Church of Pharasma
Pharasma’s church is a somber and structured organization, and staunchly neutral in matters unrelated to its tripartite roles—as stewards of life and death, most priests see nationalism and other petty concerns as beneath them. Traditions passed down by the goddess and her prophets are followed stringently, though the various branches of the church differ with respect to which rituals and practices they assign the most weight. These differences are never severe enough to force different factions to open conflict, but may make it easy for worshippers to distinguish between members of their sect and other adherents.
Most members of Pharasma’s priesthood are clerics, though a significant number are diviners, oracles, and adepts. Roughly two-thirds of her clergy are women, though the gender mix varies regionally, and worldly details like gender and species matter little to most Pharasmins. Pharasma’s followers are expectant mothers, midwives, morticians, and so-called “white necromancers” who study other applications of the magic than undead creation. Harrowers, palmists, oneiromancers, cloud-readers, and others who use nonmagical forms of divination also call upon her, although their allegiance has dropped off dramatically since Aroden’s death and the end of reliable prophecy. In smaller communities, a Pharasmin priest may assume several of these roles, or a team of spouses might split the duties between them. Prophets often go mad in this age of conflicting omens, and the church has taken it upon itself to care for these poor souls, devoting portions of major temples to be sanitariums, which are operated by the goddess’s clerics. Of course, as the goddess of birth and death, Pharasma has many lay followers as well, and even in lands where her faith is not large or organized, commoners pray to her for guidance or protection, much as farmers everywhere pray to Erastil for good crops.
Pharasma encourages her followers to procreate, whether they’re married or in less formalized partnerships; she also supports childless couples adopting and orphanages taking care of those who have no living parents. Church weddings may be simple or ornate, depending on the social status and wealth of the participants. Though she is the goddess of birth, she does not oppose contraception. Her temples are known to provide assistance to women dealing with pregnancies that would inevitably end in the death of both mother and child, or to end the torment of a mother whose child is already dead in the womb, but on the whole she believes killing the unborn is an abomination, for it sends the infant soul to the afterlife before it has a chance to fulfill its destiny. The goddess’s midwives take all the precautions they can to reduce the risk of pregnancy and childbirth; some church midwives, called casarmetzes, are so skilled in a combination of medicine, magic, and surgery that in dire circumstances they can cut a living child from its mother’s womb and save both.
On the third day after a child’s birth, families devoted to Pharasma call a gathering to welcome its soul into the world. The child must be given a name before this gathering, else superstition holds that it will be unlucky. Visitors bring small cakes, seeds, salted peas, and watered beer to share with the family and other guests. A priest or family elder lists the names of a girl’s maternal ancestors or a boy’s paternal forefathers, calling for the child to be named publicly and grow up with good health, and for the parents to live to see grandchildren born.
Worshippers of Pharasma—as well as commoners in many regions—trace the goddess’s spiral symbol on their chests, typically as a form of prayer when hearing ill news or witnessing blasphemy, and before or during dangerous events or events with uncertain outcomes. Different lands perform this gesture differently—in Ustalav, it is often done with a closed fist, while in Osirion it is with the first two fingers extended. Especially devout folk repeat this gesture in everyday activities, such as stirring soup or scrubbing a floor. Prayer services to Pharasma are a mixture of somber chants, stirring ritualized sermons, and joyous song, often based upon regional music, and usually end on an uplifting note—for while death comes to all, new generations stride forth in its wake. During celebrations, the goddess’s followers often eat kolash, bread braided into a tight spiral and topped or filled with diced fruit or sweet cheese. During the winter feast, the center portion of the spiral is left open and a wax candle is placed within; the candle is lit at the start of the meal and extinguished when the bread is to be eaten. Each temple keeps a record of births and deaths of its members, and on the anniversaries of death dates, priests speak the names of the departed while those close to the deceased honor them by lighting votive candles that burn for an entire day and night. Many tombstones have niches to protect soul candles from the wind.
When a member of the faith dies, the body is cleaned, immersed in water, and dressed in a special multi-part shroud consisting of five pieces for a male or nine for a female. A prayer written on parchment, bark, cloth, or stone is tucked into the shroud, and the corpse is sealed in a casket if local custom calls for one. A guardian sits with the body the night before the burial—to honor the deceased, to guard against body thieves, and to watch that the body does not rise as an undead. Mourners (typically the immediate family) traditionally mark their eyelids with black ash or an herbal paste for 5 days after the burial. Curiously, the church does not frown upon suicide, though individual priests may debate whether taking one’s own life is the natural fate of some souls or a means to return to the goddess for a chance at a different life.
Those who can afford it usually pay to have their remains interred on holy ground by priests. Wealthy merchants and nobles are laid to rest in room-sized private tombs, while those with fewer resources rest in shared burial cells in catacombs or ossuaries. The church allows the dead to be cremated, though burial in earth is preferred; disposing of a corpse at sea, sky burial, and funerary cannibalism are generally considered disrespectful. Exhuming a buried corpse is considered a violation of the dead, and the church normally refuses to do this—even when a city government seeks to break ground for a sewer, aqueduct, or other vital construction. However, if a priest discovers a worshipper’s corpse that has been buried improperly or accidentally exposed, he or she usually arranges for a proper burial in accordance with church teachings. The church does not mourn apostates, and while priests do not withhold services from those of other faiths, they flatly refuse to give rites to former Pharasmins who turn their back on the church.
Many local temples have only one ranking priest, but the largest temples have a high priest or priestess for each aspect of the faith—birth, death, and fate. In theory these high priests are all equal, though the high priest of prophecy has assumed a lesser role in recent decades, and the person holding that position is often strange or unstable. Temples that include crypts also have a cryptmaster in charge of that facility. Rank within a temple is based on seniority, as well as on knowledge of the faith, magical power, and personal achievements (such as the destruction of powerful undead). Hierarchy between churches depends on the size of the populations they serve; a large city’s temple has greater influence than a small town’s temple.
A typical priest earns their living tending to women in labor, acting as a mortician, digging graves, selling spellcasting services, or building and blessing tombs for wealthy patrons. An adventuring priest will not violate the sanctity of a tomb simply for the purpose of looting it, and if they enter a burial place to fight abominations, they still oppose desecrating any non-undead corpses encountered during the hunt. Followers of Pharasma tend to be brusque; some people attribute this to haughtiness, but more often it’s simply due to the fact that most of a Pharasmin’s interactions are with the dead or dying, mad prophets, or women in labor— groups who rarely care about social niceties. When their services are needed, Pharasmins give orders and expect to be obeyed, as a mortal soul (either recently departed or about to arrive) is usually at stake.
All priests carry a skane—a double-edged ceremonial dagger with a dull gray blade, often with a stylized depiction of the goddess’s face and hair on the pommel. They use these daggers to hold open prayer scrolls, to touch parts of a corpse when performing death rites, to cut shrouds for the dead, and to sever the umbilical cords of newborns. It is not forbidden for a priest to use a skane to draw blood or take a life, but some refuse to do so and carry a different item to use in combat. A casarmetzes carries a special skane bearing Pharasma’s likeness on one side of the pommel and a crying child on the other, and uses this to perform her surgeries.
Though Pharasmin priests worship the death goddess, they have no taboo against preventing death through healing, either mundane or magical. Pharasmin priests who sign on with adventuring parties usually act as healers—if not particularly gentle or sympathetic ones— and most temples raise money by selling healing and other spellcasting services. Even spells like raise dead, reincarnate, and resurrection are not forbidden, though churches usually charge a great deal for these.
For those who worship Pharasma above all others, the most important things in life are birth, death, and prophecy. When they adventure in her name, it is often to destroy undead or to seek out and attempt to understand strange prophecies. They might seek to protect the dead from disgrace, and be exceedingly uncomfortable with the standard adventurers’ practice of tomb robbing—though they have no problem rooting out whatever abominations may have taken up residence in such places, provided the innocent dead are treated with respect.
Most members of Pharasma’s priesthood are clerics, though a significant number are diviners, oracles, and adepts. Roughly two-thirds of her clergy are women, though the gender mix varies regionally, and worldly details like gender and species matter little to most Pharasmins. Pharasma’s followers are expectant mothers, midwives, morticians, and so-called “white necromancers” who study other applications of the magic than undead creation. Harrowers, palmists, oneiromancers, cloud-readers, and others who use nonmagical forms of divination also call upon her, although their allegiance has dropped off dramatically since Aroden’s death and the end of reliable prophecy. In smaller communities, a Pharasmin priest may assume several of these roles, or a team of spouses might split the duties between them. Prophets often go mad in this age of conflicting omens, and the church has taken it upon itself to care for these poor souls, devoting portions of major temples to be sanitariums, which are operated by the goddess’s clerics. Of course, as the goddess of birth and death, Pharasma has many lay followers as well, and even in lands where her faith is not large or organized, commoners pray to her for guidance or protection, much as farmers everywhere pray to Erastil for good crops.
Pharasma encourages her followers to procreate, whether they’re married or in less formalized partnerships; she also supports childless couples adopting and orphanages taking care of those who have no living parents. Church weddings may be simple or ornate, depending on the social status and wealth of the participants. Though she is the goddess of birth, she does not oppose contraception. Her temples are known to provide assistance to women dealing with pregnancies that would inevitably end in the death of both mother and child, or to end the torment of a mother whose child is already dead in the womb, but on the whole she believes killing the unborn is an abomination, for it sends the infant soul to the afterlife before it has a chance to fulfill its destiny. The goddess’s midwives take all the precautions they can to reduce the risk of pregnancy and childbirth; some church midwives, called casarmetzes, are so skilled in a combination of medicine, magic, and surgery that in dire circumstances they can cut a living child from its mother’s womb and save both.
On the third day after a child’s birth, families devoted to Pharasma call a gathering to welcome its soul into the world. The child must be given a name before this gathering, else superstition holds that it will be unlucky. Visitors bring small cakes, seeds, salted peas, and watered beer to share with the family and other guests. A priest or family elder lists the names of a girl’s maternal ancestors or a boy’s paternal forefathers, calling for the child to be named publicly and grow up with good health, and for the parents to live to see grandchildren born.
Worshippers of Pharasma—as well as commoners in many regions—trace the goddess’s spiral symbol on their chests, typically as a form of prayer when hearing ill news or witnessing blasphemy, and before or during dangerous events or events with uncertain outcomes. Different lands perform this gesture differently—in Ustalav, it is often done with a closed fist, while in Osirion it is with the first two fingers extended. Especially devout folk repeat this gesture in everyday activities, such as stirring soup or scrubbing a floor. Prayer services to Pharasma are a mixture of somber chants, stirring ritualized sermons, and joyous song, often based upon regional music, and usually end on an uplifting note—for while death comes to all, new generations stride forth in its wake. During celebrations, the goddess’s followers often eat kolash, bread braided into a tight spiral and topped or filled with diced fruit or sweet cheese. During the winter feast, the center portion of the spiral is left open and a wax candle is placed within; the candle is lit at the start of the meal and extinguished when the bread is to be eaten. Each temple keeps a record of births and deaths of its members, and on the anniversaries of death dates, priests speak the names of the departed while those close to the deceased honor them by lighting votive candles that burn for an entire day and night. Many tombstones have niches to protect soul candles from the wind.
When a member of the faith dies, the body is cleaned, immersed in water, and dressed in a special multi-part shroud consisting of five pieces for a male or nine for a female. A prayer written on parchment, bark, cloth, or stone is tucked into the shroud, and the corpse is sealed in a casket if local custom calls for one. A guardian sits with the body the night before the burial—to honor the deceased, to guard against body thieves, and to watch that the body does not rise as an undead. Mourners (typically the immediate family) traditionally mark their eyelids with black ash or an herbal paste for 5 days after the burial. Curiously, the church does not frown upon suicide, though individual priests may debate whether taking one’s own life is the natural fate of some souls or a means to return to the goddess for a chance at a different life.
Those who can afford it usually pay to have their remains interred on holy ground by priests. Wealthy merchants and nobles are laid to rest in room-sized private tombs, while those with fewer resources rest in shared burial cells in catacombs or ossuaries. The church allows the dead to be cremated, though burial in earth is preferred; disposing of a corpse at sea, sky burial, and funerary cannibalism are generally considered disrespectful. Exhuming a buried corpse is considered a violation of the dead, and the church normally refuses to do this—even when a city government seeks to break ground for a sewer, aqueduct, or other vital construction. However, if a priest discovers a worshipper’s corpse that has been buried improperly or accidentally exposed, he or she usually arranges for a proper burial in accordance with church teachings. The church does not mourn apostates, and while priests do not withhold services from those of other faiths, they flatly refuse to give rites to former Pharasmins who turn their back on the church.
Temples and Shrines
In heavily populated areas, Pharasma’s temples tend to be grand, gothic cathedrals adjacent to graveyards, although in smaller towns they might be humble structures with artistic flourishes meant to echo the great cathedrals, and even a single bleak stone in an empty field or graveyard can serve as a shrine. Large temples usually have catacombs underneath, filled with corpses of the wealthy and of former members of the priesthood, as burial under the goddess’s temple is believed to soften her judgment of the deceased. Even a remote Pharasmin monastery has ample cemetery space, and might be the final resting place of generations of wealthy and influential folk—as well as an uncountable accumulation of tomb treasures.Many local temples have only one ranking priest, but the largest temples have a high priest or priestess for each aspect of the faith—birth, death, and fate. In theory these high priests are all equal, though the high priest of prophecy has assumed a lesser role in recent decades, and the person holding that position is often strange or unstable. Temples that include crypts also have a cryptmaster in charge of that facility. Rank within a temple is based on seniority, as well as on knowledge of the faith, magical power, and personal achievements (such as the destruction of powerful undead). Hierarchy between churches depends on the size of the populations they serve; a large city’s temple has greater influence than a small town’s temple.
Clothing
Pharasmin clothing takes two different routes. For many traditionalist or more ascetic priests, the only acceptable color for formal garments is black, sometimes accented with silver (such as spiral brooches or amulets) and tiny vials of holy water. In recent generations, however, there has been a movement in many temples away from such dour fashions. Pointing out that the solemnity of death is only part of their concern, such iconoclasts celebrate the birth of new life by wearing more colorful and fancifully designed raiment. Instead of traditional black robes, they gravitate toward silver, gray, purple, and the iridescent blue of the goddess’s spiral. In addition to color, these iconoclast priests often add highly artistic elements to their clothing, designing their own unique outfits as a reflection of their unique threads in Pharasma’s great tapestry. While outright conflict is rare, the two camps of Pharasmins have strong opinions regarding each other’s clothing choices.A Priest’s Role
Priests of Pharasma take responsibility for all three of her concerns in the mortal world. Priests (of any gender) who are skilled in midwifery assist at births, and the presence of a Pharasmin priest during childbirth almost always ensures that both mother and child will live. Priests focused on prophecy bear its questionable gift, or record and interpret the ravings of those who do. And all priests of Pharasma are stewards of the dead, familiar with both local funerary customs and those of neighboring lands. They protect graveyards from robbers and necromancers, and the memory of the deceased from the ravages of time, memorizing or recording what they know about anyone who dies in their presence. Pharasmin inquisitors hunt down the undead and those who seek to create such monstrosities, but all priests have a solemn duty to oppose such abominations when they find them. Creating undead is forbidden, and controlling existing undead is frowned upon, even by evil members of the faith.A typical priest earns their living tending to women in labor, acting as a mortician, digging graves, selling spellcasting services, or building and blessing tombs for wealthy patrons. An adventuring priest will not violate the sanctity of a tomb simply for the purpose of looting it, and if they enter a burial place to fight abominations, they still oppose desecrating any non-undead corpses encountered during the hunt. Followers of Pharasma tend to be brusque; some people attribute this to haughtiness, but more often it’s simply due to the fact that most of a Pharasmin’s interactions are with the dead or dying, mad prophets, or women in labor— groups who rarely care about social niceties. When their services are needed, Pharasmins give orders and expect to be obeyed, as a mortal soul (either recently departed or about to arrive) is usually at stake.
All priests carry a skane—a double-edged ceremonial dagger with a dull gray blade, often with a stylized depiction of the goddess’s face and hair on the pommel. They use these daggers to hold open prayer scrolls, to touch parts of a corpse when performing death rites, to cut shrouds for the dead, and to sever the umbilical cords of newborns. It is not forbidden for a priest to use a skane to draw blood or take a life, but some refuse to do so and carry a different item to use in combat. A casarmetzes carries a special skane bearing Pharasma’s likeness on one side of the pommel and a crying child on the other, and uses this to perform her surgeries.
Though Pharasmin priests worship the death goddess, they have no taboo against preventing death through healing, either mundane or magical. Pharasmin priests who sign on with adventuring parties usually act as healers—if not particularly gentle or sympathetic ones— and most temples raise money by selling healing and other spellcasting services. Even spells like raise dead, reincarnate, and resurrection are not forbidden, though churches usually charge a great deal for these.
Adventurers
Many adventurers follow Pharasma because they believe in fate, and in the inescapable path of destiny. Everyone worships the goddess to some extent, for not even the most hubristic of mortals or gods can deny that hers is the hand that shepherds souls into the afterlife, sending those bound to other gods to their rightful destinations. It’s said that even gods are judged after their death by the Lady of Graves.For those who worship Pharasma above all others, the most important things in life are birth, death, and prophecy. When they adventure in her name, it is often to destroy undead or to seek out and attempt to understand strange prophecies. They might seek to protect the dead from disgrace, and be exceedingly uncomfortable with the standard adventurers’ practice of tomb robbing—though they have no problem rooting out whatever abominations may have taken up residence in such places, provided the innocent dead are treated with respect.
Type
Religious, Organised Religion
Demonym
Pharasmin
Deities
Divines
Controlled Territories
Notable Members
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