Frances Heronseye
The Heron's Eye; the River Man; the Singing Saint; the Halcyon God; Old Frank Sanjo
Saint Frances Heronseye, also known The Heron's Eye, The Halcyon God, The River Man and the Singing Saint, is an Ascendant, Material demigod of asceticism, fresh water, wetlands, music, barley wine, the disabled, repentant scoundrels and environmental stewardship. He spent much of his life as a brawler and a criminal in the poorer townships of the Antediluvian Allesans, before becoming an Ajoran friar and a local hero. He has since become a popular subject of worship throughout the Broken Empire and Valamon. His churches are often given the demonyms Frankish or Halcyon.
In addition to his divinity, the Singing Saint is immortalized in a popular series of songs known as the Cantigas de Santa Sanjo di Telura.
Frances Heronseye's alignment is Neutral Good.Appearance & Heraldry
See also: Saint Frances Heronseye Image Gallery (External)Depictions of the Heron's Eye are generally as he was during mortal life: a tall, dark, wiry, scruffy man in his 60's, with his iconic eyepatch and Ajoran friar's robes. He is often portrayed near a river, wetland or some source of fresh water, and his iconography almost always includes wetland birds, particularly herons and kingfishers, the latter of which gives him the occasional title of 'Halcyon God'. Other heraldic symbols include shillelaghs, casks/mugs of barley wine, cattails & other wetland plants, musical instruments, borrowed Ajoran imagery and more.
Domains
The Heron's Eye's primary Domain is Introspection. His secondary domains are Community, Water, Nature, Creativity, Vigil, Toil and Kung Fu.Divine Weapon
Saint Frances's divine weapons are the shillelagh and unarmed/Kung Fu. His Relic shillelagh is the humble put powerful Head-Bonker.
Before abandoning his life as a ne'er-do-well, Francis Sanjo was a locally famous for his adeptness in barroom brawls. His unarmed methods didn't have a name until he tought them as a friar, decades later; they are now most famously called Meandering River Fist, a martial art which deflects and reverses the opponent's strength. It is taught in a simple but unusual way: students are attacked briefly but frequently by their teachers, often by surprise, with a simple shillelagh. Bruises heal and their memories revisit the attacks, until they gain a preternatural familiarity with aggression, moving it about calmly like a valley moves water. It may seem harsh, but his friars wear their bruises with pride, knowing it will aid in their ability to help victims of injustice.History
It would be another four centuries after Saint Ajora's ascension for another mortal to reach divinity, himself a worshipper of Ajora Dawnbringer.Early Life
The Heron's Eye was born Frances Sanjo di Telura in the far west of what is now the Allesans of the Broken Empire. Very little is known about his early life save for his own admissions: Frances was a bard, a rake, a fence, a brawler and a drunkard, notorious in Telura as a criminal mastermind. He was eventually caught, and due to his notoriety was given the fast track to the gallows, along with a a group of sellswords-turned-bandits. One of the thugs managed to escape his bonds, and in the ensuring melee, the (still bound) Frances Sanjo was stabbed by a constable, once in the chest and once in the eye. As he lay dying, face to the sky, a white falcon circling overhead remained centred in his view. Something transformed within him, and his path diverged sharply.Conversion
As a friar of Ajora Dawnbringer, Frances Sanjo was a man of great humour and humility, talking openly of his early misadventures and never letting his piety lead to condescension. To his congregations, he was simply known as Friar Frank. He was especially fond of birds, and it was said he could communicate with them. (Certainly he spoke to them, and even sang sanitized versions of his old tavern songs to the local wildlife.) He gained the name “Heron’s Eye” as he would stare in contemplation, sometimes for hours, as if he saw something others did not, like a Great Blue Heron observing fish in murky water.The Corruption of Calagon
Friar Sanjo would later return to Telura to start his own Ajoran priory, naming it Our Lady of the Threefold Sorrows. The Priory became a fierce opponent of the neighbouring city-state of Calagon and their rapacious expansion over the sensitive, ecologically unique countryside. In one famous story, the Heron’s Eye visited the Countess Amand X di Lemare of Calagon in a wine-fuelled vision, rebuking her for the city-state’s appalling wealth gap and their fondness for hunting and caging rare animals. By now popular figures in the region, the Singing Saint and his clergy were becoming energizing figures among rebellious groups within the Lemare dynasty.Death & Ascension
The Lemares eventually decided to do away with the priory by sending agents in to poison their water supply, killing or severely sickening most of the members, and placing other, downstream settlements at great risk. The now-elderly Friar Sanjo was also struck. As the writings of his followers tell it, Sanjo was at death's door from the poison, but in a burst of "spirit" was able to rise, miraculously, from his bed. He bid two remaining friars, who did not ingest the poison, to help him to the fork of the two major rivers: the Euphra and Tenagra, which fed into Telura and the even larger town of Anjou, respectively. There, the Heron's Eye began to sing a hymn, and as he did so he walked into the great river, disappearing into the silty waters, never to reëmerge. And by doing this, he took all the poison into himself, cleansing the waters and rescuing untold thousands from a painful death.
News of this deed spread rapidly from surviving clergy to the nearby townspeople, who were instilled with such religious fervour over the Heron’s Eye’s death that his own church was born, and the Singing Saint joined the Ascendant Pantheon.Interpretations of Frances's Final Act
While all versions of Frances Heronseye's sacrifice are aproximately similar, there are variations, for example in the song he sang as he strode beneath the rapids.
In one version, he sang his favourite hymn (another sanitized barroom song), about a priest who saved a nation by tricking its drunken king into feeling inebriated from mere water, thus allowing him to regain his health & mind while avoiding sobriety, which the damaged king so hated. Theologians generally accept this to be a lesson of mind over matter, that salvation or victory are always within reach, so long as one has the faith or self-confidence to grab them.
In another version, he sings a hymn about Ajora Dawnbringer's sorrowful performance that summoned Aios-in-Mourning back to the sky, ending The Darkest Decade. This is generally thought to portray him as petitioning one or both of these elder gods for divine intervention, or perhaps to give him the strength to intervene himself, in the way his own Matron goddess did centuries earlier.Music
See full article: Cantigas de Santa Sanjo di TeluraThe Cantigas are generally thought to be a combination of Frances's own songs combined with some number of later works dedicated in his name. These songs are related to but distinct from the older The Cantigas de Santa Ajora. They are among the most widespread pieces of First Age art to survive to the modern era, alongside the Ajoran Cantigas, various songs attributed to Laila By-the-Sea and programmes composed by the God-Empress of New Rozsa, Nir.
FRANCES HERONSEYE
Godhood
Ascendant (Late First Age) Alignment
NG Domains
Introspection, Community, Water, Nature, Creation, Vigil, Toil, Kung Fu Favoured Weapon
Shillelagh, Unarmed Relic Weapon
Headbonker Divine Technique
Meandering River Fist
Banner: An elderly Saint Frances Heronseye (illus. anon (trad)).
Musical inset: One of the Cantigas de Santa Sanjo di Telura, accompanied by lutes. It is a simple lament for a dead bird he once found on the side of the road, but this famous song has come to symbolize loss in general.
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