> [!infobox|wikipedia] > # Selûne > [![[Selune_small.webp|cover hsmall]]](Selune.webp) > ###### Lore Information > Attribute | Details | > ---|---| > Type | Lore | > Category | Deity | > Pantheon | Gods of Old | > Portfolio | The moon, light, forgiveness, wanderers | > Domains | Knowledge | > Symbol | A full moon haloed by stars | > Chosen | [[Elaris Moonsong]] | > Revered by | Largely forgotten | > ###### Status > Attribute | Details | > ---|---| > Status | Forgotten | **Selûne**, the Moonmaiden, is the goddess of the moon — patron of its light, its wandering travellers, and the lost who steer by it — and one of the **Gods of Old**, the deities of the age before the [[The Pantheon|Seven Divines]] rose. Beneath her sphere of moon and star she is a goddess of gentler things still: forgiveness, redemption, and the shelter of the weak. Yet of all the old powers she is among the most thoroughly forgotten, for the world that once looked to her now prays to the name of her champion and never knows the difference. ## Overview Selûne belongs to the elder age — the long stretch of history before the [[The Shattering|Shattering]] and the rise of the Seven, when the gods the world later forgot still held their portfolios openly. Hers was the moon: its silver light, the tides and the turning of the month, the safe passage of those who travelled by night, and the quiet mercy the moon has always stood for in the hearts of mortals. She is named in the oldest records of the moon faith as the Moonmaiden, the Lady of the Moon, and the Lady of Night. In the present day almost no one worships her by that name. When the [[The Pantheon|Seven Divines]] rose to dominate the faith of the world, the older gods slipped from memory, and the moon passed in the popular mind to **[[Elaris Moonsong]]** — the silver-haired elf cleric the faith venerates as its god of the moon. The goddess herself survives now only in scholars' margins, in the rites the moon faith still keeps without quite knowing whose they are, and in a scattering of clues hidden in plain sight. ## Divinity ### Lady of the Moon Selûne's sphere is the moon and all that the moon governs: its changing light, the stars that wheel about it, the navigation of dark seas and dark roads, and the wanderers and the lost who look up and find their way by it. She is the patron of those who travel by night and of the light that pushes back the dark — not the harsh light of the sun, but the cool, forgiving glow that lets a traveller see just enough to take the next step. Beneath the sphere lies what she truly stands for. Selûne is a goddess of **forgiveness and redemption**, of second chances offered to those who have fallen, and of the **protection of the innocent and the weak**. Where her light falls, the lore holds, the lost are guided home, the sick are eased, and the fallen are given a road back. It is a gentle divinity, and a demanding one: her favour is said to rest not on the powerful but on those who carry light and mercy into dark places. ### The Elder Goddess Among the powers of the world Selûne belongs to the age before the Seven — older than the faith that now eclipses her. When the [[The Pantheon|Seven Divines]] rose to dominate the worship of the world, the gods of the elder age slipped from memory one by one, and Selûne slipped furthest of all: in time the moon itself — her own sphere — came to be remembered as another's. What the moon faith still keeps of her, it keeps without knowing whose it is. ## Worship There is no open worship of Selûne by her own name — no temple raises her banner, no order prays to the Moonmaiden. What survives of her is carried, unknowing, inside the broader **moon faith**, whose devotion now flows to [[Elaris Moonsong]]: and yet the faith's oldest rites, relics, and prophecies still bear Selûne's mark for any who look closely. ### Holy Days The moon faith keeps its calendar by the two moons that hang over the world, Sel and Sha. - **Silvernight** falls on the fifteenth of every month, when the greater moon Sel rides full — the ordinary moon-night of prayer. - **The Unshadowed** comes four times a year, on the rare nights when Sel is full while the lesser moon Sha is dark and unseen. These are the faith's highest holy nights, given over to ritual, to the asking of favours, and above all to **the Pardon** — the seeking and granting of forgiveness, when the faithful confess old wrongs and absolve them. That the rite of mercy should fall precisely when the dark moon vanishes is a thing the faith observes without explaining. ### Prophecy The faith preserves the **prophecy of the Moon's Chosen**, which the oldest records name as Selûne's own: that when great evil gathers, the Lady of the Moon will raise up a mortal to swing the balance of light and shadow. The Chosen must wander the world bringing redemption to the fallen, healing to the sick, and hope in their wake; then gather the **three Stones of the Moon**, whereupon the hidden **Celestial Cavern** will reveal itself, and the one who enters it will emerge as her champion. ## In Memory & Belief To the world at large, the moon belongs to the Divine **[[Elaris Moonsong]]**, and the name Selûne means nothing at all. Only the most learned scholars and the keepers of the moon faith's eldest lore hold any memory of a goddess by that name — an older patron of the moon, from the age before the Seven, long since folded into the worship of her champion. What remains of her are contradictions the faith has stopped questioning. The old prophecy speaks of the **Lady** of the Moon raising **her** champion, though the moon god the world prays to is a man. The two moons are called **Sel** and **Sha**, names whose origin no one can any longer explain. And the holiest rite of forgiveness waxes strongest on exactly the nights the darker moon goes blind. Each is a fragment of a forgotten truth, kept in plain sight by a faith that no longer reads it — and, for now, the nearest the world comes to remembering her at all. ## [[The Bloody Nails|Campaign: The Bloody Nails]] #### [[Session 04 - To Free a Raven]] [[Kai]] first bore her mark in the temple at [[Darmouth]] — a holy symbol etched upon his hand, the touch of a power he did not yet understand. #### [[Session 20 - The Streets of Val Miriel]] Seeking to understand his growing starry power, Kai sought a private audience with [[High Priest Oldir]] at the [[High Sept]]. Shaken by what he saw, the old priest named the mark for what it was: the touch of **Selûne**, the long-forgotten goddess of the moon — and named Kai, haltingly, as one she might have chosen. #### [[Session 26 - A Midnight Romp]] Returning to the High Sept under the city's lockdown, Kai pressed Oldir further, and the priest recounted the full prophecy of the Moon's Chosen — the redemption of the fallen, the three Stones of the Moon, the Celestial Cavern. When Kai produced a moonstone that matched the gem set in the altar of [[Elaris Moonsong]], the priest's doubt broke: he sheltered Kai for the night and urged him to walk the path of light. #### [[Session 49 - The Silver Sage]] The ancient dragon [[Praetor'Varanous]] confirmed for the party that one of the three moonstones rests in Oldir's keeping at the High Sept of [[Val Miriel]] — a piece of the prophecy's puzzle, and a step on the road Kai had been set upon. ## Trivia - The greater moon, **Sel**, carries in its very name the first sound of the goddess's own — one of the small coincidences the keepers of the moon faith have worried at for lifetimes without ever explaining away. - Her epithets preserve the gentleness the faith forgot along with her: the *Moonmaiden*, the *Lady of the Moon*, the *Lady of Night*. - The prophecy's insistence on a **Lady** of the Moon, set against a moon faith that venerates a man, is the kind of seam scholars worry at for a lifetime without unpicking.