V'Shaat
The Radiant; Matron of Fire and Freedom, Tactician of the Insurgent Gods
V'Shaat, also commonly named Bashaat, Mana-Auha, Lady Dawnschorus, Lady Dread-Naught or The Radiant, is the Material Goddess of fire, bravery, freedom, tactics, artifice and ingenuity. She is an ancient god, considered primordial by most Waking societies, and her story is long. In mortal life and as an Insurgent demigodess she was known by her full name, V'Shaat al-Avra.
V'Shaat is an active and protective deity, invested especially in the protection of Waking peoples against depredations by creatures of fear and shadows. It is because of this she is sometimes considered a "mother" goddess even above the more distant Aios, for example the Noa-Aina-Koroa, who name her Mana-Auha, meaning "Mother Dawnschorus". Even in nations where she is not seen as the Divine Mother, she is a popular subject of reverence.
V'Shaat's alignment is Chaotic Good.Appearance & Heraldry
See also: V'Shaat & The Dreadnoughts Image Gallery (External)The Radiant is mostly portrayed as she looked in life: with dark Tassalite skin & hair and bright amber eyes. She was famously short in stature but lithe and wiry strong. It was said her gaze could burn a hole through a baobab tree, figuratively and perhaps literally.
Worship
II. Move ever forward,
III. Think not in negatives,
IV. Consult the fires, then consult them again
Divine agents of V'Shaat are heavily skewed towards paladins and warpriests. These mortal swords are known as Dreadnoughts, named from the old Middish Trader Tongue meaning "fear not". As a goddess of bravery and progress, The Radiant considers fear—and those who sow it—to be the principle stumbling block of Waking Civilization. The Dreadnoughts are peerless in their ability to inspire courage and dispel the shadows from which our fears arise. Outside combat, they are exemplars of "Just do it!".
V'Shaat's clerics are known as Red Priests. Her empyreal sorcerers are known as Red Mages.The Temples of Eternal Flame
The most sacred of V'Shaat's temples are the Temples of Eternal Flame, built around occurrences of natural, indefinite fires, for example vents of natural gas or coal seams. About two dozen such temples have survived the Deluge, mostly located in western Marai, Khayyam, Ket and Nurin.The Firstsong Islands
The Radiant is one of two primary deities of the Noa-Aina-Koroa of the the Firstsong Islands. Known as Mana-Auha ("Mother Dawnschorus"), she is the divine protector of the people of Waking side of the Veil, while the Duskscape Regent Overshepherd Rom (whom they call Onu-Ahware, "Father Dusksdirge") is the protector of our traveling souls in the Dream Time.Marai
V'Shaat is also the primary mother deity among the yamabushi monks of the Ashina and Morō clans, in the Highlands of Marai. There, she is known as Ajna the Just. The current Chief Kannushi of the Ashina clan, Ashina Tsuyu, is thought to be a mortal avatar of Ajna.Domains
V'Shaat's primary Domain is Fire. Her secondary domains are Sun, Confidence, Soul, Zeal, Creativity, Freedom and Kung Fu.Favoured Weapon
V'Shaat's favoured weapons are the khopesh and unarmed/kung fu. Her Relic khopesh is Sagasinger.
She is the Divine Grandmaster of Inner Fire Style kung fu, also known as Senjutsu. Arguably the most visually impressive style of kung fu, practicioners shape their lifeforce (ki) into external, kinetic energies with which they strike their opponents. The methods are compared to primal magic sourced from the earth, sea and sky (of which our own lifeforce is a part!). V'Shaat adapted these methods from the ancient arts of Tong Deum, taught to her by Galadnock mac-Kenzie.
In addition to the Dreadnoughts, Senjutsu is popular among the Ashina, Morō and O-Nao-En-Zan of Marai, as well as some "Mad Monks" of The Ogre (though V'Shaat has no other known connection to that entity).Bladepoetry
As, among other things, a goddess of artifice and war, V'Shaat's blacksmiths and weapon enchanters are among the most accomplished in the Four Quadrants. Many of the finest Materian relic weapons & armours trace their heritage back to ancient Sagasingers and Flamespeakers of Tong Deum. Of particular value are weapons imbued with V'Shaatian Bladepoetry: deep and subtle assertions of power breathed deep into the alloys during creation. Those who retain this knowledge into the Third Age number in the single digits.History: Antiquity
The Radiant's is a long and storied origin. She is featured in dozens of mythologies, folk tales and minstrels' songs, generally featuring her piecing together impossible victories with little to no resources. She is described as having the adrenalized clarity of a chased hare, but without the fear.
Tassalit
The Fire Goddess was born V'Shaat al-Avra, on the distant plane of Tassalit, hundreds of years A.M. (Ante-Merantha) on Materia's Yasnan Calendar.
A street urchin turned criminal mastermind, al-Avra's band of merry thieves wreaked havoc on the orderliness of her home nation of Aroane's Gift. Too wise for emotions like annoyance or vengeance, the nation's Sovereign, a sphinx by the name of Annan the Attentive, decided it more convenient to employ the band than to eliminate them. By then a powerful self-taught spellsword, arcane trickster and pyromancer, V'Shaat was taught the secrets of Voidwalking, and her group was tasked with two missions: observation of the encroaching Rozsan Empire on neighboring planes, and stealing any knowledge the advanced Rozsans possessed around agriculture or silviculture, a dire limitation for arid Tassalit. As these goals benefitted her homeland as a whole, particularly the poor, V'Shaat agreed.
Most of the original members of the original Tassalite Sagasingers have been lost to history, though two of V'Shaat's closest partners are still attested in the church's oldest texts: B'Non il-Anrau, said to be a swordsman of great ferocity, and R'Ani il-Duat, said to be a inquisitor assigned to spy on V'Shaat by Annan the Attentive. Though initially feigned, il-Duat's loyalty to the mage-thief grew more real than the densest iron over the following decades.The Sagasingers and Insurgent Gods
Eventually, V'Shaat was to discover the stakes were higher merely than her tiny and relatively well-run home plane, and she broke from Annan the Attentive's government. Her merry band became an infamous organization of planar guides, vigilantes, researchers and enemies of oppression, named the Sagasingers, an early ancestor to the Dreadnoughts. They would operate for a few hundred years before V'Shaat met the Egwithian heroes Emeliat Reis and Merlinkainen, who were bent on pursuing the Lichlord Inum'indiron'aravaut through Voidspace, but lacked the knowledge to track him over such strange geography. al-Avra, joined by her long-time friend and fellow Sagasinger Galadnock mac-Kenzie, initially agreed to help them track the Lichlord, but by the time they arrived at their destination, they too were devoted to the cause. Thus, the four became the Insurgent Heroes of First Age Materia, and eventually the Insurgent Gods.The Anzu Riders of Tel
Created ~220 I.M.. A squadron of Sagasingers infiltrated the armies of Lichlord Indu'una, whose Devastators were specialists in the taming & use of megafauna (drakes, anzu, thunderlizards, baloths, etc.) in the use of warfare. They studied the Devastators' methods and brought them to bear against the Colonial Gods, becoming known as the Anzu Riders of Tel.The Deluge & The V'Shaatian Gifts
The Radiant is thought to be a saviour of untold thousands during the Deluge: in response to the imminent catastrophe, she is said to have sent the plane's volcanics into a fit of magmatic activity, creating as much new land as possible for the stranded to find and survivors to settle. In some versions of its telling, this was done in collaboration with the Red Raven and Blue Fox, Morrigan and Merlinkainen. These recent magmatic arcs are sometimes called V'Shaatian Gifts, and have been historically prized for their obsidian and mineral-rich soils. A famous example is the Arcstrand in Oztroja and parts of Agåntyr.
V'SHAAT
Godhood
Ascendant (Early First Age) Alignment
CG Domains
Fire, Sun, Confidence, Soul, Zeal, Creativity, Freedom, Kung Fu Favoured Weapon
Khopesh, Unarmed Relic Weapon
The Sagasinger Divine Technique
Tong Deum / Inner Fire Style / Senjutsu
Galadnock mac-Kenzie, Material demigod of travel,
skaldry, fire and surfacer dwarves,
Master Flamespeaker of Tong Deum.
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