“She came through the door! Yes, just like that! I couldn't stop her”
Peter, a guard at Godstow
“Uhh, Agrona, that one gave me the creeps”
Simon, another guard
“Blew all the bloody candles out and caused a lot of extra work!”
Hugh of Woodstock, another guard
No-one could have predicted the interest that the pagan gods and Christian saints would show in the meetings at Godstow. The Lady of the Shadows was the first such entity to appear, and remained interested in them until their conclusion. Similarly, until her death, Dii Casses was regularly seen at the meetings.
Eventually, these supernatural beings became accepted as regular attendees, their appearance certainly drawing interest, but not the same reverence that they first commanded.
Saints and gods were not the only visitors, but more amazingly, a number of the attendees at Godstow themselves became saints and gods, and are still answering the prayers of their faithful.
The Pact of Anna was the first such pact of its kind, binding both gods and saints from the pagan rites and Christian worship in unison, however, its repercussions and fatal results made its continuing existence untenable. The Pact of Aleyn was the successor, orchestrated by Aleyn Fair, and signed by many gods and saints in person. The pact's conditions were more lenient to the members of the religious communities, while imposing restrictions on the gods and saints, requiring them to respect the followers of other religions. The pact was not bound through Aleyn, in the way the pact of Anna was, and upheld by Tiw, respected as the god of justice, and known for his fair judgement.
This then marked the beginning of an unprecedented degree of co-operation from the gods and saints, with the prayers of many being answered. It wasn't unknown for a pagan brewer to ask for the intercession of St Arnold, or a Christian juror to pray to Tiw for guidance in delivering judgement in a case.
One of Goda Tirel's earliest reforms was to make the marriage of fae and humans possible, and her compassion towards the fae became one of the defining points in her papacy. After the Godstow meetings, her work focused on the theological ramifications of the presence of the fae world being joined to the human world, she organised no less than four ecumenical councils to discuss the fae during her papacy, with a focus on issues including the implications of being able to convert oneself to a fae, and the challenges that ministering to a flock of fae would present.
Goda should not be remembered solely for her efforts in making the Church accessible to the fae: her reforms led the Holy Roman Empire into an age of peace. By having the clergy act as impartial arbiters of justice, educated in law and ethics, living among the people they were casting judgement upon, a greater degree of fairness was seen. The local lord was still supremely well off, especially compared to those on their land, but the serfs living there were more likely to have enough food to survive the winter, and punitive taxes were discouraged. These reforms were most effective in the Holy Roman Empire when acting with Gavin's scholars for secular justice.
Even though the worship of Christian saints and the observance of their feast day remained a main-stay of the Church, given the co-operation between within the pantheon of saints and gods, it became acceptable for Christians to pray to pagan gods for intercession. This was subject to a strict process of review, with care taken to only permit this in the case of a pagan god that was seen to exemplify Christian values. It was also stressed that praying to pagan gods for acts that were un-Christian was sinful and therefore discouraged.
After Goda's suppression of the worship of St Boniface and the excommunication of many of the ranking members of the Inquisition, the group went into an inward looking state of re-organisation. While the list of those excommunicated was lengthy and included some of the highest ranking members of the Church, there were rumours that not all the the cardinals reinstated at the start of Goda's papacy were as above-board as the Curia may have hoped.
The containment of St Boniface dealt the group something of a death-blow, with almost all traces of its existence vanishing.
In the 20th century, it became a fashionable sub-culture for teenage malcontents, notably correlated with an obsession with the historical anti-popes.
With the dissolution of the Pact of Anna, pagans were free to worship much more widely, and paganism enjoyed something of a resurgence in the following years. Dii Casses' consumption of many of the less widely worshipped gods had a significant long-term effect. With the loss of diversity in the pantheon of pagan gods, and a regional reluctance to worship the more widely accepted pagan gods as opposed to the local ones, many found their prayers unanswered, and would often convert to Christianity, where the saints were still answering prayers. As news of the freedom to pray to pagan gods spread, many of these villages would celebrate their heritage by returning to the worship of pagan gods, in addition to the worship of the Christian saints. Many of these villages ended up better off than some of their brethren that switched to worshipping the surviving gods, as they more frequently received blessings from both pantheons.
However, these gods did not fall out of favour: many communities remembered their old gods, and some of the gods that had served them faithfully since the meetings at Godstow: most notably, the former queen of Scotland, Wolf of the Battle and the Hunt, Wilfrida Hunter. Her sacrifice to pilot the boat to save the world from the Totalising Will has been celebrated ever since. While she is obviously unable to answer the prayers of her supplicants, the pantheon of gods looks kindly upon her memory, and will answer the prayers of the worthy in her stead.