The Forgemaster

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When the first light of the Beacon fell upon the galaxy, it illuminated little more than gas and dust, charging the formless void with magic. This arcane flux churned and shifted with the cosmos, and from it was born the Forgemaster, the second of the Elder Gods. The Forgemaster was the first creator, who built the galaxy from swirling dust in the first age of the divines. They are the maker of the great physical edifices of the gods, and of the bodies of the gods’ greatest children.

Origin and Mythology

The Forgemaster is one of the Elder Gods, born of the shifting magic of the cosmos when the galaxy was young and the stars were but a glimmer in the eyes of infant divines. While in those ancient days it was the wish of the Light Bringer to let the gravity of their stars act as it would upon the primordial dust of the galaxy, the Forgemaster took it upon themselves to sculpt planets and constellations from the Light Bringer's work, and this disagreement very nearly spawned the first divine war, headed off only by the birth of the Two-Faced Ambassador. In the later divine ages, the Forgemaster built the Elder Dragons from purest crystal of the deep sky.

Cult, Rituals, and Veneration

The Forgemaster is primarily interested in mortal activities of building, and of the maintenance of structures and technology. In general, cults of the Forgemaster are incorporated into the organization of manufacturing facilities and firms, and are only rarely centralized under state control. In order to enure the quality of products and reliability of manufacturing devices, public festivals for the Forgemaster are sponsored by manufacturing concerns, typically center on the dedication of new machinery to the god. Special certification is typically required to operate these sacred devices. Alternatively, they might have a local steel mill pour a libation of molten metal, or devote the finest products of the preceding year to the god. Tools devoted to the Forgemaster must be used until their are worn out; it is sacrilegious to abandon or scrap them while they are still useful.

Many consumer and industrial devices are stamped with holy symbols of the Forgemaster (commonly crucibles, wreaths of hand tools, or fabric of chain) to represent their makers devotion to the master of all craft. These are often rubbed while quietly intoning prayers when the device malfunctions, or when its reliability is urgently needed, that the Forgemaster may intervene and repair, or see function through hardship, the device in question. The most common offerings made as part of these small prayers is to stamp, engrave, or impress sacred symbols of the Forgemaster onto a dedicated surface, or donate tools or components to the local shrines. In some regions, it is common to fashion a tool out of soft material such as clay as part of an offering; though its lifetime is limited, it is still sacred for the duration of its use.

Machinery and infrastructure sacred to the Forgemaster (through being directly offered and consecrated, or being made of material offered to the god) can be used as public infrastructure; privatization of such infrastructure requires that the new owners maintain very low barriers to entry, as substantial decreases in utilization is considered similarly sacrilegious to the abandonment of tools.

Craftspeople and industrial workers often offer small parts of their profits or wages to the forgemaster as part of their prayers, and the most frequent regular rite is the modification or extension of shrines in workshops and factories, frequently made of clay, paper, or other fleeting material, so that the constant maintenance of it in pristine form may be a show of ongoing piety.

Starship crews will often leave donations or sacred symbols at spaceport shrines (with varying levels of ceremony depending on region and the importance of the journey) in order to ensure the reliability of their vessels during the voyage.

Public transport operations frequently reserve empty seats or areas of their stations to the Forgemaster.

Depictions, Epithets, and Followers

The Forgemaster has been known as Vulcan, Our Lord in Iron, and The First Weaver.