Galaena

Gambling Houses

> "Oh Lady of Fate, Oh Lord of Time, lend me thy gifts. The great unknown, pierced by thy half-blind gaze. Lend me thy wisdom, guide mine own words, and unveil the truth of what is to come" **- A prayer of prophecy, often muttered by priests of Galaena**
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Galaena is the youngest among Haven's pantheon. Not even seventy years past, Galaena was the divine child of the War of Time, born out of the death of his mother, Tanana, and the sacrifice of her father, The Game Master. Though they were not his parents in the traditional, mortal sense, Galaena rules over her progenitor's combined domains of Time, Fate, and Prophecy.

Neither Lord nor Lady, Galaena exists as the contradictory combination of the gods which came before them. He possesses both the playful, mischievous nature of the Game Master and the cold, calculating madness of Tanana. Her prodding moniker, the Coin Toss, is something of a play on his duality, as the invokers who attempt to contact their god are often making the metaphorical coin toss as to which aspect of their patron's wisdom they will encounter.

To newer members of the faith, this may be a daunting idea, for how can someone be simultaneously one, two, and three different beings in one. Their elders, though, know that Galaena is not nearly as enigmatic as her mother was, nor as mischievous as his father. In fact, Galaena is an imperfect, but unique, fusion of the two, with each of their greatest strengths and weaknesses. With her two elder halves offering her wisdom beyond her years, and the world falling increasingly into chaos, Galaena fights to find balance in both himself and her dominion on Haven.

## **History (Legends)**

### **The War of Time (2019-2020 P.E.)**

* Galaena was born at the conclusion of the War, formed out of the rival spirits of the Game Master and Tanana. After the latter was killed in the war's final battle, and the Game Master was forced to sacrifice his individuality to take control of Time, which was rapidly decaying in the absence of its mistress. In the aftermath, Galaena was brought into being, appearing in the world in early 2,214 P.E., approximately two hundred years after the disappearance of the Wardens in Compass Rose and the official end of the war in 2020 P.E.

### **Post-War of Time (2020-2,214 P.E.)**

* Even in the wake of the War of Time, Galaena's parent gods, Tanana and the Game Master continued to operate on Haven from Time's Realm, though they were distant, with their main consciousness' focused on fighting or aiding the Warden's respectively. It would be during this time that scholars would, from sporadic contact with their deities, glean a vague sense of the events of the final battle of the War of Time. However, the scholarly sense of scale was somewhat warped during this time, as it was widely believed that these events took place in the increasingly distant past, rather than being concurrent with their own lives. The current theory, that the Warden's fought for two hundred and fifty years, locked outside of normal time, is supported by Galaena themself as well as the reappearance of warriors claiming to be the Wardens of the Grey Rose in late 2,277 P.E. though their claim was initially seen as dubious.

### **Arrival on Haven (2214-Present P.E.)**

* Whether Galaena's actual genesis took place in 2020 or 2,214 P.E. is hotly debated, but none can truly deny that it was in 2214 that he first made contact with Haven. The Black Day, the fifth of the Month of Seeds, 2214, began when suddenly, thousands of Invokers of Tanana across Haven fell upon their knees and wept. Their grief, caused by the sudden shattering of their connection to their Goddess, was followed shortly by a similar severing to the Invokers of the Game Master. The Black Day was soon superseded by The White Night, during which Galaena appeared to the broken invokers and restored their powers, allowing them to once more create miracles in her name.

#### **The War of the Elders (2215 P.E.)**

* Unlike most wars on Haven, the War of the Elders was not fought along territorial lines, but rather denominational ones. A relatively minor conflict, the war was caused by the distrust fostered by former members of the Church of the Game Master and Tanana's Church of Time over the long history of their rivalry. Thanks, however, to the intervention of Lady Luna and Lord Sol, as well as Galaena himself, much of the potential bloodshed was avoided. Though the tension lingered initially, the church has seemingly stabilized over the past half-century, with much of the bitter old guard passing on into memory.

## **Elder Gods**

### **Tanana, the Elder Goddess of Time**

* As Galaena's "Mother" and the former Goddess of Time, Tanana ruled over Haven as its guiding hand, trying to steer it away from a terrible disaster, which she had foreseen upon tapping into her divine powers for the first time. Witnessing this awful and seemingly inevitable future caused her to gouge out her own eyes in grief, unwilling to ever look upon the world again, though she remained fully aware of its events due to her ability to perfectly perceive Haven's past, present, and future. Through her "Grand Design", Tanana endeavoured to control Haven's fate, much to the chagrin of her antithesis, The Game Master.

### **The Game Master, the Elder God of Fate**

* The "Father" of Galaena, The Game Master was the hand in the shadows of Haven. Only coming into power in 2018 P.E. after having been trapped away for millennia by Tanana, he was driven by his Great Game. He advocated among his followers a drive to better themselves and to choose their own Great Game. A part of The Game Master's Great Game was to allow the citizens of haven to find and create their own fates. Little else is known of it as the War of Time started shortly after. Those who worshiped him often kept their worship to the shadows and were even hunted by followers of the other gods.

### **The War of Time**

* In early 2019 P.E. Tanana instigated the War of Time after Zet'tallan was dealt a mortal blow by the Aether-beast Muldratha when the latter corrupted the Keystone, poisoning the Wanderer. Believing this timeline to be doomed, Tanana allied herself with the Game Master and took the monikers of "The Laughing King" and "The One Who Sleeps in the Void", founding an apocalyptic cult using Isaac Embersteel as her mouthpiece. Through the cult and aided by Caliban the Traitoress, she engaged the forces of Compass Rose, including the Grey Wardens. Unfortunately, the Wardens were unable to prevent the cult's forces from reaching the keystone, the destruction of which sent out shockwaves across the leylines and would have destroyed Haven as we know it, had the Wardens not courageously entered the Realm of Time and slew its mistress with the help of a new/old Game Master, who they had rescued from the ancient past before he had driven mad by his imprisonment by Tanana. Shortly thereafter, the Game Master would take her place as Master of Time, sacrificing himself to stabilize the timeline and create a new god, who named themself Galaena.