Origins of the failth
Aelthir, the Keeper of the Eternal Song
Intermediate Deity
Titles: The Eternal Scholar, Keeper of the First Song, Lord of Lore, The Remembered Voice
Symbol: An open book whose pages form the strings of a silver harp
Alignment: Neutral Good
Portfolio: Knowledge, music, memory, history, inspiration, teaching
Domains: Good, Knowledge, Magic, Music*, Rune
Favored Weapon: Rapier
Worshipers: Bards, scholars, wizards, historians, teachers, scribes, musicians, explorers
Cleric Alignments: CG, LG, NG, N
Holy Day: The First Verse
Aelthir
"What is written may burn. What is built may fall. But teach a song to a thousand voices, and truth becomes very difficult to kill."
Aelthir is the god of knowledge given voice. He teaches that knowledge has little value when hoarded and that the greatest purpose of learning is to pass understanding from one generation to the next.
To Aelthir, music is knowledge made immortal.
His priests preserve libraries and ancient manuscripts, but they place equal importance upon stories, songs, poems, oral histories, and even tavern ballads. A seemingly foolish children's rhyme might contain the distorted memory of a kingdom destroyed three thousand years ago.
Aelthir is usually depicted as a slender, ageless man with silver-white hair and robes covered in constantly shifting musical notation. He carries an ancient harp called The First Instrument and a weathered book known as The Unfinished Chronicle.
Curiously, neither is ever depicted as complete. The harp always possesses an empty place for another string, while the final page of the Chronicle is always blank.
Aelthir teaches that this represents a simple truth:
There is always another song to sing and something more to learn.
Dogma
Seek knowledge, but do not merely collect it.
Question what you are told. Study the past. Listen to those who remember what books have forgotten. Record discoveries and teach what you have learned.
Music is among the greatest vessels of memory. A library may be destroyed by a single torch, but a song carried by travelers can cross oceans and survive the fall of empires.
Never intentionally destroy knowledge unless its continued existence presents a grave danger to others.
A teacher who gives knowledge freely performs a sacred act.
A student who asks a difficult question honors Aelthir more than one who simply memorizes the answer.
The Church
Temples of Aelthir are known as **Halls