Once, very long ago, a traveler walked a lonely road, lost and afraid. Though the path seemed to stretch on forever, they could not say where it took them, nor were they entirely certain of where they hoped it might go. All they knew was that they could not stay where they had begun.

They had set out with purpose, but the hardships they faced had worn their spirit down, leaving them weary and alone. As the night grew darker still, the traveler ruminated on the trials of the world, their own and those of others, and despair settled around their shoulders like the heaviest of mantles.

As they climbed a tall and wooded hill, each strained step slower than the last, they gradually became aware of a gentle sound: shh, shh, shh. The weary traveler peered ahead, unable to make out anything in the feeble starlight, and gripped their walking staff tighter in case of trouble.

A small, white butterfly ghosted across the path before them and flitted up over a fallen menhir they hadn’t yet noticed in the dark. A delicate tune floated back in its wake. Their fear assuaged and their exhaustion temporarily muted by curiosity, the traveler clambered over the stone slab and followed the butterfly’s path to the top of the hill.

They didn’t expect the scene that awaited as they emerged from the trees. Several rough stone pillars, arrayed in what might once have been a circle, ringed the summit of the grassy hill. Nestled against the biggest stood a wide, flat stone platform covered in many colors of faded threadbare cloth that were surely vibrant long ago. Small rock cairns, candles burnt to their wicks’ ends, a bedraggled feather, and a few other small tokens littered the rock’s surface.

It might have looked forlorn and abandoned, save for the three women merrily tending to it. One, a Tian woman with pale skin and short, dark hair, was setting out fresh candles, the flame reflected in her dark eyes. The second, a Varisian woman with warm brown skin and multicolored ribbons threaded through her long, wavy hair, was the source of the tune that echoed into the trees; she continued to hum cheerfully she painted the stone pillar with delicate designs. The third figure, a Garundi woman with skin nearly as dark as the night around them, danced as she swept the ground around the shrine, the beads in her cloud of black hair like miniature sisters of the stars. Shh, shh, shh, the broom whispered to the stones.

The third woman—clearly a priestess of Desna—spotted their guest first as the ghostly butterfly alit on a nearby cairn. “Welcome, traveler,” she called with a smile, her warm voice gentle as she set the broom aside.

The first woman—surely a priestess of Sarenrae—rekindled a dwindling log with a gesture. “You look cold,” she said, her voice strong and clear. “Come, share our fire.”

The second woman—undoubtedly a priestess of Shelyn—ceased her song and beckoned the traveler closer. “You are welcome among us.”

The traveler, overwhelmed at their kind and unexpected greeting, assented with quiet thanks, sitting near the now-blazing campfire and accepting a warm mug of tea from Shelyn’s acolyte.

“You look troubled, friend,” said Sarenrae’s priestess as she sat down across from the traveler.

The traveler looked into their tea for a long moment before meeting her gaze. “The road has been long, and uncertain,” they said, and soon found themself telling the women all about their struggles, from the personal queries of identity and belonging to the endless communal work toward justice and liberation.

“I’m afraid I’m tired, and lost,” they admitted. “I see a brighter future, but I don’t know how to get there. It’s hard not to feel hopeless, and alone. Though I guess I’m less so, at the moment.”

Desna’s acolyte smiled again, looking to her companions. “We are always ready for unexpected friends,” she said, and the others nodded. “And as for being lost or unsure, the only step in any journey that matters is the next one.”

“The dawn brings new light,” Sarenrae’s acolyte added. “You may find you see more clearly after rest. There will always be good causes to fight for, but we cannot do so alone and weary. Even the boldest among us must seek rest and community to nourish our spirits.”

“I find creation helps,” offered Shelyn’s acolyte, gesturing to the paintbrush now tucked behind her ear. “Love and beauty belong to all, and help to keep hope alive in each other when we might otherwise falter.”

“But everything has changed!” cried the traveler. “So many are suffering, and nothing is as I expected it to be. How are we supposed to cope with the uncertainty?”

“Change is unavoidable,” said the priestess of Sarenrae. “But it brings new opportunities to right old wrongs. We must face change head-on. Together, we can find courage.”

“Change is beautiful,” said the priestess of Shelyn. “Instead of fearing it, we can learn to dance with it.”

“Change is the only way we see new horizons,” agreed the priestess of Desna, smiling at her companions and taking their hands in hers. “But as the union of the Radiant Prism has shown us, even in the face of change, some things endure.”

As the women joined hands, the traveler saw a new scene before them. Instead of a dark hilltop, there was a peaceful woodland glade with a small creek warmed by afternoon sunlight. Three women rested together in the soft grass, but they were not the acolytes—or had they been the acolytes all along? Two of the women now had wings, one the thin veined membranes of a butterfly, the other the powerful feathers of an angelic raptor, her hair now shining gold as if it contained the sun’s own light. The third woman was crowned in flowers. She sang softly, a comforting ballad of loves’ triumphs, her long hair now threaded with all the colors of the rainbow.

Desna, Sarenrae, and Shelyn together are worshiped as the Radiant Prism. Illustration by Klaher Baklaher

The traveler slept then, the cares of the road eased, for a while. When they awoke on the hilltop, the women were gone, but they no longer felt quite so alone. The embers still glowed in the fire, and a wren’s morning song filled the air. Above them, starlight twinkled in the friendly dawn sky.

About the Author

Simone D. Sallé (she/they) is a senior editor at Paizo. Her writing credits include the Paizo blog’s Zoetrope Logs, Pathfinder Howl of the Wild, Starfinder Bounty #12: Under Pressure, and more. She can often be found exploring divine woodland glades in the Pacific Northwest with her spouse and dog.

About the Windsong Testaments

On the northern reaches of Varisia’s Lost Coast stands Windsong Abbey, a forum for interfaith discussion tended by priests of nearly twenty faiths and led by a legacy of Masked Abbesses. At the dawn of the Age of Lost Omens, Windsong Abbey suffered as its faithful fought and fled, but today it has begun to recover. A new Masked Abbess guides a new flock within, and the Windsong Testaments—parables about the gods themselves—are once again being recorded within the abbey’s walls. Some of these Testaments are presented here as Golarion’s myths and fables. Some parts may be true. Other parts are certainly false. Which ones are which is left to the faithful to decide.

In the Trophy Room of Shyka the Many, among the infinite treasures that the Eldest has plucked from time, there sits a plinth of banded bone and gold.

Upon this plinth is a stone of red agate veined with spreading black. It resembles a large baroque pearl, but it is more precious than any oyster’s prize, for this is the heartstone of the lich-king Darocath.

It sits on the plinth by Darocath’s own will, and it commemorates how Shyka the Many defeated the lich without striking a single blow.

This is how it was done:

Illustration by Igor Grechanyi. For more information on Shyka and the Eldest, Lost Omens: Gods & Magic!

Long, long ago, in a small and forgotten corner of the Immortal Principality of Ustalav, there lived a girl named Krisalla. She was a child of uncommon patience, and this drew Shyka to her, for the Eldest knew the value of a mortal who could let time unspool properly.

One evening, as the brief summer moths were flying thick through the twilight, the Eldest appeared before the child. “Do you wish to touch your hand to destiny?” they asked.

Krisalla looked up at the blue-gowned figure, who appeared to her an ageless woman with light brown skin and a silver-capped braid, at once human and unearthly. “How?”

“You will lay low a sorcerer of terrible power, an unliving monstrosity who will come to grip all Ulcazar in his bony fist. You will end his reign of cruelty and will become a hero to those who survive to remember your name. But this will not come without cost.”

“What cost?” Krisalla asked, for she was a child of Ustalav and knew the grim ways of its curses.

“One life,” Shyka answered. “Not yours.”

“I accept,” Krisalla said.

From a hidden sheath in their sleeve, Shyka drew out a scroll bound by a white ribbon figured with cracked hourglasses. This scroll came from Shyka’s Archives, where the records of the future were penned in the past. They held it out to Krisalla, and as the girl took it from Shyka’s slender fingers, the Eldest flickered and shifted to an androgynous youth in the same garb, but now with a different symbol at the neck.

Krisalla showed no surprise at this, for why should one be surprised by the transformations of a god? “What shall I do with the scroll?”

“Read it if you like,” Shyka said, “though most mortals are happier without knowing their futures. Otherwise, hold it safe. When the time to do more comes, you will know.”

Then the Eldest was gone, and Krisalla was alone.

Decades passed. The girl became a woman, married, had three daughters of her own. Her husband fell ill and died; her children became mothers in turn.

And in this time, at first from afar, a cold and withered shadow began to stretch across Ulcazar. Bones and wraiths rose up from the dark places in the mountains, and they gathered into an army of the hateful dead. Rumors of the lich-king at their head grew ever closer and more urgent, until finally Krisalla, now an old woman, knew that the day for Shyka’s gift had come.

She opened the scroll. With fearful eyes and trembling hands, she read what Shyka had written, long ago or long before. Then she rolled it up again, and closed her eyes over her tears, and sent for her youngest daughter.

“You must flee Ulcazar at once,” Krisalla told her daughter, “or it will mean your life. The sorcerer-lich Darocath is coming, and it is written by a god that he will kill you in Ulcazar. Therefore, you must go to Amaans with all haste, because if you stay here, you will surely die.”

“Yes, mother,” her daughter said, and fled.

But neither mother nor daughter knew that Darocath had already come to Ulcazar. The lich’s armies held the border village of Borsov, and there they caught Krisalla’s daughter. Darocath’s creatures killed her, but not before their master heard of the woman who had tried to flee Ulcazar to escape a god’s prophecy.

Struck by curiosity, Darocath ordered his forces to Krisalla’s village, where they seized the old woman. From her he took the story and the scroll, and then he left her weeping with her family as he swept off to study the Eldest’s message. He scanned impatiently past the tale of Krisalla’s life, and he saw the words written for him:

“You will come to the House of Eternity,” it said, “and you will die.”

Darocath laughed, amused as he had not been in centuries, as he read the instructions Shyka had given him for finding his way in. “I am dead,” the lich said to his lieutenants, “and I do not fear time’s watcher.”

Indeed, for years piled upon years, Darocath had sought a way into the House of Eternity, for it was the manipulation of time and the mysteries of the future that had intrigued the lich beyond his mortal span. Now all those secrets had been given to him freely, and he would not be intimidated away from using that key.

Abandoning his army, Darocath ventured through a breach into the First World, and then followed the tangled and treacherous path that Shyka had set for him to the House of Eternity.

The Eldest met him there. “Lich.”

“Many.” Darocath studied Shyka with the same half-forgotten savor of curiosity. The lich had trained his sight to see across a certain span of time, and so he saw Shyka as a figure blurred across multiple faces and heights. “You invited me here.”

“To die,” Shyka agreed. “Would you like to visit the Archives?”

“What will you allow me to read?” Darocath asked. He had no intention of obeying the Eldest’s restrictions, but he was curious.

“Everything,” Shyka said. “I will let you walk the Archives as I do.”

Suspicious but intrigued, the lich climbed the mountain stairs after the Eldest, circling around the castle’s crumbling base until they came at last to the gaping maw of its entrance, pitted with rusting spikes and shards of age-discolored wood. Inside, the House of Eternity was in equal disrepair, all dust and cobwebs and stale gray gloom.

Yet though the Archives’s books sagged on shelves of mold-spotted wood and its scrolls were brittle and yellowed by time, its grandeur awed Darocath. The lich scarcely glanced at the scholars’ books; it was Shyka’s writings he had come for. “You will let me read these?”

“Yes,” the Eldest said.

So Darocath went into the Archives.

For a year and a day he absorbed himself in the Eldest’s journals of the future, while in the world outside, his army collapsed from neglect and infighting, and the spell-wards of his tower crumbled for want of tending. The lich forgot his own experiments into manipulating the strands of time, for why should he labor so arduously to uncover the secrets that were already laid out for him?

All that the lich wanted to know was his. Any question he could conceive of was answered and had been answered before ever he imagined it. In the Archives of Shyka the Many, he saw the map of time laid bare of its mysteries, and so Darocath came to realize a terrible thing.

To live this way, in all moments at once, was to exist without curiosity. It was to realize that all his efforts at mastering his own fate came to a nullity, and that the illusions of choice and control were just that, and that even he, a creature of unfathomable brilliance and magic, could not escape the slow snares of fate.

All was known, and all was written, and nothing was left to wonder.

The lich sat with this truth in silence and turned it over in his mind for a day and a night. Darocath could see no flaw in his conclusion. The answers were written in the Archives; the outcome was foreordained.

And so he plucked out the stone that held his unliving heart, and placed it on a plinth in surrender, and let himself collapse into dust and despair.

And in a dusty corner of the Archives, on a page buried in an unremarkable book that the mighty lich had never thought to open, the lettering changed minutely. But only minutely. Because, in Darocath’s story, the ending did not change.

About the Author

Liane Merciel is the author of the Pathfinder Tales novels Nightglass, Nightblade, and Hellknight, and a contributor to other books including Nidal: Land of Shadows, Faiths of Golarion, and the Lost Omens World Guide. She has also written for Dungeons & Dragons, Warhammer: Age of Sigmar, and Bioware’s Dragon Age franchise. She lives in Philadelphia with her husband, two dogs, and an adventure toddler who is extremely into Spider-Man.

About the Windsong Testaments

On the northern reaches of Varisia’s Lost Coast stands Windsong Abbey, a forum for interfaith discussion tended by priests of nearly twenty faiths and led by a legacy of Masked Abbesses. At the dawn of the Age of Lost Omens, Windsong Abbey suffered as its faithful fought and fled, but today it has begun to recover. A new Masked Abbess guides a new flock within, and the Windsong Testaments—parables about the gods themselves—are once again being recorded within the abbey’s walls. Some of these Testaments are presented here as Golarion’s myths and fables. Some parts may be true. Other parts are certainly false. Which ones are which is left to the faithful to decide.

It took less than a day for the first seven worlds to end.

Before these seven planetary deaths, before the Material Plane began its storied journey through the Ages, the gods had not conceived that one of their own would wreak such ruin. The mortal realm, after all, was intended to be a place for the faithful of all divinities to learn and grow. Why, then, would a deity seek to destroy what was meant to be for all? In those early times before days were days, it could be said that even the gods were naive.

The glories and horrors of the outer sphere had long since coalesced into the nine outer planes after Pharasma’s First Walk. The Inner Sphere remained empty of mortal life for some time, a blank slate that increasingly drew the curiosity of countless divine imaginations. The raising of the First World was a wise choice, for it allowed the gods to practice the complexities of creation, to rework and rewrite, and to finally settle on a method for the crafting of the Myriad on the Material Plane.

When they turned to the dark universe at the heart of the Inner Sphere, there were already inhabitants—entities left over from other realities, but they were few and far between and seemed content to slumber. The gods kept them in mind as they turned their attention to the Work and were ready to react should these Outer Gods take note of their creations.

The Speakers of the Depths could hardly be concerned with aiding the work, but neither did they oppose the act of bringing order from chaos within the Inner Sphere, and in such act, they provided what aid they could. Desna lit the stars, so that their light could reach the skies of the Myriad. Sarenrae gave life to the suns of those countless worlds where creation would begin. Ihys and Asmodeus, not yet bickering brothers, set to work creating the first mortal frames. Achaekek stood sentinel at the edge of the Spire, an impartial arbiter to oversee reality’s spread. And the Bound Prince waited in the darkest place to welcome mortal death into the world.

And when all was set in place, Pharasma touched the source of the River of Souls and began the flow of mortal life into all worlds. Rovagug, the Rough Beast, who had busied himself with the eternal task of burrowing through the Outer Rifts, took note. He crawled from the rifts, scaled the Spire, and leapt from its edge to hurtle across the Silver Sea. He cracked the Elemental Shell and invaded the Material Plane and gloried in the banquet before him. He consumed seven worlds before they saw their first sunsets but found the food flavorless. Worlds without names... worlds without histories... worlds without anything to lose were unsatisfying to the Rough Beast, and he did not fight hard when the gods, aghast at the destructive assault, drove him back to the Outer Rifts. Desna raised Sevenfold Cynosure as a memorial to the first seven worlds destroyed, and the gods vowed upon its steps that, should the Rough Beast return, so too would they return to face him again.

Much took place during that first age—the Age of Creation. New gods like Calistria and Dou-Bral, Torag and Gorum, or Dahak and Apsu rose and began the creation of their own domains. Life grew and evolved within the Material Plane, and in time, so did sapience. At first, the most intelligent of life consisted either of intrusions from elsewhere, such as the visitations of the xiomorns upon many worlds, or the spread of alghollthu through the darkened seas they had always ruled. But in time, mortals themselves discovered faith and free will, and sapience became the spark that would burn the Age of Creation to ash.

It was this spark that compelled Asmodeus to betray his brother Ihys, who had encouraged the flow of free will through these hungry mortal minds. War spread as the rift between Asmoedus and Ihys grew, and the first true conflict amid the gods saw death and devastation on a scale the Great Beyond had never endured. Asmodeus’s murder of Ihys would bring the war to an end, but not in a way any could predict, for that final act would have repercussions. It was this betrayal that drew Rovagug’s attention back to reality as well. As the Great Beyond reeled from war, Rovagug slipped unseen back into the Material Plane and fed upon the world upon which Asmodeus had first lured and then slain Ihys. The Rough Beast reveled in the flavor of a planet that died screaming, its inhabitants agonizing at their apocalypse, and so from world to world did Rovagug move, feeding and destroying with impunity.

illustration by Igor Grechanyi

In these final eons of the Age of Creation, the gods suffered. Groetus rose above the Boneyard for the first time. Achaekek went mad and consumed his own impartiality to become little more than a mindless beast for many eons to follow. The Bound Prince gnawed upon the despairing souls from those planetary apocalypses and became the First Horseman. And Rovagug continued to feed, slouching from world to world and leaving cataclysms in his wake. As world after world died, devastation undid what the gods had wrought. It was Sarenrae who finally took note, who called upon the gods to honor their ancient vow, who begged them to join her again on the steps of Sevenfold Cynosure. Many, but not all, responded, but at the final moment, even Asmodeus returned, perhaps hopeful to make amends for his act, or perhaps seeing yet another opportunity for personal gain.

A new alliance was born that day as Rovagug turned his attention toward three different worlds—Androffa, Golarion, Earth—and as his actions began devastations therein, the gods began the work that would end the Age of Creation. Wily Calistria distracted Rovagug from his feast, sparing the three worlds and focusing his gaze around the least of them—Golarion, a younger world than its two imperiled sisters. Torag and Gorum toiled together under Pharasma’s guidance within Golarion to craft the Dead Vault, a demiplane metaphysically nested within that could hold the Rough Beast. Abadar provided the perfect key and lock to hold the prison shut, a key so cunning in construction that only Asmodeus could turn it. Dou-Bral placed the Star Towers around Golarion and poised to strike when the time was right. And when the Dead Vault was complete, Calistria lured Rovagug into the trap. There, he was ambushed by Sarenrae and Desna, Apsu and Dahak, Erastil and Gozreh, and many more who would fall in battle to Rovagug’s jaws and be forgotten forever. But as Rovagug stepped fully into the trap, Sarenrae cut open the world and dealt Rovagug a crippling blow, sending the Rough Beast hurtling into the Dead Vault. Dou-Bral woke the Star Towers, and they lanced into the world, stitching Golarion shut and piercing Rovagug within, stunning the rough beast long enough for Asmodeus to turn the key in the lock.

And with that, the young world of Golarion became the Cage. The Age of Creation ended, and the Ages that Followed began. And as long as the Cage continues to spin, as long as the Rough Beast remains within, may those Ages never again falter and die.

About the Author

James Jacobs is the Creative Director for Pathfinder. While he was there at the beginning of Golarion’s creation, many of the deities worshiped by that world’s heroes and villains had already existed for decades before. Goddesses and gods like Desna and Rovagug, Sarenrae and Abadar, Achaekek and Zon-Kuthon first established their faithful among PCs and NPCs alike in James’s home campaign in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. Sharing them with the world as deities of the Pathfinder setting, seeing players and creators come to love and hate them (and in some cases cosplay as them), has been a career highlight.

About the Windsong Testaments

On the northern reaches of Varisia’s Lost Coast stands Windsong Abbey, a forum for interfaith discussion tended by priests of nearly twenty faiths and led by a legacy of Masked Abbesses. At the dawn of the Age of Lost Omens, Windsong Abbey suffered as its faithful fought and fled, but today it has begun to recover. A new Masked Abbess guides a new flock within, and the Windsong Testaments—parables about the gods themselves—are once again being recorded within the abbey’s walls. Some of these Testaments are presented here as Golarion’s myths and fables. Some parts may be true. Other parts are certainly false. Which ones are which is left to the faithful to decide.

We can learn much from the wisdom of the divine, but we can learn as much from their actions. The truly faithful understand that not even the gods themselves are infallible, and that words and promises do not always suffice. Those among us who see no fault in the gods are worse than zealots, worse than puppets. They taint the very idea of faith with their blind devotion. When a god makes a mistake, the results can be disastrous if their faithful do not understand the error. If they take that error as gospel, they are doomed to repeat the error and compound upon it again and again. And in so doing make the initial misstep into something more. In the worst of cases, these repeated mistakes can transcend to become the new order, and not even the gods themselves can turn them back.

Iomedae knows this well, for she was, not so long ago, among those who worshiped the gods herself.

Before her Ascension, Iomedae worshiped Arazni, the herald of the god of humanity, Aroden. When Arazni was defeated during the Shining Crusade, Iomedae turned her faith to Aroden. That Iomedae herself chose the path of a paladin was an indication of the strength of her convictions, for Arazni did not particularly embody the strictures of law, nor did Aroden particularly promote acts of goodness. But Iomedae saw the devotion to tradition and honor in Arazni’s deeds and could sense the underlying kindness and generosity in Aroden’s acts even if he didn’t notice them himself.

Even after she ascended to divinity herself, she continued to serve as Aroden’s new herald, and when the god of humanity perished unexpectedly at the dawning of the Age of Lost Omens, Iomedae did not lose hope. In the decades to follow, Iomedae’s faith grew and she inherited Aroden’s mantle. And as her church grew, she spread her wisdom to those who would listen. She told her followers to avoid her faults. To watch and judge themselves when she would misstep, and to not take her errors as gospel. For even before Iomedae’s apotheosis, she had noted imperfections in the gods she venerated, and as a goddess herself she vowed to never encourage the same unwavering zeal. And as such, she commanded that those who would worship her learn not solely from her words, but from her actions.

First came her memorable clash with legendary Nakorshor’mond, a gluttonous monstrosity spawned and abandoned by Lamashtu. The glutton consumed members of her adventuring group, and Iomedae had to cut her companions free from otherwise eternal slumber from the fiend’s supernatural gullets.

Next was her defeat of the Pallid Sisters, a coven of Garundi witches who had been terrorizing the city of Senghor. Here, Iomedae found triumph without ever drawing her blade, achieving victory through the clever use of wordplay and diplomacy alone.

The last of these initial acts performed before the Shining Crusade was the defeat of Segruchen the Iron Gargoyle, who had proclaimed himself the King of the Barrowood. Iomedae’s griffon-mounted battle saw the so-called King metaphorically dethroned in mid-air.

It wasn’t long after the Iron Gargoyle’s fall that the Shining Crusade began, and Iomedae was at the forefront of the battle from the start. During the Second Battle of Encarthan, Iomedae’s legacy grew as she took command of a regiment of mortally wounded knights and held back a wave of wraiths long enough for reinforcements to arrive at dawn.

Illustration by Dallas Williams

Erum-Hel, the Lord of the Mohrgs, was her next great triumph during the crusade—Iomedae defeated him during the Battle of Three Sorrows. She wasn’t able to slay the powerful undead monster, but sent him whimpering back into the Darklands nonetheless, and in so doing struck a crippling blow against one of the Whispering Tyrant’s most notorious and feared generals.

Soon thereafter, the Whispering Tyrant struck back against Iomedae and shattered her magical sword. Yet Iomedae didn’t let this deter her, and she simply rebuilt it and continued the fight, for she knew that it was not her sword that gave her the power to stand against evil—it was only a tool in that pursuit.

A month after the Shining Crusade came to an end, Iomedae visited Absalom with several other veterans of the war. Her visit to the temple of Aroden drew more adoration for her own acts than for Aroden herself, but it was a month after she left that another miracle took place when her image appeared at the same shrine—an image that healed the needy and spurned the wicked… including one false priest of Aroden who had secretly conspired with the cult of Asmodeus to convert those of faltering faith.

Although the Shining Crusade had ended, many of those who had fought for Tar-Baphon remained behind. Since the war was over, Iomedae sought to redeem those who had lingered. Her greatest work during these days was the redemption of the graveknight known only as the Black Prince. With her forgiveness, he was able to repent for his evil, bringing an end to his undead state and allowing his soul to pass on for judgement.

Elsewhere in Ustalav, Iomedae heard of nine forlorn knights who had fallen from favor among the church during the crusade, only to go missing soon after their excommunication. She sought them out and freed them from the vampire-mage Basilov, using nine drops of her own blood as payment in ransom. She was forced to slay the vampire soon thereafter, but with the knights’ aid, she also secured their return to the church.

Iomedae’s rule over the city of Kantaria began soon thereafter, but only lasted for a year and a day, but she never intended to rule for long—just long enough to protect the city from sinister shapechangers so that a legitimate ruler could take the role.

Finally came her eleventh act—an act that would end her time as a human and begin her life as a goddess. Iomedae cast her cloak down over the pit surrounding the Starstone Cathedral, transforming the garment into a bridge upon which she could cross the chasm and enter the edifice to take the Test of the Starstone.

Today, the faithful refer to these eleven deeds as the Acts of Iomedae. Iomedae has made it clear that the lessons, not the specifics, are important, and to her faith’s credit the vast majority understand this. What tends to get lost in the excitement of worship and admiration, though, is the fact that Iomedae didn’t set out at the start of her acts to perform eleven heroic accomplishments. They were, in truth, attempts by Iomedae to learn from the failings of those she respected, be they family or friend or even one of the gods.

About the Author

James Jacobs is the Creative Director for Pathfinder. While he was there at the beginning of Golarion’s creation, many of the deities worshiped by that world’s heroes and villains had already existed for decades before. Goddesses and gods like Desna and Rovagug, Sarenrae and Abadar, Achaekek and Zon-Kuthon first established their faithful among PCs and NPCs alike in James’ home campaign in the late 80s and early 90s. Sharing them with the world as deities of the Pathfinder setting, seeing players and creators come to love and hate them (and in some cases cosplay as them), has been a career highlight.

About the Windsong Testaments

On the northern reaches of Varisia’s Lost Coast stands Windsong Abbey, a forum for interfaith discussion tended by priests of nearly twenty faiths and led by a legacy of Masked Abbesses. At the dawn of the Age of Lost Omens, Windsong Abbey suffered as its faithful fought and fled, but today it has begun to recover. A new Masked Abbess guides a new flock within, and the Windsong Testaments—parables about the gods themselves—are once again being recorded within the abbey’s walls. Some of these Testaments are presented here as Golarion’s myths and fables. Some parts may be true. Other parts are certainly false. Which ones are which is left to the faithful to decide.

“Reality is born. Reality must die. So somewhere in between must dwell both you and I.”

Such was said to be writ upon the Seal, carved in such a way that all would understand regardless of language or intellect. The Seal was the gravestone of the previous reality. The Seal was the foundation stone of the next reality. It was upon the Seal that Pharasma was born into this reality, adrift in the Maelstrom within an unformed metacosmos. She stood, and read the Seal’s Truth, and saw that she trod upon its core. Looking out over the Seal’s eight edges, Pharasma beheld the eternity of probability, a vastness yet formed from the raw entropy of the churning remains of what had come before. She was the Survivor, yet she knew not what she had survived—just that she had.

Pharasma stepped off the edge of the Seal, and as her foot descended to the nothing, the Seal expanded so that she was supported. She stood there a moment on one of the Seal’s eight edges, one step into the new reality, and she could sense that she was already not alone. Something chewed and gnawed out there beyond perception. Something vast, and hungry, and dangerous. Pharasma knew her first fear that very first step—fear of the unknown, fear that something else had survived, fear that she would not.

And so she stepped to the side.

As Pharasma walked, the edges of the Seal grew. The Outer Sphere bloomed beneath her feet as the Seal expanded its power. Where Pharasma walked, the planes themselves followed, and with each circuit around the Seal, she widened her path, walking a deosil spiral of creation that gave those who would follow a place to love and hate, to war and create. As she walked the spiral, the Seal itself grew outward, forming the Spire. It reached toward what lay opposite its beginning. And when Pharasma finished, the Spire had grown to support the Boneyard above, and it would be her home.

The Seal had responded to Pharasma’s spiral path, and as she strode, other divinities were birthed into the new reality. The Speakers in the Depths retreated at once to the heart of entropy and could not be bothered to take part in what followed. Desna marveled at creation, and with a wave of her hand brought the first night to the skies above. Sarenrae followed swiftly thereafter, and was smitten with Desna and her work, and so she chose the brightest of those stars to shine as the suns, birthing the first day. Ihys, who would in time become the First to die, and his brother Asmodeus, who would in time become the First to kill, each defined the other and brought goodness and evil with them. And Achaekek rose to stand between, an arbiter over morality and a judge whose impartial aegis would, in time, crumble to savagery. Yet not all of the first would have names, or even be remembered. One tread forth beyond the Eclipse, but without death yet in the world, this Prince became Bound to a throne in the Spire’s shadow to await his time. And the final would foolishly step forth beyond Pharasma’s first fearful step, and in so doing would be transformed and absorbed by that fear. Whether that fear became Rovagug or whether it was Rovagug who was the devouring fear, not even the gods can remember.

As those First Eight became, so did Pharasma feel something else wake on the far side of time. Just as she had walked a deosil spiral to create, a widdershins spiral wound in opposition at the other side of reality, where the Lurker at the Threshold formed the second anchor of creation. Pharasma thus learned that each cycle required not only a Survivor, but also a Watcher. So that between the two, between Pharasma and Yog-Sothoth, all reality would thus become the Great Beyond. Thus began the Age of Creation.

Illustration by Mark Molnar

And so in the ages that followed, Pharasma remained upon her throne. She watched and judged all who passed from life into death, and as time wore on the number of the dead grew apace to the number of the born. And in time, Pharasma beheld her second fear. An event beyond anticipation fractured fate, and on all worlds, the flow of prophecy was forever altered. Storms raged, empires fell, gods died, and in the least fortunate corners of reality, entire worlds came to an end. Pharasma herself lost track for that brief moment of what had yet to come, and when she opened her eyes again, she saw that the Seal had vanished, leaving behind a featureless void. She reached out to the Watcher to inquire if such a ripple in destiny had ever occurred before, to determine if the loss of the Seal had always been ordained, but the Watcher would not reply.

Yet reality went on. Mortals were born, and mortals were slain. Pharasma’s second fear abated, and she realized that the lost Seal was not an ill omen, but more akin to the passing of a parent or teacher. Now, this cycle of reality had matured to the point where it could continue on its own, and Pharasma knew that, going forward, reality was well and truly on its own. The apogee of creation had passed, and Pharasma knew that her days ahead would forever be in the shadow of her days behind. And while she knew how much time remained, she knew as well that there was more than enough for mortal life to enjoy more glories and triumphs than they could envision.

And even though reality must eventually end, Pharasma does not despair. She knows that the number of the dead has never before eclipsed the number of the born, for even as the Watcher witnesses from outside the cycle, there must always be a Survivor to carry on within the cycle to begin the next. In time, the flux of the born shall cease, and their number shall become a static record. And in those final hours, Pharasma knows she must prepare the next cycle’s Seal, and she must watch and wait as the final count of the dead approaches. And when that final visitant from life steps before her throne to be judged, Pharasma knows that it will be the Survivor who stands before her, and that she will not judge but will herself be judged. And so, with her death, shall this cycle end.

But it is here that Pharasma’s final fear awaits. The fracture of fate and the loss of the Seal has made her conviction falter, and she no longer knows for fact that she shall be the penultimate death. For if she steps before herself to be judged, and leaves behind none to Survive, the cycle shall end and nothing shall wend.

About the Author

James Jacobs is the Creative Director for Pathfinder. While he was there at the beginning of Golarion’s creation, many of the deities worshiped by that world’s heroes and villains had already existed for decades before. Goddesses and gods like Desna and Rovagug, Sarenrae and Abadar, Achaekek and Zon-Kuthon first established their faithful among PCs and NPCs alike in James’ home campaign in the late 80s and early 90s. Sharing them with the world as deities of the Pathfinder setting, seeing players and creators come to love and hate them (and in some cases cosplay as them), has been a career highlight.

About the Windsong Testaments

On the northern reaches of Varisia’s Lost Coast stands Windsong Abbey, a forum for interfaith discussion tended by priests of nearly twenty faiths and led by a legacy of Masked Abbesses. At the dawn of the Age of Lost Omens, Windsong Abbey suffered as its faithful fought and fled, but today it has begun to recover. A new Masked Abbess guides a new flock within, and the Windsong Testaments—parables about the gods themselves—are once again being recorded within the abbey’s walls. Some of these Testaments are presented here as Golarion’s myths and fables. Some parts may be true. Other parts are certainly false. Which ones are which is left to the faithful to decide.

The bonds of family are strong and can blind even the gods to atrocity and awfulness. And no deity knows better the dangers of trusting one’s sibling than Shelyn, sister of Zon-Kuthon.

In the earliest days of mortal life on Golarion, there was no Zon-Kuthon. None suspected what dark fate awaited Shelyn’s brother Dou-Bral, and indeed the two deities were, in many societies, worshiped as a single faith, an inseparable pair devoted to the pursuit of song and joy. But even among the ranks of the divine, nothing is forever. The most dour and depressed take a lesson in this, alas, in that a mortal’s limited time on the world is a blessing. For the longer one lives, the more chances you’ll have of facing betrayal from those you once held most dear.

Arguments between siblings are part of the parcel, and both Shelyn and Dou-Bral had had their share of squabbles before, but the clash that would shatter their familial ties was something so overwhelming that it changed both deities forever. Whatever the cause of the great dissonance between the siblings, the results were undeniable. Dou-Bral abandoned his faithful and reality alike, leaving his sister to grieve and mourn as if he had perished. The prayers of Dou-Bral’s faithful went unheard, and those of the faith who survived this betrayal were welcomed into Shelyn’s church even as the goddess herself struggled with the results of that great sadness. It would be ages before anyone heard again of Shelyn’s brother, but when they did, they—Shelyn included—would have rather remained forever in mourning.

For when he returned, he was no longer Dou-Bral. He had become Zon-Kuthon. Unknown to the gods or the faithful, Dou-Bral had not only abandoned his family and followers, but reality itself. He had traveled to the very depths of the Outer Rifts, pushing beyond borders held in fear by the most ancient dwellers in those unknown Abyssal depths, to emerge into the Beyond Beyond. And what he found there destroyed him. And what he found there reincarnated him. A cycle of death and rebirth taken place outside of the auspices of Pharasma herself, Dou-Bral ended and Zon-Kuthon began.

Forever changed and transformed from the unimaginable ordeals and torments suffered during his absence, Zon-Kuthon did not immediately seek his family’s pardon upon his return, yet as different as he had become from what had been before, enough of Dou-Bral remained within the tormented frame of the new god of loss and pain for Shelyn to take notice.

Zon-Kuthon repaid Shelyn’s extended hand of forgiveness with trauma and agony, piercing the flesh of her hand with his razored nails. When she cried out in pain and again offered forgiveness, Zon-Kuthon responded by slaughtering their father, Thron. The mutilated god twisted and broke and reshaped Thron into his own enslaved herald, the Prince in Chains, an act that provoked Shelyn into something she had never before engaged in—battle.

Illustration by Yu Cheng Hong

The siblings’ combat shook the pillars of reality, and on worlds spread throughout the Material Plane, things of beauty withered and wept and bled and died. Zon-Kuthon had grown powerful indeed from his exposure to that which transformed him Beyond the Beyond, but Shelyn was empowered by her own righteousness. The battle ended in a draw as Shelyn wrested away Zon-Kuthon’s murderous glaive. She’d hoped that separating him from what she believed to be the source of his corruption would set him free, but in the time of horrors that followed, she realized that the glavie itself was not the source—that her brother was now forever a slave to loss. As news of Zon-Kuthon’s treatment of his father and sister spread among the gods, an unsettling schism began to form. Some took offense at the acts and called for Zon-Kuthon’s execution. Others expressed admiration for his cruelty and professed support in pursuit of a change to divine order.

Abadar, forever protector of society, be it among mortals or the divine, saw the rumblings of civil war among the gods and took action. He offered Zon-Kuthon a choice to accept banishment to the prison realm of Xovaikain on the Plane of Shadow for as long as the sun hung in the skies above Golarion, and in return offered the Midnight Lord a single item from the First Vault. Zon-Kuthon agreed and chose from the vault the First Shadow, and once again left the ranks of the divine.

There are those who say Zon-Kuthon knew of the promise of Earthfall, and even others who dared imply he had a hand in its engineering. Whatever the case, the Age of Darkness blotted out the sun above Golarion, and Zon-Kuthon was released from what should have been eternal imprisonment. In that time, though, tempers had cooled. Zon-Kuthon took his gift of the First Shadow and used it to transform his one-time prison into his planar realm and cemented his divine rule over the nation of Nidal, but he was careful to moderate his atrocities so as to avoid arousing the wrath of the other gods. And while his evil lingers in the literal shadow of greater dangers, much as the nation of Nidal’s cruelties are overshadowed by the more blatant mayhem and tyranny of neighboring Cheliax, Shelyn has not forgotten. Still she seeks a method of redeeming her lost brother. Still she seeks a way to save him from the horrors Beyond Beyond. And those who know and love the goddess of love can only pray themselves she finds a way, lest what transformed her brother so long ago find new despair to ripen within.

About the Author

James Jacobs is the Creative Director for Pathfinder. While he was there at the beginning of Golarion’s creation, many of the deities worshiped by that world’s heroes and villains had already existed for decades before. Goddesses and gods like Desna and Rovagug, Sarenrae and Abadar, Achaekek and Zon-Kuthon first established their faithful among PCs and NPCs alike in James’ home campaign in the late 80s and early 90s. Sharing them with the world as deities of the Pathfinder setting, seeing players and creators come to love and hate them (and in some cases cosplay as them), has been a career highlight.

About the Windsong Testaments

On the northern reaches of Varisia’s Lost Coast stands Windsong Abbey, a forum for interfaith discussion tended by priests of nearly twenty faiths and led by a legacy of Masked Abbesses. At the dawn of the Age of Lost Omens, Windsong Abbey suffered as its faithful fought and fled, but today it has begun to recover. A new Masked Abbess guides a new flock within, and the Windsong Testaments—parables about the gods themselves—are once again being recorded within the abbey’s walls. Some of these Testaments are presented here as Golarion’s myths and fables. Some parts may be true. Other parts are certainly false. Which ones are which is left to the faithful to decide.

One never needs look far from the loveliest flower to find the worms fatting on the buried dead below, providing for beauty’s banquet above. Such truths are known to the gods. There can be no light without darkness, no life without death, no good without evil. As one of the First among the gods, these truths are held as virtues to glorious Desna, Song of the Spheres. She knows and teaches that a thing of beauty to your eye may be a wretched affront to mine. Beauty and horror can exist simultaneously. Beauty and horror can be the same.

But do not let any deceive you that beauty and horror are equals. One need not endure the pain of rent flesh to marvel at the glitter of a finely-honed blade, nor should you be forced to endure the ache of loneliness just to enjoy the peace of solitude. Learn, Desna teaches us, that enjoyment and delight in the pleasures of life is not a sin. You need not pay for bliss with shame, and you should not fear the horror that lies within all beauty.

For so Desna learned herself when she woke the abominable Gossamer King from his shrouded dreams.

Illustration by Alberto Dal Lago

In those earliest of days, long before the first of us dreamed our mortal dreams, the gods were still young and they still had much to learn. The worlds of worlds had yet to hang in the firmament, and the First of those Worlds was still being woven as Desna drifted, dreaming and delighting, through the In-Between.

In that time, the Ethereal Plane was no Ghost World, for no lives had yet been lost to mortal souls. Nor was it a Space Between Spaces, for the worlds of reality had yet to be forged. It was first, and yet remains, the In-Between. A place not fully dreaming, yet neither fully awake. Such sights Desna beheld In-Between tugged at her heart and would inspire her in time to light Cynosure itself at the heart of the Cosmic Caravan.

And so when, in her rapturous wanderings, the Song of the Spheres came across a glistening shape drifting alone, she became entranced. Here was a splendid ovoid of shimmering silken strands, each twined length sliding and singing against its kin and bright with more colors than any mortal eye would ever behold. Desna could see that the shape was a shroud of woven lengths, yet the strings had no beginning and no end, as if it had simply formed at once as a single impossibly tangled length.

Desna was not content to simply look upon the shape, and so she settled upon it. It was warm to the touch, and its smooth surface compelled the hand to slide along its pleasing textures. And as she held the shape, she knew it was but a covering, a shroud that held an even greater wonder within. What mysterious marvel lay shielded from view by those few thin layers of silk? What unbeheld revelation waited within this strange traveler through the flickering void? Desna knew of the brutality of evil and the rancor of wrath, for such awfulness has existed from the beginning. She knew, even as she tugged at the strands and worried at the weave, that something this entrancing could also be something equally awful, yet she paid those nagging thoughts no mind.

She opened the Gossamer King’s cocoon, and as Ghlaunder emerged, Desna knew sorrow and regret for the first time.

Ghlaunder crawled from quiescence: eyes and mouths—eyes that were mouths; legs and tongues—legs that were tongues; hunger and hate—hunger that was hate. Ghlauder seized upon the Song of the Spheres. She brushed aside those starving stalks and slashing teeth, yet more were there to vex voraciously, for Ghlaunder had waited for eons, and in eons, hunger has much time to compel. As Ghlaunder fed in desperate gulps, as it glutted upon Desna’s divine grace, its wings unfurled and there Desna beheld glory again. For the Gossamer King’s iridescent wings held the same shimmering beauty that had caught Desna’s eye before his wakening.

Desna could not bring herself to destroy Ghlaunder, yet she knew he was a great hunger whose presence would bring pain and suffering. And so Desna drew upon her might and banished Ghlaunder from the In-Between, and the Gossamer King was hurled from the Inner Sphere to fester far beyond within the Outer Rifts, a place more accepting of his countenance now that his shroud had been forever torn.

Desna left the In-Between soon after, and in the creation of the worlds of worlds, she would find much more to remind her of the beauty of reality, yet always the Gossamer King’s lesson remained. Even in great beauty could dwell great horror—and in great horror one might find great beauty.

The Gossamer King lives still. His faithful infest the neglected cracks of society, and they see the face of god in the rasping kiss of the chewing maggot or the thirsty work of the supping leech. Yet do not doctors use maggots to save the living from gangrenous wounds? Have not physicians used leeches to reduce the swelling of inflamed flesh?

Desna’s faithful are not alone in the constant fight against the cults of those like the Gossamer King, but Desna today is the first to point to her mistake of releasing this evil into reality not as something to be ashamed of. It was a chance to learn. It is always better to live, to make mistakes, and accept the challenges discovered as opportunities to grow, to teach, and to do better than to suppress and forget.

And while the sight of a devotee of Ghlaunder clad in the faith’s most sacred raiment—a thousand thousand sucking mosquitos worn together as robes—certainly turns the stomach, is there not something of beauty in how each of those gossamer wings shines back the twinkling starlight from the night skies above?

About the Author

James Jacobs is the Creative Director for Pathfinder. While he was there at the beginning of Golarion’s creation, many of the deities worshiped by that world’s heroes and villains had already existed for decades before. Goddesses and gods like Desna and Rovagug, Sarenrae and Abadar, Achaekek and Zon-Kuthon first established their faithful among PCs and NPCs alike in James’ home campaign in the late 80s and early 90s. Sharing them with the world as deities of the Pathfinder setting, seeing players and creators come to love and hate them (and in some cases cosplay as them), has been a career highlight.

About the Windsong Testaments

On the northern reaches of Varisia’s Lost Coast stands Windsong Abbey, a forum for interfaith discussion tended by priests of nearly twenty faiths and led by a legacy of Masked Abbesses. At the dawn of the Age of Lost Omens, Windsong Abbey suffered as its faithful fought and fled, but today it has begun to recover. A new Masked Abbess guides a new flock within, and the Windsong Testaments—parables about the gods themselves—are once again being recorded within the abbey’s walls. Some of these Testaments are presented here as Golarion’s myths and fables. Some parts may be true. Other parts are certainly false. Which ones are which is left to the faithful to decide.