The Guardian Gods

Eight were sent to hold the world steady. They watch over it still, unseen, even as a stolen voice damns them by their own names.

Mortals call them the Guardian Gods. In truth they are the eight Virae Sentinels, the highest Virean, sent to watch over Caeloren and hold the mortal world within the order of Vire. Each is a Sentinel. Eight was the number chosen, and the eight are co-equal: no king among them, and no portfolios. Not one is the god of war, or the sea, or the harvest. Together they uphold all of Caeloren. Beneath them serve their agents, the Caelori.

They are never seen. The Sentinels dwell on the Divine Plane, beyond mortal sight. Only seers, through a hard spiritual discipline, can look upon the Plane and the Sentinels directly. Everyone else knows the divine only at second hand.

How they reach us: the agents

Eight beings cannot hear a million prayers or stand in a million places. So each Sentinel commands its own network of agents, lesser Virean spread through its part of the world, who carry the Sentinel's will down to mortals and mortal need back up to it. These agents are the Caelori, the lesser Virean who serve under the Sentinels, and the whole of the divine that most people will ever touch. The West knows them as the Arnar, the gods' sworn watchmen, a chain of command; the East as the Nemai, the threads, the Sentinels' voices woven through the world.

This network is exactly what the Fracture broke. The Hollow Crown did not silence the Sentinels; it seized their agents and now wears their faces. The Sentinels still watch, cut off, while a forger speaks in their name.

Those who see: the seers

Almost no mortal can perceive the Plane. The few who can are seers, and the discipline that opens their sight is a deep meditation: stilling the self entirely and reaching past the veil with one's own sliver of Vire. In the East, seers are revered and trained, the Conclave's oracles are seers who serve the cities, and it is through them the Syrai believe they read fate. In the West, a discipline-and-order culture distrusts anyone claiming unsanctioned sight from heaven, so Rukken seers are rare, hidden, and often hunted.

Since the Fracture, seers are the most haunted mortals alive. They alone look on the Plane directly, but they no longer see it whole: the Hollow has fogged the very sight of the divine, and a seer beholds only a churning, distorted ruin where the Sentinels should be. They cannot see past the Hollow. What a seer alone can perceive is that something is deeply wrong, the fog where clear truth should be, while everyone else, fed by the forged Caelori, senses nothing amiss at all.

The Eight

Each Sentinel carries two names, one used in the West and one in the East, the way one being can live in two tongues. They are told apart not by domain but by character, and by the part of the world each watches. Two of the eight are now the warring empires' chosen gods.

Ordinal	West	East	The Sentinel
The First	Forntor	Palthys	The Eldest. First sent and longest-watching; the gravest counsel, the slowest to anger.
The Second	Korran	Sthenys	The Unbroken. Unmoving and unyielding, never leaves a post nor takes a backward step. The West's god.
The Third	Dornor	Syrios	The Far-Seer. Patient and far-seeing; the seers and oracles commune with this Sentinel. The East's god.
The Fourth	Wealor	Kharys	The Gentle. Mercy and hope, the tender of the weak and the lost.
The Fifth	Gornor	Menys	The Wrathful. Fierce against Rive-corruption, the hardest of the eight to restrain.
The Sixth	Wendor	Planys	The Wanderer. Restless, walking the borders of world and Plane; the scout of the eight.
The Seventh	Morvar	Sigys	The Silent Watcher. It never speaks, only watches; the most remote, and no one can say whether its silence is its nature or the forgery.
The Eighth	Frehor	Neonys	The Youngest. Last sent, eager and untested; it bonds most easily with mortal seers.

The two gods of the war

Since the Fracture, each empire reveres the Sentinel who watches its own lands and damns the rest as demons and idols.

• The Great Rukken Empire worships Korran, the Unbroken, whose unyielding, never-retreating nature is the West's own. To the East, this same Sentinel is Sthenys, a reviled idol.
• The Syrene Conclave worships Syrios, the Far-Seer, whose far-sight its oracles seek. To the West, this same Sentinel is Dornor, a heresy.

The cruelty of it is that both are real, both are true Sentinels of the Eight, and the war damns six other guardians who never took a side.

Canon in progress: the region each Sentinel watches waits on the world map. See canon-summary.md.