Chauntea

The Great Mother, the Grain Goddess

Chauntea is goddess of agriculture: sowing and reaping, seeding and harvest, breeding and butchery, shearing and weaving. In this aspect she is a rural deity rarely prayed to behind the walls of a city except by kitchen gardeners. But Chauntea is also the Great Mother, a goddess of crib, hearth, and home. And as such she is welcomed into all homes at mealtimes and at the birth of children, and folk give her thanks whenever they experience the pleasure of settling by a fire and feeling safe and loved.

Chauntea's faith is one of nurturing and growth. Agricultural aphorisms and farming parables dot her teachings. Growing and reaping, the eternal cycle, is a common theme in the faith. Destruction for its own sake, or leveling without rebuilding, is anathema to her.

Temples of Chauntea maintain a great body of lore about farming and cultivation. Her priests work closely with communities in rural areas, and they are willing to roll up their sleeves and dig their hands into the dirt.

The Faith

Chauntean priests and priestesses are often called upon to pray over freshly tilled soil, over new planting fields, and at harvest. In rural communities, weddings are sometimes held on or adjacent to a tilled field by Chauntean clerics, which is said to bless the couple with happiness or fertility.

Greengrass. This is a fertility festival, where Chaunteans take pleasure in consumption of food, drink, and hedonistic pursuits.

High Prayers of the Harvest. This is a celebration of Chauntea’s aid to an agrarian community. These celebrations occur on or near Highharvestide, though they are often specific to a community’s actual harvest season.

Temples and Shrines. Most of Chauntea’s temples are small shrines that double as storage facilities for seeds and crops. Offerings of crops by local farmers are preserved longer than in mundane facilities, and the clergy there freely give seeds and food to those in need.

The best-known holy site of Chauntea is Goldenfields, which is a large abbey and farmland enclosed by walls and located northeast of Waterdeep. The nearly two dozen square miles of farmland is tended by a few thousand worshippers.

In the kingdom of Amn, the Harvest House is tended by an all-female clergy known as the Sisters of the House. The gardens found there have no equal in Faerûn.

Symbol of Chauntea

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Alignment:

Neutral good

Symbol

Sheaf of grain or a blooming rose over grain

Portfolio

Agriculture

Domains:

Life

Worshippers:

Druids, farmers, gardeners

Worshipper Alias:

Chauntean