An Athair is the senior priestess and druidic authority of a Cain among the Skyre Folk. The office is always held by a woman and exists alongside the Cain’s secular leader rather than beneath her. While the leader handles diplomacy, defense, practical communal decisions, and most ordinary political disputes, the Athair preserves religious practice, sacred traditions, and the Cain’s relationships with the living world and significant places.
Athair are trained through apprenticeship. A serving Athair teaches prospective successors the rites, histories, druidic practices, medicinal knowledge, and responsibilities required by the office over a period of years. The precise way a Cain decides which trained woman ultimately succeeds to the role belongs to that Cain’s own customs, but succession depends upon preparation rather than simple inheritance.
Skyre religious life gives particular importance to Astraphora, Maritana, Mezra, and Vogiana. Athair revere Astraphora especially through her association with untamed nature and the flourishing of living things, Maritana through the sea and adaptation, Mezra through cultivation and harvest, and Vogiana through movement and seasonal travel. These divine traditions exist alongside druidic practices whose roots reach back to the ancient liberation of the Firbolg ancestors from Fomorian rule and the relationships they formed with peoples of Caelra.
An Athair may represent her Cain at a Moot alongside its secular leader. Her authority does not make the Skyre Folk a theocracy; it instead preserves a division between practical leadership and spiritual responsibility that appears across the known Cains.