Apito

Mordecai: elves worship the Oak Mother, the mother of all gods; her name is Apito; her angels must remain free or she will destroy all the worlds — and 'we'll get to what they really are later' (B2 ch. 17). The 201st Security Group's Apito Education Center is a Corrupt Temple on the map, and Donut, in an Anklet of the Fallen Oak, is named the Oak Fell, 'She Who Ends' (B2 ch. 20). The angel was Miss Quill's illusion (B2 ch. 24).

Nekhebit's crossbow tells how the elf mothers abandoned Nekhebit for Apito, the Oak Goddess (B3 ch. 24); Coolie's note names her with Eris as a god always sponsored (B3 ch. 32); Grull's card names her as his mother (B3 ch. 33).

The goddess behind the book's title. Queen Imogen tells her story: Taranis and his wife Apito held the first masquerade in the Halls of Ascendency for children who are always vying for control; Grull asked why a party without masks was called one, and her answer — the masks are the smiles and the goodwill — became gospel; Yarilo broke the peace and she banished him to the Nothing (B5 ch. 65). Now the party is her sacrament: cast once in a life by the most divine, with a guest list from the goddess herself chosen to sow discord, protections put in place 'by Apito herself', a peace seal, and a boon rumoured to be immortality that no cleric has ever earned (B5 ch. 64, B5 ch. 65, B5 ch. 68). She appears to Signet in a dungeon to invite her (B5 ch. 67); when Signet cuts her own throat, 'Apito has turned her back' and the spell fails to cast (B5 ch. 74); her cleric is shunned (B5 ch. 76). The queen's necklace, offered as the party's greatest prize, turns out to be a Memorial Crystal: Apito — a crystal only a fallen god leaves — and Emberus adds it to the search for Geyrun's killer (B5 ch. 77).