Moonlight Guide

From gronkfinder

The Moonlight Guide is a deity worshiped by the Moon-Gazer gnolls. This god is a protector of the souls of the dead first and foremost, a beacon who leads the deceased to the moon Abashmu. Most Moon-Gazer tribes believe that dead souls rest on Abashmu, safe from the violence and hazards of the world, though some instead believe the souls form the moon itself. Regardless of the details of the faith, totems to the Moonlight Guide dot the landscape of the Urra Highlands where the gnolls live, circles of stacked spherical stones where worship of the god takes place.

The Moonlight Guide is often depicted as an ashen faced gnoll, holding a flame in one hand and the moon in the other - many of his clerics and oracles rub ash or powdered bone into their fur to give themselves a similar appearance.

For millennia the Moonlight Guide has been heavily syncretized with the Chaskan deity Shai, after increased contact with the expansionist Viridia brought many humans and their religion to the borders of the Moon-Gazers territory. Some missionaries from the Dominion attempted to convert the gnolls to the worship of the Chaskan pantheon, but the Moon-Gazers simply saw Shai as a natural aspect of their own god, adopting some influences from his domain and depiction while still fundamentally retaining the Moonlight Guide as their own deity.