Urgathoa
Urgathoa demands that her faithful reject moderation and self-restraint
at all costs, instead urging reckless gluttony, constant experimentation,
and the relentless pursuit of appetites of the flesh. Above all, Urgathoa’s
children must feed their endless hunger. They must dine from every great
hall, striving to fully satiate their cravings as they feast, for every morsel
bears a sacred truth gleaned only from its consumption. Her followers should
taste the flesh and drink the lifeblood of other sapient creatures to discover
what hidden thirsts their essence might quench. Only the weak fear to indulge
those yearnings they mislabel as strange and taboo, for even poison can be
savored as a sweet nectar upon the tongue if one is strong enough to relish
its torment. Disease and infection are but tests of her followers’ conviction
and should be willingly contracted and endured, as Urgathoa reveals her
most treasured secrets in the fevered dreams that often accompany these
afflictions. Undeath—seen by so many as a perversion of the mortal form—
is the ultimate transcendence beyond the body’s limitations, for those who
defy the hypocrisy of death’s judgmental gaze shall never know an existence
where their desires remain unfulfilled. Nowhere are these tenets of putting
one’s personal gratification and sensation first more espoused than in
Urgathoa’s holy text, Serving Your Hunger, written by the Pallid
Princess’s first champion, Dason.
The church of Urgathoa is organized as a matriarchy. Usually, a powerful
female cleric presides over each temple, leading a congregation composed
mostly of necromancers, undead, or those hoping to eventually become undead.
While most worshippers of Urgathoa concern themselves less with spreading
her faith than increasing their own pleasure in her name, they often work
together to ensure that her temples are devoted to offering experiences rife with
pure sensation. Temples with more experienced clerics tend to offer services
that can satisfy more peculiar, and often grotesque, hungers.
Senior clergy of Urgathoa sometimes practice a ritual known as the
Reaping, in which they don clean gray robes and arm themselves with scythes
before heading out into the surrounding countryside to deal as much death
and destruction as they can upon worshippers of Urgathoa’s most hated
enemies. During the slaughter, each cleric attempts to inflict wounds that
spatter as much blood and gore upon their garments as possible, believing
that if Urgathoa is pleased by the results of the Reaping, she will grant a
boon to each worshipper who participated. The blood-soaked robes from a
successful Reaping are often displayed in temples of Urgathoa as symbols of
the goddess’s approval of the local clergy’s efforts.
DIVINE INTERCESSION
Urgathoa interferes in mortal affairs to fuel her own self-gratification and obsession with observing new sensations. Minor Boon: You feast on the spoils of life and death. You gain the benefits of the irongut goblin heritage, regardless of your ancestry. If you already have this heritage, the circumstance bonus increases to +4. Moderate Boon: Urgathoa blesses you as one of her children. You gain negative healing. Major Boon: When you contract contagions, you experience fever dreams filled with insight. Once afflicted with a disease, you gain the effects of foresight with yourself as the target until no longer afflicted with any disease. Minor Curse: You must overindulge or partake in forbidden feasts before you find yourself even remotely sated. You need to eat 20 times as much food as normal to avoid starvation, though you always feel hungry regardless of how much you eat. If you dine on the flesh and blood of sapient creatures, you need to eat only the normal amount of such meals and your hunger abates. Moderate Curse: Urgathoa cuts you off from positive energy without granting you the blessing of undeath. You are harmed by positive effects and don’t recover Hit Points from them, as if you were an undead or had negative healing, but you are still harmed by negative effects as normal. Major Curse: Urgathoa teaches you that pointless lives in slavery to death and morality are bound to end in tragedy. You develop an incurable wasting disease that leaves you clumsy 2, enfeebled 2, and unable to move except by Crawling. This disease never progresses further to kill you, but it passes to your friends and loved ones merely by sight, wasting them away unto death before your eyes and causing them to rise as undead to haunt you.
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