The Goddess of Greed

The **Goddess of Greed**, also known as the **Goddess of Avarice and Ambition**, is one of the gods that rule in Giantstep. She is the patron of desire, protecting those who crave what they don’t have, to those who yearn for more. She represents the realm of “wanting”, the desire to obtain more than one already has, and to obtain said things by any means necessary. The Goddess of Greed is seen as a negative figure, a shadow that will strengthen some of an individual’s darkest desires, aiming to fulfill them regardless of the cost and morals. The Goddess of Greed goes beyond mere materialism: things such as love, friendship, fulfillment, success, glory, revenge, vengeance, punishment… these things are also in the realm of one’s wants and needs, and as such, they are within the purview of the Goddess.

The Goddess of Greed is not a major god of the pantheon of Giantstep. She is considered a dark god, a bad omen to those who do not have deals with her, and an inevitable doom for those who have. She is a goddess of excess: she will give those who accept her offerings the will and strength to pursue the mortal’s goals and aspirations, but if so, they will do so at the cost of everything else: family, friends, fortune, stability, future, even one’s own life. All will be sacrificed if need so to reach the goals. However, once reached, it is not so simple as to part ways with the Goddess of Greed. She will have her claws on the mortals in question, and their desires will only grow and grow. The initial objective, that which had made them deal with the Goddess of Greed in the first place, will start looking like it was not enough. The mortals will start desiring for more, and she will continue to push them forward and forward, until they are just empty husks, having become nothing but vessels of greed itself. As such, the worship of the Goddess of Greed is forbidden in many mortal kingdoms, only really present in those areas outside of civilized law or hidden from them.

An interesting fact of the Goddess of Greed is that, while she is the patron of desires and wants, she repudiates the concept of wishes. In her and her followers’ judgement, wishes are those desires that one wants but will never pursue, and thus they are of no interest for the Goddess of Greed. She wants goals, aims, targets, concrete things that one can focus their energies on, to take action and pursue at all costs. Something vague as wishes are a different kind of want, and as such, they are not of her purview.

The Goddess of Greed is usually represented as a young woman with long, elaborate dresses and red hair. Her face, while beautiful, is scared by some other gods, who did that to her after she tried to steal from them. That is why her left eye is also missing. She sits on a golden throne, on top of mountains of treasure: gems, gold, silver, pearls… always keeping check on her hoard, so as to never let anyone take it away from her. Her single green eye always watches the mortal realm, for new things to appropriate, she is seldom represented smiling, as she still does not own enough to make her happy, and she is never satisfied with what she has, she never will.