Elder Gods

**Elder Gods** are ancient, powerful beings who seek to bring about the end of the world in *Shadows of Forbidden Gods*. At the start of a new game, the player assumes the mantle of one Elder God, with their choice determining their play style overall strategy. Initially, the only Elder God available is She Who Will Feast, but winning a game for the first time will unlock all other Elder Gods.

## List of Elder Gods

### She Who Will Feast

**She Who Will Feast** is an Elder God in the form of an enormous serpent who has been incubating in the void between stars. After millions of years, the stars have entered the proper alignment for her awakening, and the time has come for her to awaken and devour the world so that she might bear offspring who will go on to devour other worlds.

As the first and only Elder God available to new players, She Who Will Feast is a versatile Elder God who can achieve victory through various means, but she is most adept at spreading Shadow. She Who Will Feast starts the game with the Supplicant Agent, who spawns at the Elder Tomb.

### Iastur, the Laughing King

**Iastur, the Laughing King** is an Elder God who knows the secret truth behind the creation of all worlds, past, present, and future. While Iastur finds this secret hilarious, it is horrifying enough to twist and break the minds of mortals. Iastur desires to spread the truth to all in order to end the existing world and usher in the next.

Iastur is designed for players seeking an easier experience, and specializes in spreading Madness and manipulating the personalities of Heroes via a special Tome, which can be bestowed and taken from individuals and affects all who come into contact with it. However, the Tome is a double-edged sword, as a hero can acquire it and use it in a ritual against Iastur. Iastur starts the game with a Supplicant Agent at the Elder Tomb.

### Vinerva

**Vinerva** is an Elder God of nature bent on removing a threat that ceaselessly encroaches on her domain: humanity. To this end, Vinerva entices humans with her boon-giving fruits, granting them power so that they will welcome her with open arms, oblivious to the fact that Vinerva's boons come with a dire cost.

Vinerva specializes in spreading Gifts that are initially beneficial to Rulers and Heroes, but later cause deleterious effects. She must avoid being too generous with her Gifts, however, as too many Gifts can end up making their recipients too powerful for Vinerva to overcome. Vinerva starts the game with no Agents, but she has an extra Agent Recruitment Point to compensate.

### Ophanim, the Divine Beyond

**Ophanim, the Divine Beyond** is an Elder God of false light. He manipulates a populace by threatening them with Shadow, then offering to drive away the Shadow with his light. As faith in Ophanim grows, so does his grip over human minds as his faithful cast out non-believers and convert kingdoms into theocracies. Meanwhile, regions languishing in Shadow also become Ophanim's tools of conquest, scaring people into flocking to his light for protection.

Ophanim specializes in Faith, which he can spread in areas with or near Shadow. Faith drives Shadow back, but gives Ophanim power over the location. Eventually, Ophanim can take over kingdoms and use them to make war on those that have not accepted his faith. Kingdoms under Ophanim's Shadow can become Dark Empires that also under Ophanim's control.

### Mammon, Wealth of the Mountain

**Mammon, Wealth of the Mountain** is an Elder God that was brought into being by an extravagant festival held by an ancient civilization to celebrate its abundant wealth, accumulated through the mining of a rich vein of gold beneath a mountain. Unknown to the revelers, their dances and chants became an inadvertent ritual that called forth Mammon, who tainted them with a rapacious and insatiable desire for material riches, thus paving the way for their bloody downfall.

Mammon specializes in manipulating Trade Routes, and can give Rulers and Heroes an unhealthy obsession with Gold, undermining civilization from within and turning friends into envious foes.

### Cordyceps Hive Mind

The **Cordyceps Hive Mind** is a rapacious fungal Elder God that grows by infesting insects and humans, who are controlled by pheromones and mutated into vessels to spread the Hive Mind ever further.

The Cordyceps Hive Mind begins with a small hive of insects under the thrall of the fungus. These insects must be used to infest humans, who can covertly spread the fungus to others as long as the infestation does not fully mature, otherwise an infested will convert into a monstrous soldier of the Hive Mind. When the Hive Mind grows strong enough, it can unleash lethal Vespid Swarms to eradicate humanity and usher in a new age of its supremacy over the world.

### The Broken Maker

The **Broken Maker** is an Elder God that is itself incomplete, and yet it eternally strives to mold mortals into perfection, heedless of the cost in lives and unable to realize that its own flaws render its goals impossible. It will foster the rise of an entire civilization and enter a long slumber, only to awaken, annihilate its matured creation over the most minute flaw, and start fresh in an attempt to correct the flaw.

The Broken Maker is designed for advanced players, and campaigns with it have no turn limit and a cyclical cadence that encourages strategic experimentation. The game does not end with the Broken Maker's initial victory or defeat, and instead it returns to sleep for a long period and reawakens to wreak havoc on a changed world. When the Broken Maker prevails with an apocalypse, then during its slumber a new civilization will arise with buffs based on how the previous civilization was destroyed. However, the Broken Maker can also strengthen its future position by creating hidden caches of its power and afflicting bloodlines with curses that endure across generations.

### Death's Games

**Death's Games** is a "bonus" Elder God whose actions are determined by drawing and playing various cards, offering a unique play style that requires the player to adapt their strategy to random chance and consider how to best use the cards, both helpful and harmful, they currently hold.

## Notes

* Originally, each Elder God was unlocked in succession by winning games. For example, winning with She Who Will Feast would unlock Iastur, and then winning with Iastur would unlock Vinerva, and so on. This was changed with version 1.0 to unlock all Elder Gods by winning a single game with She Who Will Feast, allowing players to more quickly gain access to their preferred Elder God.
* Since *Shadows of Forbidden Gods* is structured around each Elder God providing a different play style for a given campaign, players have popularized modding in their own custom Elder Gods to expand the game's replayability. Some notable mods include "The Living Void", "Adolia, the Faceless Memory", "Chandalor, the Cursed Bloom", "Ixthus, King of Cups", "Escamrak", "Kishi, God of Bloodshed", and "Mekhane, the Broken God".