Groetus

 is one of Pathfinder's deities.

Description
Groetus is the god of the End Times, a sentient and cruel moonlet that looks down upon the Boneyard and waits for the last living soul to die. When Pharasma judges the last soul after the last living body dies on the Material Plane, Groetus will descend to the Boneyard and move on to the Material Plane to "clean up" and pack the dust away for another reality. No one really knows what Groetus is going to do once the last soul is judged, but is generally accepted that it will not be pleasant.

Background
Groetus is an apocalyptic god of unknown origins, perhaps predating the current incarnation of the planes. Enigmatic and malevolent, he remains infinitely patient in the face of an indefinite vigil to fulfill his mysterious purpose. Because he does not actively cultivate worshipers, much of what is known about him and his faith is limited and contradictory, built from secondhand lore repeated by scattered — and mostly insane — followers. Most folk pay him no heed or give him only scant consideration, for tangible and immediate threats are far more pressing than a god of the death of all things. This doesn't bother Groetus, for he knows the end times will come, whether mortals believe in him or not.

There are records that Groetus was worshiped in Azlanti and Thassilonian times, though he has no known kinship to Golarion's other gods and there is no evidence he was once a mortal or nature spirit. The proteans and qlippoth have no tales of his appearance or of a time before he existed.

Groetus presides over the end times — the demise of the world, or perhaps the destruction of the multiverse itself. Having silently witnessed billions of souls from countless worlds filter through the Boneyard, he is unconcerned with the fates of individual heroes, villages, or even civilizations. Despite his chaotic alignment, he is an agent of inevitable fate, ensuring that all things pass. He chose this role for himself, the dispassionate observer in balance against the dispassionate judge. Groetus's role is to close the book on this reality when the final page of its story is told. He knows only how the story ends, and uses that knowledge to piece together what is yet to come — a conflict occurs, this entity survives until the end of the story, this other entity does not, and so on — and what to do next once the tale is finished. His attention is on the final goal and the cosmic dynamics that may enable or delay that goal: the subtle movement of planes against each other, the brooding thoughts of rising gods, and the births and deaths of stars in the remote expanse of space.

Groetus rarely appears in human form, but a few records from ancient Azlant describe him as a tall, slender man wearing a gray, cowled robe that hangs heavily to the floor. He is slightly bent at the neck, as if bearing a great weight on his head, with ashen skin, hollow eyes, and long, smooth hands. His voice is the dry whisper of old paper, his laughter low and breathy, and his inflection archaic or foreign. His feet are bare and covered in soot, as if he had walked through an extinguished fire.

Groetus almost never intervenes directly in the mortal world, as if doing so were against some selfdefined code. His rare intervention on behalf of his prophets grants them a few moments of clarity at those critical times when madness would interfere with his intentions. When he is displeased, madness intensifies, phobias are born or triggered, and eyes become cloudy or weep itchy gray fluid.

Just as there are dozens of world-ending prophecies and the exact definition of "the end of all things" varies among religions and races, there are many interpretations of Groetus's role. Most of his cultists follow one of these ideologies (called "dooms"), and each doom can be considered a splinter cult of the god's vague faith. Cultists' identification with particular dooms is generally a reflection of the cultists' particular forms of madness and the visions these insanities inspire. Two worshipers with different ideologies may ally with or ignore each other, but rarely do they fight, for time will prove one or both of them wrong.