The Elder Beings were unintentional creations of Jak'ra, forming from the largest remnants of the primordial sea of chaos just after he punched a hole in it to form Amaryllis. These immensely powerful beings, of which there are an unknown number, live outside the purview of Jak’ra, lacking his divine essence to give them real direction and thus often being monstrous and surreal in form, even more so than the already-otherworldly Gods. Their existence is known to Oerthian theologists, but rarely is there any interaction between them and the mortal plane as this would likely be disastrous. Their status as Gods or not is open to intense debate amongst theologians, although many of the Elder Beings are known to control their own individual plane, which often looks dramatically different from the Prime Materium.
How many of the Elder Beings are benevolent is unknown as no real attempt has been made to directly contact any one of them en masse until recently. In that case, it has only been an attempt to contact a specific one by a group who have worshipped this individual for some time. While Warlocks have been known to occasionally contact them as patrons, such a pact usually comes at an extremely high price and leaves the mortal end of the deal wishing they hadn’t made it. There are of course exceptions however, such as the celestial trickster known as The Striped Cat.