Pharika, God of Affliction

Pharika is a god of affliction and medicine, alchemy and aging. In the earliest days of Sfaíyra, Pharika seeded the world with countless secret truths—mysteries of medicine, minerals with strange properties, nexuses of magic, and the like—which she hid among Nylea's wilds and the shadows of Erobos' Underworld, leaving clues where mortals might find them. It isn’t altruism that drives her; she studies the innovation and suffering of mortals, deciphering in them ever greater mysteries as she treats Sfaíyra as her personal laboratory.
Pharika typically takes the form of a green-skinned human woman with the lower body of a snake. Her hands are thickly scaled and a pair of bronze-scaled vipers seamlessly emerge from her chest. She is never without her kylix, a drinking cup within which she can produce virtually any medicine or toxin. When her aims require subtlety, Pharika often takes the form of a serpent or a medusa, or sometimes an aged human.

Divine Domains

Pharika represents the duality of life and death distilled into a single draught that can serve as tonic or toxin, depending on the dosage. She is most associated with affliction, whether that phenomenon takes the form of a disease, a venom, a drug, or the passage of years. Her cures are reliable but come at a cost. In some cases, that cost is pain as the medicine courses through the imbiber’s body. In other cases, she demands years of life, either from the patient’s lifetime or the researcher’s labor.
In her oversight of life and death, Pharika acts as a patron of alchemists. Pharmacists offer prayers to her while crafting potions, as do the ill or infirm before imbibing a supposed remedy. Likewise, a body’s slow transformation is sacred to her, whether it be the inevitable effects of aging or the petrification of her medusa children’s victims.

Artifacts

The Basilisk’s Greed. In Pharika’s earliest days, her mind overflowed with knowledge, and she retreated to a secret, verdant glen. There, she set to scribing her secrets into the garden’s fruits, hiding within each a dozen deaths and their cures. When she retired wearily to bathe, a lizard crept into her grove and gobbled up much of the fruit. It’s said that this original basilisk, far larger than any of its progeny still lives, heavy with undigested secrets, and that if its blood can be distilled into ink, it can be used to write out forgotten lore.
Aestraste’s Reward. So impressed was she with the deeds of her champion Aestraste that Pharika offered to fill her kylix with any draught for Aestraste to imbibe. The champion asked to taste the nectar of pure joy, and the god obliged. But when Aestraste took a sip, passion took hold of her, and she quaffed the entire elixir. Overwhelmed with ecstasy, the champion perished, having forgotten that too much of anything—even happiness—can be fatal. The kylix still remains, with the tiniest drop still left inside, in Pharika's largest temple, in The Nightwood.

Divine Symbols & Sigils

Amphisbaena: A snake with a head at each end of its body can be seen above all entries to both temples of Pharika's worship and most alchemists or herbalists place of business. The symbol recognises not only Pharika's snake-like form but also the legendary monster she is said to have let loose upon the world; her greatest knowledge still yet to be found. One head is said to produce poison that can kill any known thing in existence, even the other gods, whilst the bite of the other head is believed to cure any and every ailment afflicting the victim, even age.

Holidays

At the open of winter, it is the Goddess of affliction who is acknowledged throughout the tenth month of the year as common-folk hope to pass through the cold months safely.

Divine Goals & Aspirations

To Pharika, Sfaíyra is an ongoing experiment and mortals are her agents in carrying it out. Rather than limit her knowledge to what her own insights yield, she revels in watching mortals decipher the world’s wisdom and unearth its hidden knowledge, and she delights in seeing each sage interpret their findings in novel ways. She is willing to do anything to perpetuate experimentation and discovery, even at the cost of turning her less devout followers into specimens.

Divine Classification

God

Realm

Asteria