ENTITIES OF NOTE - GOEDERAN
Goederan is perhaps the most mysterious of the Old Faith Gods. Among her faithful, she is known primarily for three things.
The first is her supreme mastery of the Cosmos. Her power certainly flirts with the Blue Wind, but the Druid claim it is different; greater. Where Astromancers divine portents and call down lightning and meteors in the heat of battle, Goederan is the one who places the stars and constellations. She is the one who girdles planets in lunar belts and flits between the cosmic spheres to this or that planet, but always to Malleus does she return and so it is surmised there she was born. Even before the Old Ones arrived, the everwinter of the world did not bother her. Space was cold, after all, and she was well equipped to deal with it in a way much of life on Mallus was not, leading some to speculate Goederan was from the frozen planet of Obscuria.
The second of her well known traits is her relation to the other gods and some of the spirits of the loose Pantheon. While the question of their sire has many proposed answered, Goederan is unanimously agreed to be the Mother of the Gods, with Ishernos being her favored child and Medhe the Stormlord being her most self-same; a fellow Astromancer, though not as grand as his mother.
Finally, she is known for her distance. Unlike her children, who engage more readily and directly with mortals, Goederan prefers to observer life from afar, within the confines of the heavens. If one is lucky, say the Druids, one might glimpse her shooting across the sky in her silver chariot. Rarer still is to be acknowledged and blessed by her, as Goederan's concerns are cosmological and she finds it hard to relate to individual mortal beings.
The Disputed Truths of the Goddess of the Cosmos
Despite the general tendency for the Old Faith and it's followers to be dismissed, some scholars who pay them even half a genuine mind have noted the accord between how Goederan is described and how the Elven Lorekeepers describe the Old Ones: Silvered Chariots racing across the heavens.
For a Religion chiefly concerned with earthly matters, it is odd that a deity of the Cosmos would feature and she indeed stands out among the gods and spirits. Similar to the Old Ones, described as mysterious, Goederan is described as distant and unrelatable , more interested in the stars than the beings who live beneath them, even as she patrons the planet.
The Truthsayers claim that the Godlike Old Ones tutored them on Albion and that the ancient stones raised there keep the darkness of Chaos at bay. The truthsayers are druids, their culture centered around nature; so are the Old Faither Keepers, venerators of natural forces. Perhaps it is not a far stretch to claim that Goederan was an Old One, teaching the primitive tribes of men just as that mysterious race did. Perhaps she was even a scout for the Old Ones, surveying the planet and flitting off to report her findings. Perhaps Goederan was a Herald of things to come in those ancient days...
Notably, however, the Old Ones are explicitly absent in Belthani Druids tellings of their own lore and they seem to be unaware of the many coincidences between her and the world-shapers. While the Druids agree their Goddess is ageless, they pay it no more mind that and have no clear idea of the exact age of the Lady of the Stars. According to some of the most ancient dragons, roused from their slumber by insistent lorekeepers willing to risk life, limb and trade treasures for half-remembered truths, the Silver Chariot of Goederan has been seen since the Primeval age and she has a place among draconic culture.
But the Dragons make no indication of her being an Old One. They maintain, quite stubbornly, that Goederan's home was every planet orbiting the sun. Mallus was merely the sight of her nest, where Medhe (first patron of Dragon Ogres), Cailldhe (patron of Behemoths), and Naidhe (patron of the Marnocks) were born. The dragons snidely boast that they kept no patrons, even if they still did accord respect to Goederan.
However, her mastery of the ten planets of Soll would be challenged with the arrival of the Old Ones. Goederan's Chariot was seen, they say, gleaming the same silver as the Newcomer's ships. She disappeared into the firmament and what happened beyond then no dragon is sure of. However most lean towards her being slain, captured, run off, or otherwise removed from the picture.
And in her place, a son, the Damner Ishernos.
The dragons sneer there is no Goederan anymore, not truthfully. Perhaps an impotent spirit kept alive by Men of the Old Faith and Jade Order, but nothing like the primeval age. Even her children are dead, slain by the forces of Chaos and rendered down to spirits that share the name of the gods, but not their power. Only Ishtaran, perhaps, survives and he is the Shame of the Stars.
