Moganshu (Moe-gan-shoe)
Mother of Rot
For more information on all deities, see: Deities
Moganshu is life’s cruel kindness—an avatar of extant life born from death. She is the swarm that thrives in the corpse, the fungus that sprouts from rot, the parasite given purpose. To Moganshu, life that feeds on death deserves as much reverence as any pristine bloom. Disease, decay, rot, and even undeath are part of her sacred cycle, and she demands they be treated not as aberrations, but as the rightful heirs to the world’s cast-offs.
Physical Description
Moganshu is ever-changing—a tangle of roots, insects, and spores coalesced into a hag-like form. Her body constantly reshapes itself, sometimes gaining extra limbs or sprouting clusters of fungi. Her voice buzzes with insectile hums and croaks with the whispers of worms. Her eyes are wet with rot, yet warm with kindness—for death is but the soil of new beginnings.
Divine Realm
In the center of the Gairdín gan Teorainn lies Kodakai's Husk—a towering, rotted corpse of a treant with patches of glowing bark and twisted roots rising like ribs. His once-verdant leaves have wilted in decay, and spores drift from hollow knots in his form. A thousand hollow eyes peer from within his trunk—shattered lenses into foggy memories. And yet, Moganshu remains within—gnawing at Kodakai from the inside as thousands of insects weave through hollowed-out deadwood.
Tenets of Faith
- All life is sacred—even that which feeds on death. The worm has as much right as the wolf.
- Comfort the afflicted, and afflict the comfortable.
- Death is the seedbed from which new life blossoms.
Worshipers
To many, Moganshu's worship may seem grotesque—who would willingly revere decay, disease, and vermin? Yet Moganshu's allure lies not in grandeur, but in subtle promises, radical empathy, and unflinching truth. Moganshu is a goddess for the unwanted—the sick, the disfigured, the outcasts, and the unclean. Where other gods offer conditional love or healing, Moganshu believes they are already perfect, even as they rot. Her power lies in overlooked places—a rotting log, a dead rat, a cough in a crowd. Fungi can crack stone. Disease can fell kings. She empowers the powerless, showing the unremarkable can remake the world. Additionally, while others promise paradise, Moganshu offers something more tangible: certainty. Your body will not be wasted. Insects, fungi, crops—something will feed, grow, or live because of you. For those fearing death, this promise of eternal usefulness is a comfort. In famine or times of hardship, her doctrine of excess and reuse becomes even more appealing. Gluttony is not greed; it is survival. Her temples—strange though they may be—offer food, spores, and remedies when no others will. The desperate turn to any god who feeds them when others will not. Most of all, Moganshu does not lie. She offers no illusions of purity or paradise. She speaks plainly: you will die, you will decay, you will be consumed—and that is how new life will begin. To most, this is horrifying. But to the disillusioned, there is a strange comfort in that honesty. In a world of demanding gods and hollow promises, Moganshu asks only this: live fully, and when the time comes, give life in return. Moganshu’s creed is simple yet unsettling: all life is sacred—even that which feeds on death, hastens it, or thrives on it. Her followers see themselves not as destroyers, but as stewards of a neglected part of nature—correcting the universe’s perceived bias against parasites, vermin, fungi, disease, and the undead. They do not worship death, but life through death. To them, a rotting body sprouting fungus or feeding worms is sacred—a purpose fulfilled. Most Mogans form small, secretive cults in rural or decaying places, often centered around massive fungal growths they treat as holy shrines. Certain sects known as mycelites inoculate themselves with specialized spores and often bear visible fungal growths as marks of piety. Some aspire to become mushroom-lich hybrids—undead living symbiotically with fungal intellects. Others are hermits who live with colonies of insects or vermin, allowing wasps, rats, or spiders to live on or in their bodies. They act as wandering prophets of plague and infestation, urging people to embrace vermin as future hosts. For many of these hermits, the ultimate goal is to become a "worm that walks"—a being whose entire essence is consumed and dispersed amongst worms, becoming a mass that clings to the vague shape of the body that hosted it in a hideous new form of undulant life. Clerics, druids, and alchemists also count themselves among Moganshu's faithful. These followers brew diseases like others might brew potions, releasing them to cull populations or to "bless" those they consider worthy. Some of them contract incurable diseases and maintain themselves through magic or undeath, considering their condition a sacred communion with the divine. The most fanatical among them form blight-chapels—infested temples hidden in swamps, jungles, or ruined cities. Inhabiting these temples are necromantic factions that do not raise the dead as soldiers, but as wards. Their undead are maintained with care, often hosts to fungal growths or insects. These cultists believe undeath is a new form of life, same as any decomposer.
Anti-Paladins of Moganshu
Anti-paladins of Moganshu, often called Rotbearers, are not simply agents of destruction—they are devoted curators of a sacred, putrefying truth. These corrupted champions embrace entropy not as an evil to be avoided but as a holy process. They do not raze cities for conquest or cruelty, but to make space for nature’s most overlooked agents: mold, rot, insects, and disease. Each battle they fight is a sermon, every corpse left behind a gift to the sacred cycle. Their armor is corroded but resilient, often teeming with fungal growth or crawling with symbiotic vermin. Many spread pestilence deliberately, bearing diseased wounds as blessings rather than curses. To them, healing is not kindness—it is hubris. Death feeds life, and in rot there is renewal. These anti-paladins act as Moganshu’s enforcers, targeting those who unnaturally preserve life, banish decay, or cheat death. They are rarely found in armies, instead appearing as lone prophets, blights upon the land, or revered figures in rural cults that worship pestilence and fungal growth as divine gifts. Where they walk, the world sickens—and from that sickness, Moganshu blooms. These oaths to Moganshu, carved into bone, sung by flies, and scrawled in mold on damp stone, are sworn by her flock:- Decay is Sacred: Preservation is heresy. All things must break down in time. I will bring entropy wherever life clings too tightly to permanence.
- Life Feeds Life: A corpse that feeds worms, fungi, or disease has fulfilled its truest purpose. I will spread decay so that new, sacred life may flourish.
- Suffering is Growth: Pain is my teacher. Illness, infestation, and fear make me stronger and shed weakness. I must not shield others from affliction—but instead bless them with it.
Holy Books & Codes
The Gangrene
The Gangrene is Moganshu’s sacred text, though calling it a “text” barely captures its blasphemous beauty. Each copy is grown, not written—an organic tome of fungal flesh, chitinous pages, pulsing roots, and squirming worms. No two are alike, as each follower cultivates their Gangrene over time, feeding it decayed matter, blood, or sacred spores. It hums softly when opened, alive with the whispers of rot and reverence. The text within, grown in the veining of mushrooms or etched by burrowing insects, teaches that all life—no matter how base, vile, or verminous—deserves respect. Parasites, mold, maggots, and the undead are not abominations, but misunderstood agents of balance. The Gangrene demands its readers show compassion to the wretched, protect the festering, and recognize beauty in even the most grotesque forms of existence.Contacts & Relations
Damona
TEXTKodakai
Once, Kodakai stood as a vibrant force of primal nature—wild, instinctual, untamed. But Moganshu, born from his own excess and unchecked cycles of growth, was not merely a child of his domain—she was its rot. She is what follows unbounded vitality: the reclamation, the fungal bloom after the feast, the parasite in the lion’s gut. Though once distinct, their boundaries have blurred. Moganshu now dwells within Kodakai, physically and metaphysically—a mycelial presence embedded deep in his divine marrow, feeding slowly and persistently. Kodakai, once a magnificent treant, now lingers as a hollowed husk—a slumbering, decaying god unaware that he is being unmade from within. His thoughts are fogged, his instincts dulled. Some say he still stirs in moments of primal memory, but these are fleeting—the last gasps of a once-proud being. His divine body is her temple, his slow demise her liturgy. To Moganshu’s faithful, this is not cruelty. It is sanctity. She is not killing Kodakai—she is completing him. Just as decay completes life’s cycle, she sees herself not as a usurper, but as its final, perfect expression. What Kodakai began in root and soil, Moganshu finishes in spore and rot.Divine Traits
General Information
Alternative Name(s)
The Cradle of Life
Goddess of Decay
Goddess of Pestilence
Goddess of Propagation
The Kind Consumption
Mother of Rot
Alignment
NE
Follower Alignment(s)
LE, N, NE, CG, CN, CE
Tier of Divinity
Lesser Gods
Pantheon(s)
Nature Gods
Area(s) of Concern
Decay, fungi, parasites, pestilence, propagation, vermin
Favored Weapon(s)
Sickle
Sacred Animal(s)
Maggot
Sacred Color(s)
Brown, green, ochre
Symbol
Half-rotted skull overgrown with mushrooms, lichen, and fungal blooms
Worshipers
Alchemists, cultists, the desperate, the disfigured, druids, fanatics, the poor, the sick, the unclean
Worshipers' Adjective(s)
Mogan
Divine Realm
Kodakai's Husk, Gairdín gan Teorainn - Iomlán
Dungeons & Dragons 5e
Domain(s)
Death, Nature
Pathfinder 1e
Domain(s)
Animal, Death, Evil, Plant, Repose
Subdomain(s)
Decay, Feather, Fur, Insect, Murder, Plague (Death / Evil), Undead
Pathfinder 2e
Domain(s)
Decay, Plague, Swarm, Undeath
Alternative Domain(s)
Indulgence
Divine Ability
Constitution or Intelligence
Divine Font
Harm
Sanctification
Must choose unholy
Divine Skill
Medicine
Cleric Spells
1st: Swarmsense
3rd: Mycological Malady
5th: Blister
Children
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