Selara, the Feywild

Let the All-Mother guide you.

— ancient saying

Selara creating the Celestial Source by Julie Dillon

Selara was the first being to arise out of the Nothing, to gain substance and thought, and She was all-loving and all-powerful. But even She knew Fear, and in response to Fear She birthed Her children, and guided them to build the world so that they may know love. Because of this, She was once the head of the Amalthean pantheon, the progenitor of all Gods and the All-Mother of Creation. While She gave Her children the tasks of creating specific aspects of the world, Selara made the Celestial Source that guarded all Creation from the Far Realms beyond. It is said that the world of Amalthea is alive, its sentience manifested through Selara’s most precious gifts to all—the soul itself, the consciousness with which mortals and immortals alike could behold the world and know their place within it.
At some point in prehistory, Selara was slain by Vanthus, and her body shattered into countless pieces. Those pieces that remained in the Celestial Source were reborn into Archfey, causing her entire realm to become overgrown and transform into the primordial Feywild. Those of her fragments that fell to Material Plane are believed to have transformed into the Kaiju of the Cerlanian Isles.
Despite her death, Selara’s name is still invoked by a steadily diminishing few. Selara's domain includes all that is good and wholesome in life, but She is regarded above all as the goddess of selfless, altruistic love—the love a mother has for her children. The most devout of Selara dedicate their lives to spreading this love to others, building orphanages, healing houses, and shelters for the homeless in Her temples. Priests of Selara are rarely simple preachers and theologians—or at least, they should not be. They are also charity workers, healing the sick and feeding the hungry wherever they go. The magic of healing is credited to Selara, who is thought to have passed it onto all Gods, Elder or Ascendant, that inherit her benevolence. Motherhood is sacred in Selara’s eyes, and thus births are always celebrated as holy in Her faith, presided over by priestess-midwives. Curiously, Selara is also a goddess of death, as death is the natural end of life, and the beginning of new life. Selara's own death and rebirth into the Archfey and the Kaiju is symbolic of this.
Of all deities, Selara has the most diverse of depictions, ranging from the plump statuettes found in prehistoric ruins, to the countless instances of maternal imagery in faiths worldwide. The only thing that these depiction have in common is that Selara is almost always considered female. Despite her death, the Sybilite faith forbids depictions of Selara with a face; but her diminished importance in their pantheon means that depictions exist aplenty that liken her to a mortal woman.

The Feywild and the Archfey

As Selara was the goddess of Life, the Archfey that were reborn of her fragments each represents an element of Life itself. However, without a singular deific will governing these beings, the Archfey are primal and wild, and thus represent Life in its most natural state. They are wilderness without civilization, emotion without logic, instinct without morality.
The following Archfey have been identified, although more are likely to exist.

• The Roaring King is a giant sabertooth cat with ram horns and eagle wings. He is the Archfey of evolutionary competition, growth, and the survival of the fittest. The Roaring King's domain is an untamed wilderness where he delights in the beautiful brutality with which all manners of beasts and wild men battle each other for dominance.


• The Dethroned Lord is a terrifying flayed figure who wears a robe of their own skin, their ribcage pried open to expose a hot, beating heart. They are the Archfey of agony, fury, and vengeance. They represent the unbridled hatred brought on by trauma and fear, and of a primal violence that civilized mortals refuse to accept within themselves. The Dethroned Lord rules a realm desecrated by flesh and blood, where the sky screams in rage and the winds reek of iron.


• The Moon's Daughter is a large wolf with sharp fangs and claws, capable of walking on two legs as well as four. She is the Archfey of bestial instinct and patron of lycanthropy, and she calls to mortals to abandon pretenses of civilization in order to revel in savagery. Some myths depict her as the Roaring King's mate, while others portray them as bitter rivals.


• The Pale Maiden appears as a child in a white nightgown. She is the Archfey of childhood, innocence, and naive devotion like that of a pet for a master. She represents love without lust, expectation, or complexity, yet she is far from harmless. Innocent love becomes a dangerous and unpredictable thing when spurned, and the Pale Maiden is said to be terrifying to those mortals she loves that do not return her affection.


• The Slender Prince appears as a gauntly handsome elven man dressed in noble's garb that turns to tatters around his feet. He is the Archfey of loneliness and fear, of a dark forest that hides dangers, but also possibly companions in the cold night. The Slender Prince is said to appear as a lone figure to travelers through his domain, just distant enough that his features are indiscernible. Those who approach him as a foe will find a horrific multitude of arms and maws, and be torn apart. Those who approach him as a friend, however, will be invited to a dance under the starlight, and be sent on their way.


• The Shining Chrysalid is an iridescent butterfly wrapped in an ethereal, transluscent chrysalis. It is commonly thought of as the Archfey of dreams, but it's more accurate to describe it as the ghost of dreams. The Shining Chrysalid is a child's fanciful hopes of the future before they were crushed by the drudgery of adulthood; it is the pile of abandoned creative projects gathering dust at the drafting table; it is the wistful daydream of what could have been if one has taken a missed opportunity. The Shining Chrysalid inhabits a realm beautiful as a daydream, yet upon close inspection, it is a mere illusion upon a desolate wasteland.


• The Formless is the Archfey of ignorance. It has no discernible shape, and its realm bestows constant confusion.


• The Voice of Thunder is a gigantic deific figure clad in storm clouds, and they are the Archfey of nature's dominance, as well as mortalkind's helpless awe before it. Their domain is a breathtaking landscape of craggy mountains, raging rivers, primordial forests, and unpredictable weather. If encountered by mortals, they demand nothing less than complete and utter veneration at their feet.


• The Thousand Faces is the first doppelganger, and like their progeny they have no fixed appearance, although they tend to manifest before mortals in a familiar form that's just a tad sinister. They are the Archfey of bitterness and betrayal, of trickery and lies. Their realm is a twisting, shifting marshland where directions lose all meaning.


• The Troubadour is the most approchable of the Archfey, appearing to mortals as an unassuming adventurer seeking interesting stories. They are the Archfey of curiosity and storytelling, and represent the protagonist, narrator, and story at once. Their realm is their true form, a delightful wilderness that reshapes itself according to a mortal's actions in order to tell the best story.


• The Lady of Thorns is a nymph who sits upon a throne of thorns. She is the Archfey of love and lust, embodying the cautious yet primal mating dance of animals as opposed to the sensual and romantic love of civilized men. The Lady of Thorns is easy to anger and difficult to please, and to lose her favor is to be strangled by the thorns that spread from her throne through her entire domain. She will never be impressed by the same thing twice, but should a mortal impress her, she is said to bestow gifts and pleasures beyond one's wildest imagination.


• The Red Scoundrel is a squirrel-like creature whose cute and harmless appearance belies his true power. He is the Archfey of clever prey animals, tricksters, escape and hiding. While he never physically attacks anyone or anything at all, his realm is filled with traps and monsters lying in ambush. He is known to intentionally lure mortals into a chase they cannot win in order to teach them a lesson.


• The Mantis Queen is a massive praying mantis, as her name suggests. She is the Archfey of joy and innocent cruelty, like a child picking legs off a spider, or a cat playing with a mouse. The Mantis Queen's realm is a beautiful yet deadly game of prowess and wits. No mortal has survived a trip into her domain without scars.

Religious Interpretations

As the entity credited with the creation of Amalthea and its Multiverse, every faith has a place for Selara in their theology. However, the views of the Archfey that descend from her fragments differ.

Sybilism

Sybilites believe that the legacy of fallen Selara is inherited by St. Sybil the Martyr, as told in the epic of the Sidereal War. Selara's will of a world of civilized order and enlightenment is further enforced by Sybil's mentor in life, St. Laurelion the Sage, as well as generations of mortal Luminaries to come. Sybil herself famously compared the Archfey to fungus growing out of Selara's decaying corpse, and decried their worship as heretical to Selara and the other Elder Gods. Other faiths, notably the Elder Faith, reject this notion entirely.

The Elder Faith

The Elder Faith sees Selara as the Creator, but a distant rather than loving and benevolent one, focusing their worship much more on the Archfey that came to exist because of her death. The Elder Faith makes no pretenses of the Archfey's fickle nature, but find it far more pragmatic to bargain with fey who show their physical prescences, than to put their faith in crytic visions from the Elder Gods.

The Sublime Mechanism

The Sublime Mechanism posits that Selara and Vanthus were once a single divine Creator, cleaved in two by echoes that remained from a previous reality. Thus, Selara and Vanthus each have something of the other within them: Life, after all, ends in Death; and Death leads to the beginning of Life anew. Vanthus' corruption, and subsequent slaying of Selara, is an aberration introduced by the cleaving, and the event from which evil entered the current reality.

Cerlanian Folk Religion

Cerlanians call Selara the Heavenly Mother, and believe her true form to be a great serpentine dragon. Cerlanians believe the Abyssal Father, their analog of Vanthus, to be Selara's husband rather than son, and the pair collectively birthed Amalthea and the Spiritual Planes. In addition, they believe that the death of Selara is a physical event that occured on their very continent, shattering it into the Cerlanian Isles today. Consequently, Cerlanians hold utmost reverence for the Kaiju that sleep on many of their islands, viewing them as guardians that carry Selara's dying will.

Kuma Myths

The Kuma believe Selara to be the leading voice of the symphony of Creation, and that Her vibrations yet reverberate across reality. She is not truly dead, as long as reality continues the song she started.

Ancient Elven Religion

Curiously, the ancient elves were the only culture known to depict Selara in a masculine aspect, whom they called Nielahath, the First to Rise. Nielahath was the embodiment of life as an unchanging principle, and the ruler of all other gods of the Iudanar, the ancient elven pantheon of the Elder Gods. He was a beacon of inspiring radiance that represents the perfection towards which all life forms strive. Nielahath aided those who seek perfection in their physical body, their way of life, and their profession and craftsmanship. Nielahath was credited with the gift of immortality.