Calistria
Calistria has
three aspects: lust, revenge, and trickery. Silver-tongued and charming, she is a
master of weaving insults into compliments and laying intricate groundwork
for retribution at its finest. She is a goddess of vengeance, but it would be a
mistake to assume that means she pursues justice. Calistria is fickle, shifting
her loyalties and interests as her whims take her—though she never
forgets a slight, and any who think she has forgiven will surely find it
is only a matter of time before they are targeted by a long-term plot of
revenge to lay them thoroughly low.
As the goddess’s whims are ever-shifting, her worshippers are also often
somewhat transient. Even among elves, worship of Calistria is usually
intermittent or secondary to faith in another deity. Prayers to Calistria arise
from individuals who find themselves driven by lust, engaged in trickery,
or driven to revenge, and the people offering those prayers may have no
commitment to the faith beyond the prayer offered in that moment. As
followers’ lives lead them in different directions, they move on to other
deities, just as the goddess herself moves from one lover to the next to suit
her shifting interests. This personal freedom is a value held dear by the
goddess and her followers alike, and perhaps one of the most central values
to elven society as a whole. Some of Calistria’s most devoted followers
work to promote this tenet, quietly working to undermine tyrannical
governments, exacting revenge upon slavers and freeing their captives, or
simply demonstrating the benefits of a freedom-driven lifestyle.
Though rumor would suggest all her temples are brothels,
these gathering spaces are often more akin to intellectual salons—albeit
more encouraging and supportive of sexual interaction between attendees
than most equivalent secular institutions. Others function more akin to
a thieves’ guild, providing a place to sow and reap rumors, plot acts of
questionable legality, and perhaps also engage in lust-driven interactions—all
activities suitable to take place behind closed doors.
Clerics of the goddess endeavor to hold the three aspects of their goddess
in balance, as a lifetime in service to any one can easily become monotonous,
and Calistria abhors her followers becoming overly consumed by a single
pursuit. Champions are sometimes more focused, such as those who dedicate
themselves to fighting slavery, but even these are careful to avoid becoming so
wrapped up in their work that they lose sight of the other aspects of life that
make it worth living.
DIVINE INTERCESSION
Signs of favor or displeasure from the Savored Sting are sometimes subtle and at other times incontrovertible. Calistria typically grants her boon to those on the path toward great vengeance and curses those who slight her followers, particularly if those followers are sex workers, though her fickle heart rarely commits to any absolute guidelines. Minor Boon: Calistria smiles on the riskiest deceptions. Once, when you roll a failure on a check to Lie, you get a critical success instead. Calistria typically grants this boon for an extremely consequential lie. Moderate Boon: A foot-long wasp finds and befriends you. It serves you as a familiar as long as you maintain Calistria’s grace. The wasp always has the burrower and flier familiar abilities. Major Boon: Calistria guides you towards vengeance. You always know the direction and distance towards the nearest creature that has wronged you and thus far gone unpunished. Minor Curse: Whenever a new person desires vengeance against you, you suffer a painful sting and are afflicted with giant wasp venom (Pathfinder Bestiary 324) at stage 1. Moderate Curse: People react as though you’re insulting them, even in normal conversation. Whenever you attempt to Make an Impression, the outcome is one degree of success worse than the result of your roll. If you converse with someone over a long enough period of time but don’t attempt to Make an Impression, you still insult them, and you suffer the effect of a critical failure to Make an Impression. Major Curse: You have wronged those unable to obtain revenge for themselves, and Calistria’s curse grants their revenge its own life. Whenever another creature imagines vengeance upon you but can’t pursue that vengeance because you are too powerful, well connected, or otherwise untouchable, a creature of roughly your level manifests out of their imagination and performs their desired revenge. Once the revenge is complete or the manifestation is destroyed, the summoned creature vanishes from existence.
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