Aelfar, the Cracked Compass

Deity of Fortune, the Wager, and Near Misses

In the Guidepost Plaza at Triz Valley there is a statue of a blindfolded goblin holding a compass with a split face. Nobody in the town will tell you when it was put up. Everyone touches it on the way past.

Aelfar is what they are touching.

The god is not a patron of winners. It is a patron of the exposed — people whose living depends on an outcome they cannot control, who have made their peace with that and go on trading anyway. You do not live in Triz, the saying goes; you bargain with it. Aelfar is the god of everyone who took the bargain knowing the terms were unknowable.

Domains:

  • Fortune: Outcome unearned in either direction. Aelfar's power gathers around anyone who has genuinely accepted a risk and abandons anyone who has quietly hedged it.
  • The Wager: A stake placed where the result is not yet determined. The faith regards this as a sacrament and cheating at it as blasphemy in the strict sense — not immoral, but a category error.
  • Near Misses: The outcome that almost happened. Aelfar's clergy collect these obsessively, holding that they are the only direct evidence mortals ever get that the world was not going to go one way all along.

Manifestation and Symbols:

  • Aelfar is depicted blindfolded and mid-step, one foot off the ground, with no indication of where it is going to land.
  • Its sigil is a compass rose with a cracked face, borrowed from the Triz statue, or possibly lent to it.
  • Its presence shows in stories of what nearly happened. The cart that nearly took the other road. The deal that nearly closed. Nothing changes; people simply cannot stop recounting the version that did not occur.

Doctrine and Influence:

  • "A bet you cannot lose is a purchase. Do not confuse the two."
    • The founding teaching, and the reason the faith is unimpressed by prophecy, insurance and rigged games alike.
  • "Count the misses. They are the honest part of the ledger."
    • Aelfar's faithful keep tallies of outcomes that did not happen, a practice that outsiders find morbid and practitioners find steadying.

Worshippers:

  • Traders, hauliers and deal-brokers of Triz Valley, whose entire economy is exposure to an outcome nobody controls.
  • Gamblers of the devout sort, distinguishable from the ordinary kind by their habit of recording their losses in detail.
  • The Cult of Dy, at arm's length — the Cult casts to remove the chooser, Aelfar's people bet to accept the risk, and the two congregations argue about the difference constantly.

"You nearly had it. That is the proof. Nobody nearly has a fixed thing."