Calistria

Chaotic Neutral goddess of Lust, Revenge, and Trickery

The Savored Sting (a.k.a. The Lady in the Room, The Unquenchable Fire)

Savor the three stings of passion, guile, and vengeance. No food you ever taste and no thing you ever build will satisfy you as much as my gifts.

-The Book of Joy

As symbolized by the three daggers of her religious symbol, Calistria has three aspects: lust, revenge, and trickery. Silver-tongued and charming, she is a master of weaving insults into compliments and laying intricate groundwork for retribution at its finest. She is a goddess of vengeance, but it would be a mistake to assume that means she pursues justice. Calistria is fickle, shifting her loyalties and interests as her whims take her—though she never forgets a slight, and any who think she has forgiven will surely find it is only a matter of time before they are targeted by a long-term plot of revenge to lay them thoroughly low.

Though she is one of several Elven Pantheon, Calistria is by far the best known outside of elven communities, and thus many non-elves view her as the representative (or even the only) elven goddess. This conclusion is not entirely unreasonable, as Calistria represents those aspects of the elven ancestry that many other people see as alluring, intriguing, and fascinating. Among elves, she embodies characteristics endemic to elven culture and identity, such as free-spirited pursuit of one’s own path, and further embodies a truth lost on shorter-lived peoples: the flexibility and capriciousness of Calistria provides a model for maintaining perspective and composure over a centuries-long lifespan. As a result, she is closely associated with the elven people by elves and others alike. Of the elven deities, she receives by far the most worship from non-elves.

As the goddess’s whims are ever-shifting, her worshippers are also often somewhat transient. Even among elves, worship of Calistria is usually intermittent or secondary to faith in another deity. Prayers to Calistria arise from individuals who find themselves driven by lust, engaged in trickery, or driven to revenge, and the people offering those prayers may have no commitment to the faith beyond the prayer offered in that moment. As followers’ lives lead them in different directions, they move on to other deities, just as the goddess herself moves from one lover to the next to suit her shifting interests (Cayden Cailean being counted among these lovers). This personal freedom is a value held dear by the goddess and her followers alike, and perhaps one of the most central values to elven society as a whole. Some of Calistria’s most devoted followers work to promote this tenet, quietly working to undermine tyrannical governments, exacting revenge upon slavers and freeing their captives, or simply demonstrating the benefits of a freedom-driven lifestyle.

Organized worship of Calistria is most common among elves, as befits an elven deity. Though rumor would suggest all her temples are brothels, these gathering spaces are often more akin to intellectual salons—albeit more encouraging and supportive of sexual interaction between attendees than most equivalent secular institutions. Others function more akin to a thieves’ guild, providing a place to sow and reap rumors, plot acts of questionable legality, and perhaps also engage in lust-driven interactions—all activities suitable to take place behind closed doors.

Clerics of the goddess endeavor to hold the three aspects of their goddess in balance, as a lifetime in service to any one can easily become monotonous, and Calistria abhors her followers becoming overly consumed by a single pursuit. Champions are sometimes more focused, such as those who dedicate themselves to fighting slavery, but even these are careful to avoid becoming so wrapped up in their work that they lose sight of the other aspects of life that make it worth living.


Special rituals, conducted as needed, include invocations of the goddess’s blessing when a worshipper begins pursuit of a desired lover, divinations to determine her approval or disapproval of set courses of revenge, initiation rites for those who wish to devote themselves to the faith, and birth and death ceremonies. But Calistria’s faith places little stock in marriage; between the goddess’s own shifting interests and the mercurial nature of relationships between long-lived elves, marriage is much less of an institution as it is among other peoples.

Wasps are iconic to Calistria, as widely recognized as a symbol of the faith as her formal religious symbol. Like the goddess, a wasp inflicts extreme pain in retribution for an offense, far beyond what it seems a simple insect ought tobe capable of. Further cementing the similarity is the fact that the wasp seems to take a perverse pleasure in its attacks, pursuing offenders and stinging repeatedly. Many followers of Calistria carry yellow-and-black tokens on their person as a form of homage. Priests are known to cultivate giant wasp allies and pets, and many Calistrian gathering places harbor swarms of wasps under the eaves or in similarly sheltered spots. These swarms tend to ignore worshippers but descend in force upon any interlopers, defending such locations with even greater spite than expected from a typical wasp.

Relations with Other Religions

Calistria's interactions with other gods are complex and strewn with contradictions. Some stories even suggest that she was the force behind the creation or destruction of certain deities. Each temple has its own idea about which stories are true and which are false, and these differences only escalate the conflicts between factions. All agree that the other gods treat her very carefully and respectfully, as they fear her reprisal for an unintended slight.

In general, Calistria and Shelyn get along well, as erotic love leads to sex and common lust can turn into love, though Calistria believes Shelyn's insistence on love is a weakness. Calistria finds Urgathoa distasteful but respects her lust for life. She is intrigued by Norgorber and willing to work with him, though he is never quite sure if he is somehow being manipulated. She respects Desna, but thinks she's a little too hung up on her failures and setbacks. Calistria and Cayden Cailean are on very friendly terms, and just how friendly is the subject of much speculation.

Calistria's worshipers are open to dealing with members of most other faiths, provided it suits their needs or desires at the moment. Most of them evaluate people as individuals rather than members of groups or followers of creeds.

While they are implacably vengeful if roused, Calistrians rarely judge a person on the basis of social standing, ethnicity, or personal history. Their attitudes toward members of faiths they consider prudish range from amused to contemptuous, and some take a certain impish pleasure in seducing those with such beliefs. Every person presents an opportunity for rewarding exchanges of money, information, or caresses, so Calistrians are generally amiable until they are wronged. They tend to be found in cities, where it's easiest to indulge their hedonism and find willing partners, and have little interest in associating with those who would get in the way of their revels. Followers of Cayden Cailean tend to get along well with Calistria's faithful, and Shelynites focused on the beauty of eroticism often find common interests with Calistrians, who are ever attentive to the eroticism of beauty

Holy Books & Codes

Although Calistria's followers recommend several works of theater and literature as shining examples of how to execute the perfect seduction or revenge, the only text they hold as sacred is The Book of Joy. Some versions of this guide to passion include illustrations of sexual positions, instructions on reading and manipulating others' emotions, or collected anecdotes on satisfying revenge schemes to address various offenses; the sections included in each temple's unique copy ofthe text say much about the temple's leadership. Conservative cities sometimes make it illegal to possess a copy, but mischievous Calistrians print portions of the book as one-page "penny bibles" showing the most erotic portions of the manuscript in the hope of eliciting curiosity in the readers.

Tenets of Faith

Edicts: pursue your personal freedom, seek hedonistic thrills, take revenge
Anathema: become too consumed by love or a need for revenge, let a slight go unanswered
Follower Alignments: Chaotic Good, Chaotic Neutral, Chaotic Evil

Holidays

Calistria's church as a whole has no set holidays, although each temple has established its own holidays to commemorate the avenging of old slights or great conquests and epic acts of trickery.

Worship in Taldor
As a Non-The Seven deity, worship of The Savored Sting is officially illegal in Kingdom of Taldor.

Aphorisms

The following phrases are used by followers of Calistria to articulate the finer points of their deity’s teachings.
Love the food, not the chef: Seeking an object of desire or revenge can be sweet, but Calistria loathes the thought of becoming too consumed by love, a need for revenge, or any other single endeavor. This saying warns followers of the risk of letting a need for revenge overtake the rest of their lives, and it reminds them to keep a degree of emotional distance from the target of their physical desires.
See to your own wounds first: When one is wronged, the urge to retaliate immediately is strong, but this directive encourages followers to ensure their own needs are met before pursuing vengeance. Those needs may be literal wounds, emotional turmoil, or carnal desires, and ignoring them is akin to leaving a wound to fester. Of course, the saying also leaves little room for doubt about the steps to be taken after.

Religions

• Elven Pantheon
• Gods of Tengaria