Aetheryn
| Type | Elder power / ancestral presence |
|---|---|
| People | Elven |
| Titles | The Unfinished Song; The Forest That Remembers; What Was Before the First Word |
| Domains | Memory · Grief · The Living World · What Endures |
| Symbol | A single leaf with its veins traced in silver, each vein a different age |
Aetheryn is not worshipped so much as listened for. Elves build no temples; they tend old places — ancient groves, still pools, the ruins of things that have not quite forgotten what they were. Aetheryn is understood as the accumulated memory of the living world itself. The elves believe they do not follow a god so much as belong to one, individual threads in a pattern too vast to see whole.
They regard the seven human gods with a polite detachment that humans often mistake for contempt. The Order of the Pale Flame's writing-down of the dead is, to an elf, an attempt to do badly in ink what Aetheryn does perfectly in living wood.
Their deepest fear is not death but forgetting: the moment a memory fades and something passes wholly out of the pattern. Some elven scholars believe this has already happened — that entire peoples, languages, and truths existed before humans came to Pelervar and that no living mind now holds them.
The Greenward Fellowship is bound in a compact with Aetheryn.