Church of Desna

While Desna’s faith is ancient—known even in the age of storied Thassilon—the church is extremely disorganized, with few actual temples or settled priests, and no formal chain of command. Physical and magical might are respected, as are knowledge and experience, with personal expertise in a field trumping mere combat prowess or spellcasting ability. For example, when dealing with a basilisk’s attacks on a frontier town, a low-level cleric who has survived an encounter with the creature is accorded greater authority than a high-level character who has never faced one. This structure means that Desnans have certain ideas about what they consider to be “informed” authority; they feel free to ignore nobles, politicians, and other “meritless” leaders if more knowledgeable folk are on hand to provide better advice. Although they can be competitive with others inside and outside the church, these are friendly rivalries; they prefer to move on if a disagreement is going to turn ugly—after all, there’s an entire world of wonder to explore, so there’s no sense wasting time on an argument.
Services dedicated to Desna include singing, dancing, storytelling (especially of unusual dreams), footraces, and music. Some use exotic substances, herbal drinks, alcohol, or animal venom to spark unusual or (for the very lucky) lucid dreams. Many rituals involve sand because of its relation to sleep and the comparison of grains of sand to the number of stars in the sky. Dust made from crushed rose quartz (which can have a starry pattern when illuminated from behind) is used in the faith’s rare ceremonies and blessings instead of water or sacred oil; Desnan priests carry holy quartz dust in glass flasks instead of holy water. Some luck-seeking faithful carry dice or other luck talismans carved of rose quartz.

Temples & Shrines

Desna keeps few temples, preferring unattended shrines at crossroads and places of secluded beauty, like hilltops or peninsula points. Although unmanned, these shrines often hold simple provisions and a place to scrawl notes or feelings if visitors are so inspired. Her association with the stars and night sky means that her temples sometimes double as celestial observatories, or at least have one room partially open to the sky. In many cases, these observatories have markers on the walls or windows to indicate the positions of important stars on holy days (one-room churches might have a single hole in the ceiling to show a particular star’s position, and keep the hole covered on other days to keep out rain or snow). Temples in large cities often take the form of tall towers with observatories at their tops, and with small libraries of astronomical and astrological charts. Rural temples usually incorporate an inn or stable as a service to travelers. As Desna maintains friendly—or, at least, non-conflicting—relationships with most good-aligned and civilized deities, it’s not uncommon for her faith to be among those practiced in communal temples.
Butterflies and moths (as well as their caterpillar young) congregate at her holy sites; legends say the priests can call upon these creatures to defend the temple, devouring cloth and leather to leave would-be thieves naked but unharmed. Some temples maintain colonies of silk-producing moths, creating hardy and beautiful silk for use and sale by the temple. Every temple protects a small chest of silver coins (usually no more than 300 sp), which it uses to help fund journeys by the faithful.
Needy travelers can petition the temple for financing, but this funding is normally available only for frontier exploration or travel to exotic locations—a trip to the next town might merit only a silver for water, bread, and a spare blanket. Those who exploit this generosity tend to suffer bad luck in the long run.

Clothing

Desna’s priesthood has no regalia or vestments beyond bright colors, often adorned with butterfly-wing patterns, and their goddess’s holy symbol. Worshippers typically have little problem recognizing each other, as they often work Desna’s symbol into jewelry, clothing, or tattoos, or bear her holy weapon, the starknife.

A Priest’s Role

Priests of Desna—including clerics, bards, rogues, rangers, and occasionally druids—go where they please, earning money by telling fortunes, providing entertainment, and interpreting dreams. They help people when they can, but prefer to make their acts seem like luck, coincidence, or the blessings of their goddess.
Many of Desna’s faithful are talented artists, writers, and entertainers, and the church expects all priests to at least be familiar with contemporary music, theater, and literature, even if an individual priest shows no talent for playing instruments, acting, or writing. Those without abilities in these areas are still taught to recognize such gifts in others and are expected to encourage the gifted to explore their talents. Worshippers with performance skills share them regularly at festivals, local venues, and celebrations such as weddings. The church also throws public parties to showcase such performances, and such events endear the church to the public, even if the offered fare is no more than cheese, warm bread, and watered wine.
Some Desnans are skilled fortune-tellers, using their gift for reading people to entertain and inspire hope. Like their goddess, they oppose the use of divination to create fear or despair; most brush off requests stemming from unhappiness or malice, such as when the listener or one of his enemies might die. The goddess expects her diviners to challenge any speaker who prophesies ill, misfortune, or doom, and when they hear of magical auguries predicting bad times, they actively intervene to make sure those events do not come to pass. In addition to soothsaying, some Desnans learn to interpret dreams in order to ease troubled minds and mend other wounds of the psyche. Recurring or shared dreams are of particular interest, as they often stem from inner traumas or external magical sources. Those plagued by insomnia or nightmares call on Desnan priests for aid, for their healing spells or even just a soothing touch are often enough to bring a tranquil night’s sleep.
A typical day for a Desnan priest involves an early prayer (often spoken in bed moments after waking), recording remembered dreams in a journal, breakfast, study (the arts if so inclined, geography or the culture of a foreign land if not), and any duties assigned by a more experienced priest if one is present. After a light lunch, the priest goes for a walk or ride, either to someplace new or by taking a new path to a known place. Once at his destination, he attends to his duties there, helps passersby who require his skills, possibly entertains at a local gathering spot, seeks a place to stay for the night, dines, prays, and sleeps. Caravan masters like to hire priests of Desna to accompany their wagons for luck, especially in regard to warding off attacks from beasts, and this gives priests an excuse to travel when they have no other pressing matters. If a holy site needs maintenance or repair, the priest takes care of what is needed or hires a skilled person to do it.
Elder priests whose bodies can no longer handle physical travel tend to use magic to visit the minds of others in distant locations (using the dream spell) or even travel to distant planes (using the astral projection spell). Some use herbal or alchemical substances to enter a dreamlike state to explore higher levels of consciousness or commune with dream entities. A few such “Wakeless Ones” are so strong-willed that they have remained asleep and dreaming for years—they don’t even wake to eat or drink, and are instead sustained by faith, will, and dream-food. It is considered a noble end for a Desnan to die in her sleep, as it sets the sleeper on the first step of the final spiritual journey to the goddess.
Followers of the Song of the Spheres consider sleep a form of prayer, and traveling Desnans volunteer only for the first or last watch of the night so as to be able to sleep uninterrupted. If a priest believes he won’t get as much sleep as he likes that night (for example, if his comrades plan a midnight battle), he tries to fit a nap or two into his schedule for the day rather than risking being short on sleep. Divine priests prepare their spells during morning prayers, while Desna’s bard-priests generally prepare spells after those prayers.
Desna shares a mutual loathing with night hags and other creatures that prey on sleepers, so her priests oppose them, as well as spellcasters who use nightmare—priests go so far as to destroy spellbooks and magic items that use the spell. Because of Desna’s feud with Lamashtu, she charges her priests with protecting the common folk from dangerous beasts (especially from intelligent beast-like creatures such as worgs), although she holds no hatred for wary predators that avoid mankind. Desna’s priests have a tradition of exploring distant places and leaving marks indicating someone of the faith has been there. This “found-mark” might be as simple as the goddess’s symbol scratched on a flat rock or tree trunk, as elaborate as a small shrine, or anything in between. Often, explorers leaves personal glyphs or notes indicating who they are; in this way, they gain fame in the church, and someone who has marked many sites in this way is called a Founder—a title that confers no formal powers but garners high esteem among the faithful. Although Desnans constantly seek to make new discoveries, some particularly remote or hard-to-reach locales—such as mountaintops, islands, or the tops of ruined buildings—have become pilgrimage sites in their own right, eventually bearing the mark of the original Founder surrounded by dozens of personal runes or butterfly symbols left by those who have followed in his or her path.

Adventurers

Those who follow Desna follow their dreams. They accept and cherish the world’s surprises, but sometimes see the world not as it is, but as it could be. Their most cherished desire is to accumulate experiences, to find out what existence has to offer, and to expand their souls’ understanding of the myriad delights of the cosmos. Desna’s faithful are accustomed to making decisions quickly (though not rashly!), because they never know when opportunities might arise again. They express themselves freely, whether through voice, dance, music, or art, regardless of whether they’re any good at it.
Desnans don’t pick fights, and would rather leave than get involved in one—but if there’s no choice, or if innocents might be harmed by their departure, they hit hard and fast to end the battle quickly. Many members of the Desnan faith find themselves drawn to the Pathfinder Society, with its limitless potential for travel and adventure.