Nüwā

Nüwā, a great serpent with a woman’s face, was so resourceful and powerful she could have been or done anything, but she chose to care for humanity and the World it lived in. When the pillars holding up the sky collapsed, everything was in chaos. Fire, water, birds, and beasts ran rampant across the land, and none could stop them — save Nüwā. She patched the sky with colorful stones, cut off a giant tortoise’s legs to prop up the sky, fought off a black dragon, dammed the flood with reed ash, and — since she could not reproduce normally with her brother-husband Fuxi — molded humans using mud, though pieces occasionally fell off and resulted in disabilities. She taught them to arrange marriages and created wind instruments for them to play.

Today, Nüwā serves as a Divine Sovereign among the Shén, along with Yandi Shennongshi and the technically-retired Fuxi. She liaises between humanity and the pantheon due to the volume of prayers she receives. Send a random cry of need into the æther, there’s a good chance Nüwā will hear and even respond to it. Her commitment to humanity’s priorities sometimes brings her into conflict with more ruthless Shén like Laozi, who see humans as straw dogs; she once saved humanity when her father the Jade Emperor sent the God of Plague to cull humans. When she goes among humans, the “serpent with a human face” form tends to freak people out, so she more commonly looks like a smiling older woman in traditional Han Chinese clothing.

Nüwā’s Scions tend to share their mother’s selfless love for humanity and lateral thinking skills. They care deeply about humanity’s problems and are endlessly creative and brave in how to solve them.