Urgathoa (oor-gah-THO-ah)

NE goddess of DIsease, Gluttony, and Undeath

The Pallid Princess

Seize what you can, tear it apart, and savor its sweet, bloody taste, for existence is dull without the blessing of sensation.

-Serving Your Hunger

The chosen of Urgathoa do not dread the flaws of mortal flesh, such as aging, disease, or even death, for so long as they indulge in excess above all else, their goddess offers eternal freedom from such fickle constraints. Urgathoa herself was once a mortal woman who challenged and rejected the tenets of deities whose followers expected mindless conformity, temperance, and restraint. Why would the gods craft Panaria into a near-endless buffet abundant with pleasures of the body and mind if the living weren’t destined to feast from it? Urgathoa so loved satiating her life’s appetites that in death, she spat in the face of Pharasma’s judgment, murdered the psychopomp assigned to aid her transition to the afterlife, and tore herself from the Boneyard with a feat of will that not only returned her to the Material Plane but also transformed her into the first divine undead creature.

Urgathoa demands that her faithful reject moderation and self-restraint at all costs, instead urging reckless gluttony, constant experimentation, and the relentless pursuit of appetites of the flesh. Above all, Urgathoa’s children must feed their endless hunger. They must dine from every great hall, striving to fully satiate their cravings as they feast, for every morsel bears a sacred truth gleaned only from its consumption. Her followers should taste the flesh and drink the lifeblood of other sapient creatures to discover what hidden thirsts their essence might quench. Only the weak fear to indulge those yearnings they mislabel as strange and taboo, for even poison can be savored as a sweet nectar upon the tongue if one is strong enough to relish its torment. Disease and infection are but tests of her followers’ conviction and should be willingly contracted and endured, as Urgathoa reveals her most treasured secrets in the fevered dreams that often accompany these afflictions. Undeath—seen by so many as a perversion of the mortal form—is the ultimate transcendence beyond the body’s limitations, for those who defy the hypocrisy of death’s judgmental gaze shall never know an existence where their desires remain unfulfilled. Nowhere are these tenets of putting one’s personal gratification and sensation first more espoused than in Urgathoa’s holy text, Serving Your Hunger, written by the Pallid Princess’s first champion, Dason.

Much like the principles held by members of her church, Urgathoa’s existence defies the natural order. She is often depicted as a raven-haired woman wielding an enormous scythe. Her upper torso is clad in skin as pale as a vampire’s; her abdomen peels into rotted strips of flesh that expose her entrails; and her pelvis, legs, and feet are torn clean of muscle and flesh, revealing little more than bleached bone. Her clothes, if she wears any, are stained with blood and bile—more often she wears nothing, in a mockery of the carnal form. Some say the footprints left from her first steps upon Panaria filled with a pestilence so indomitable it has spawned thousands of other plagues as it evolves and adapts, leaving mortals incapable of developing an immunity to it. Others say the first words Urgathoa spoke after returning to the Material Plane stole the breath from the lungs of those who heard them, transforming these poor creatures into wraiths and specters that shared her endless hunger. The faithful hold that her touch can evoke pleasures so great that those who know her embrace never experience a desire for anything else ever again. And should Urgathoa ever bestow a curse upon an individual, her followers believe it can be removed only by gorging in excess on the raw flesh of sapient creatures.

The church of Urgathoa is organized as a matriarchy. Usually, a powerful female cleric presides over each temple, leading a congregation composed mostly of necromancers, undead, or those hoping to eventually become undead. While most worshippers of Urgathoa concern themselves less with spreading her faith than increasing their own pleasure in her name, they often work together to ensure that her temples are devoted to offering experiences rife with pure sensation. Temples with more experienced clerics tend to offer services that can satisfy more peculiar, and often grotesque, hungers. Her faith is illegal in all nations of Tengaria.

Senior clergy of Urgathoa sometimes practice a ritual known as the Reaping, in which they don clean gray robes and arm themselves with scythes before heading out into the surrounding countryside to deal as much death and destruction as they can upon worshippers of Urgathoa’s most hated enemies. During the slaughter, each cleric attempts to inflict wounds that spatter as much blood and gore upon their garments as possible, believing that if Urgathoa is pleased by the results of the Reaping, she will grant a boon to each worshipper who participated. The blood-soaked robes from a successful Reaping are often displayed in temples of Urgathoa as symbols of the goddess’s approval of the local clergy’s efforts.

While it has never been confirmed, most suspect that Urgathoa was the architect of the events of the Age of Darkness. While the forces of the undead were led by Trigon, it seems unlikely that the vast amount of undead in his army would have not had the Pallid Princess' involvement. The goddess herself denies these accusations, but at the same time her cultist celebrate the events of the Age of Darkness (especially the death of Aroden) with reverence and celebrate Orcus as a martyr to their mistress' cause.

Relations with Other Religions

Urgathoa is largely content to indulge her own needs and desires, and most other powerful entities leave her alone to do that; as a result, she has fewer enemies than most evil gods. Pharasma, however, considers undeath an abomination, and pursues Urgathoa and her kind whenever they are found. Good-hearted Sarenrae seeks to "heal" the goddess and her followers, which naturally strains relations between them.The Pallid Princess appreciates Abadar's cities for the plagues they foster, and sometimes operates side by side with Calistria, as the lust goddess's portfolio is similar without overlapping.

Urgathoa's has contempt for ascetics and Irori's strict discipline. Her ire is tempered by his devotion to moderation rather than abstinence, however, and she is intrigued by the idea of tasting his physical perfection. The goddess supports the Whispering Way for its promotion of undeath, but allows her priests to form their own opinions of it, as those adherents who focus on her gluttony aspect may object to it. Urgathoan vampires and ghouls, for example, must feed on the living, and if the cult manages to convert the entire world to undeath, these undead would starve, so they shun the cultists or even work to keep them from becoming too successful.

Urgathoa's church has little desire to crusade against other faiths, even those like Pharasma's and Sarenrae's who actively hunt its congregants, as members would rather spend their time indulging themselves than fighting others. That said, they aren't above undermining those faiths when opportunities present themselves, and take particular satisfaction in raising members of those faiths as undead when possible. They generally go out of their way to avoid antagonizing Abadar's church, as cities serve many of Urgathoa's interests, and work amiably with servants of Calistria when their interests align.

Holy Books & Codes

Crafted by Urgathoa's first antipaladin, Dason, Serving Your Hunger is an extended meditation on the greatness to be found by sacrificing all for sensation. It's a cookbook filled with decadent recipes and instructions for dressing and preparing various humanoid races. It also serves as a primer for taking a conciliatory approach to dealing with the undead, as well as for transitioning into an intelligent form of undead oneself, and focuses mainly on vampires, ghouls, and wights.

Tenets of Faith

Edicts become undead upon death, create or protect the undead, sate your appetites
Anathema deny your appetites, destroy undead, sacrifice your life
Follower Alignments LE, NE, CE

Holidays

As a goddess who believes existence should be a continual celebration of one's own power and urges, Urgathoa places no additional significance on particular dates. Her followers have attached special meaning to moonless nights and celestial conjunctions with the undead-filled world of Eox, believing they mark times of the Negative Energy Plane's greatest influence on Panaria, and on those nights they hold great candlelit feasts to honor the goddess and her divine presence and will.

Aphorisms

The following phrases are common among followers of Urgathoa.
May you dine forever: Devotees of Urgathoa believe all will be consumed— it’s only a matter of time. Followers of Urgathoa often use this phrase to call upon others to perform acts of wanton gluttony, bestow a rite of passage to an ally, or subtly reveal their faith to other followers of the Pallid Princess.
May you never hunger again: While a fool can mistake this as a benediction, it is a damning insult, often whispered to an enemy just before the victim takes their final breath.
Pay the pox: As a disease runs its course, victims can no longer afford the cost of their own flesh—their bodies wither and die along with their material ambitions. But worshippers of Urgathoa believe themselves above “paying the pox,” as she allows them to evade the tax of mortality through undeath.
Rot in the gut, froth in the mouth: Oft uttered before performing a ritual obedience to the goddess, such as consuming rancid food or eating while painfully full.

Religions

• Gods of Tengaria
• The Ascended