Before there were kings, the oldest powers gathered beneath the world-tree and swore to keep its roots from consuming its branches.

They were already ancient then. Their first covenant was not creation but restraint: Wodan would seek knowledge, Tiwaz would measure its use, and Nerthus would preserve what neither could command. The other gods joined through bargains, kinship, and old necessity. No surviving account agrees on who summoned the first assembly.

The world is a great ash-rooted structure whose branches and roots extend beyond mortal sight.

The gods did not make all that exists; they inherited its burdens and keep its oldest boundaries. The sun, storms, seasons, and paths of the dead are not possessions but agreements continually renewed. Wodan reads signs in the branches, Nerthus feels the roots’ distress, and Hel tends the dark passage beneath them. Beyond the known worlds lies a silence the gods refuse to name.

The gods seldom answer plainly.

A community may receive a dream, a storm at an impossible hour, a harvest that fails in a patterned way, or a stranger who speaks with the wrong person’s voice. Clergy serve as keepers of rites and interpreters of signs, but no priest can claim a god’s full authority. Mortals are expected to maintain the old covenants through hospitality, oathkeeping, burial customs, and care for the land.

The dead pass first through Hel’s quiet halls, where memory is weighed but not judged.

Those who die with oaths fulfilled may be welcomed to Wodan’s high hall; the battle-slain are not promised glory, only a place at his table if he chooses them. The unburied and forgotten linger near the mortal world until Nerthus’s seasonal rites restore their names. No soul is certain of its destination, and even the gods speak of death as a road whose far end they cannot see.

Wodan hoards foreknowledge that Tiwaz believes should guide just rule, while Donar’s blunt defense of mortals repeatedly disrupts Wodan’s careful designs.

Loki exploits the strain between them, and Frija conceals bargains that might otherwise unite the assembly. Nerthus opposes the gods whenever their feuds poison the land; Hel insists that every conflict ends in a reckoning, though Eostre keeps urging renewal. Baldr’s compassion makes him a mediator, but his presence unsettles Hel, who knows how fragile every reprieve is.

The Alte Götter have no universal church or single high priest.

Their worship is maintained by local halls, roadside shrines, seasonal gatherings, and family rites. Each settlement chooses a keeper of customs, while specialists—seers of Wodan, oath-speakers of Tiwaz, and mourners devoted to Hel—may travel between communities. The assembly has no permanent ruler: Wodan’s influence is immense, but Tiwaz contests his authority, and Nerthus can halt any gathering by withdrawing her consent.

Ancient obligation, costly wisdom, the limits of divine power, and the fragile bargains linking mortals, land, and death.

Distant and austere.

The gods are real but seldom intimate; their favor is inferred from signs, seasons, and consequences rather than granted through easy conversation.

The assembly ranges from lawful good to chaotic evil, with most gods occupying difficult ground between.

Their alignments describe their instincts, not a shared moral code.