Keima (Kai-ma)
Keeper of the Dimweave
Keima is the Goddess of Death, who guides souls from the mortal realm to their final home. During the Era of Tranquillity, she was a minor deity who guided lost creatures in wild spaces, before her vision expanded into the Dimweave plane during the First Great Turbulence, and out of compassion for the souls wandering there, she took on her present mantle. However she is still respected and sometimes worshipped by rangers and travellers, who ask her for safety and guidance when they make their way through the woods and wilds.
Early History: Nature’s Guide and Guardian
Keima came to divinity in the wild places during The Era of Tranquility, called to being by the panicked pleas for safety from the creatures who ran through the forests, marshes, swamps, caves, and thickets of Nataya. Her voice was first heard by these creatures, as she wordlessly guided them to safety. From a voice, she slowly coalesced into a gentle guardian of natural trails. Eventually, sentient beings arose, and travellers in her woods and wilds would sometimes heard her voice too, when they needed help. Legend suggests that it didn’t take long before a traveller, a halfling named Lily Millwright, made the first shrine to Keima. Lily became lost in an unfamiliar thicket as she attempted to cross it during a rainstorm, and panic had her at risk of injury. But she heard the soft voice of the goddess, gently drawing her attention to little-marked paths, and slowly found her way out of the thicket. She apparently asked for the name of her guide, and the goddess granted this. Lily then built a small shrine to her at the entrance to the path she had just left: a series of eight river-smoothed pebbles—Lily’s favourite rocks—set along the start of the trail. The first shrine created to her, before she had been named, was a set of small river-smoothed pebbles, a short line of them either side of a fox trail through a thicket. She engraved Keima’s name into the prettiest one. As the goddess’s name became better known over the years, and more and more people heard her voice, more stones were added to the shrine, making small piles of them along the trail. Keima’s name was engraved into each, in a variety of languages, as a way of giving thanks for safe travels. Rangers often viewed her as a personal deity and friend, and in her honour they would mark out difficult paths in wild spaces like this. As years passed, temples began to be built to her. They were rarely found in cities, but shrines and temples were both common enough in rural areas, and in dangerous moors and expanses.During and after the First Great Turbulence
During The First Great Turbulence Keima’s worship swelled rapidly. The geography of the world was changing massively, and rifts were opening to dangerous other planes. Her guidance was sorely needed. Learned scholars and ancient clerics describe how during the chaos, the goddess’s consciousness expanded further than ever before. Her eyes beheld all the secret and hidden ways, including those walked by souls when they leave the world. And she saw the terrible dangers that faced those souls as they tried to make their way to their final homes. Demonic and abyssal forces sometimes besieged them and tore them apart. Liches, and even terrible mortal mages and sorcerers, dragged the souls back, imprisoned them, and used them to sustain their own lives or fuel ghastly undead creatures. Her clerics describe how the goddess shed three tears upon seeing these things, and as the each tear left her eyes and fell to the earth, they transformed into foxes, each with soft grey fur and the golden eyes that shown like candlelight, or lanterns. (These would become her avatars.) Keima’s own irises took on a soft, golden glow, like a candle or lantern. And her compassion was so great that she gave up the forests she loved, and took on the guardianship of the Dimweave, the grey voidlike space between the mortal realm and the afterlife. Now she and her avatars help souls find the right path to their final home, and guard them as they walk on it. Those who have been bought back sometimes recall remembering seeing a fox looking back at them, golden eyes shining in the darkness. These are often said to be one of the goddess’s avatars, leading them on the right path.The Undead
Keima is said to have the same pity for the undead and corrupted souls that she had for lost travellers in her woods in the younger days of the world. Her clerics are charged with destroying any undead they see, so that their souls are wholly free to follow her avatars to their rightful afterlife. If a soul has been damaged or corrupted so badly that it cannot follow, Keima or her chosen avatars/celestial followers will simply scatter the soul’s essence either across Nataya, or even in the Dimweave.The Hollow Archive
Souls of especially dangerous mages and sorcerers, usually those who have been working with intense magics for more than a millennia, are said to sometimes be diverted from their path to their final homes by Keima and her avatars. Stories tell of a vast cavernous library, with books upon neverending stacks of books, where these powerful souls can be essentially shelved until the dangerous magics they worked with in life no longer infuse their very spirit. It is said that even gods have ended up here, in the past.Divine Domains
Grave
Peace
Death
Artifacts
The Circlet of Wild Welcome
The Whisperweed Blade
Divine Symbols & Sigils
Her symbol is the Foxeye Flower, a small yellow flower that grows in clusters along wild trails and dirt paths, and glows softy in the moonlight.
The fox is especially associated with her, and sometimes her avatar or spiritual messengers resemble a fox with golden eyes.
Personality Characteristics
Motivation
To guide souls passing through The Dimweave to their final home, and protect them against demonic, absyssal, undead, and arcane forces that might try to steal, damage, or corrupt them.
Virtues & Personality perks
Kiyyiya is full of compassion and a kind guide in desperate situations.
Vices & Personality flaws
Keima's compassion makes her vulnerable to feeling the grief of mortal creatures as if it were her own. So sometimes she is silent when her followers need her most, not daring to risk sharing their hearts in case it breaks her.
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