think so- ofc id be illusioned by his rabbit husband im only human, but considering just how cold and reserved he can be, we'd probably just be acquaintances so i don't think id gell very well with him

it genuinely kinda depends on where the timeline is so i'll just wing it and say this: the man has a fashion aesthetic comparable to bass pro shop. his clothes are always muted colors with no branding, he only wears flannels and jackets, jeans and boots. the man is screaming 'these clothes are from a thrift shop but idgaf' because he will always prioritize if it regulates his temperature and if it doesn't constrict his movements.

okay so. i'll keep it brief for brevity's sake- i just always thought he was cute! my favorite color is sage green and my favorite animal has always been rabbits so it's kind of a shoo-in, but i always found springtrap awfully endearing. there just isn't much else to say than that, sorry!

when it comes to springtrap: he's illusioned by fire but deeply afraid of it. this isn't trauma from fazbear frights burning down, he's just. afraid of it but loves it at the same time. he gets squeamish around candles yet loves staring at the wick slowly sinking and likes the feeling of extinguishing the flame with his fingertips- he's scared but he can't help but be captivated by it

im gonna ignore the 'don't like' prompt because even i wouldn't be able to give you a straight answer, but- definitely writing him as a sort of housewife figure. it's dumb but since he isn't exactly capable of living a normal life, instead integrating him into a stay-at-home housewife is so entertaining to consider. wearing aprons, taking up gardening and baking, seeing you come home and gently hugging you before asking if you'd like him to make you anything. it's simple! but it's good.

[undead-moth]

Btw these are the people the current market is catering to. These are the people determining which books get published right now.

Do they know that reading is not mandatory? Nobody is forcing them to read?

[eclipsecrowned]

Old nb trying not to yell at clouds abt trying to use a coupon and finding everything applicable is not to her liking.

[youwouldtreatittenderly]

Of all the things I could have expected from 2025, my hyperfixation with the shadowhunter books having a renaissance was not it.