High Elven Pantheon

The High Elven Pantheon, known to the Atarlie as the Divine Ancestors or the Elysian Princes are the objects of worship of the Atarlie State culture, a polytheistic belief system centered around an progenitor deity and a retinue of divine cousins, some descended from her and others ascended from mortal elves. The elven matron goddess, Pyria Valpetor, is held to be both the mother of many of these deities and the progenitor of the elven species - in common understanding the Atarlie specifically, who hold that all other elves are simply distaff cousins.

While many public holidays center Pyria's worship, most Elves take actual patronage from one specific diety within the pantheon, with the public worship of any of these being nominally legal within the Atarlie Empire - there is no unified church as compared to the contrasting Bastonian Pantheon. This includes the evil deities on the Pantheon, though most of their public worshippers are basically petitioning for mercy rather than for favour.

The collective belief among followers of deities within the pantheon is that all elves who die go to Elysium, with only the most wicked among them being turned away from the Cradle of the Wise and instead swallowed up by the Abyss.

Pantheon at a Glance

Dieties of the Bastonian Pantheon

Name	Portfolio	Worshippers	Domains	Alignment
Pyria Valeptor	Families, Divinity, Fortune	Universal, Mothers of Large Families	Community, Protection, Sun, Weather	TN
Rophalin Imperitor	Royalty, Rulership, Authority, The Empire	Officials (Military and Civil), Clerks, Historians	Glory, Law, Nobility, Protection	LN
Feno Ilirel	Medicine, Alchemy, Wellbeing, Births	Doctors, Healers, Veterinarians, the Ill	Good, Healing, Plant, Magic	NG
Navarre Yesbella	Liberation, Welfare	The Poor, Some Magistrates, Philathropists, Some Thieves	Community, Liberation, Luck, Protection	CG
Merellien Chaebalar	Justice and Just Causes	Many Magistrates, Jailors, Paladins	Healing, Law, Protection, War	LG
Camus Inakas	Magic, Scholarship, Exploration, Discovery	Mages, Philosophers, Scholars, Adventurers	Artifice, Knowledge, Magic, Rune	CN
Lysanthir Lugolor	Death, Final Judgement, Passing of Seasons and the Ending of Days	Mortuaries, Necromancers, Assassins, Some Magistrates	Darkness, Death, Erosion, Repose	LE
Shalaevar Shamaris	Disease, Disasters, Crises	Assassins, Bandits, the Ill, Some Doctors	Destruction, Evil, Ruins, Vermin	NE
Hycis Uriris	Rebellion, Arcane Disasters, Wild Portals	Some Mages, Philosophers, Rebels	Air, Chaos, Earth, Fire, Water	CE
Immarra Hyacinth	Beauty, The Arts, Love	Artists, Lovers, Aristocrats	Charm, Glory, Good, Plant	CG

Origins

"Even the oldest of gods knows not how the beginning of the beginnings began."

- Attributed to Anghara

This article discusses the setting from a perspective fundamentally outside it and shouldn't be considered necessarily-true knowledge as understood by the characters inside the setting.

While the worship and veneration given by the elves makes these figures true deities, in actual fact all of them are simply a princely family of elves who had lead the recolonization of Wisteria from Elysium during the Springtime of the Gods. In the many centuries since that age, however, this fact has now largely been eclipsed by other topics in Elvish education, and the Elysian Princes are now thought of as a sort of forerunner line, now extinct in the mortal world, to mainstream elvendom. It remains fashionable among the Atarlie upper class to maintain expensive family genealogies that show how and where they are connected to the Divine Ancestors, but even in these families, the attitude that one is "descended from the gods" in any way that confers special authority is exceedingly rare.