San Heather

San Heather is one of the Great Saints of the Bastonian Pantheon, elevated to godhood by the Almighty Herself to be the teacher of and, an example to her people. Once a human from Bastonia, she was an engineer who is said to have constructed the First Wall. The Bastonian Royal Family are said to be able to trace their ancestry back to her directly, however distantly after millennia of crossed marriages. She is known by the epithet Queen of Saints and is worshiped particularly among craftsmen and architects of all kinds. It is said that if San Lukas is the saint of common struggle, then San Heather is the saint of common effort.

Her symbol is a divider athwart a sqare, forming a diamond in the negative space between, and her sacred weapon is the warhammer. Communal insects such as bees and ants are considered sacred to her.

History

Before the Battle of the First Wall, San Heather was a mortal human living in the village at Whiterock, which would later become the Bastonian capital. She is said to have designed and lead the construction of the First Wall, including repairing it by the use of magic, at a critical moment wherein the breakthrough would have otherwise been disasterous.

After the battle, San Heather was elevated to sainthood (and thus divinity) by the Almighty, and eventually married San Lukas, becoming the first Queen of White Rock. After being gravely injured in a tunnel collapse, she was transported to the Bastion of Heaven, where she is said to have been restored.

Relationships

San Heather is a devout follower of the Almighty, who she pays fealty to to the point of worship. Her husband, San Lukas, is also one of the Almighty's saints and a fellow divinity within the Bastonian Pantheon. She is known to be on especially good terms with San Marino, who often shares common interests and endeavours with her. San Lauren is another good friend, owing to the understanding of common cause between builder, merchant, and famer.

More liberal than her husband, San Heather is less opposed to San Elijah, San Sylvester, and San Hera; she has been known to attend the courts of all of them freely, and is said to be in good spirits whenever she does.

In opposition to her husband, she is also the voice among the saints most in favour of gentle treatment of San Meteo and San Verus. She sees Meteo as merely damaged by self-interest and otherwise reasonable (at least to a point), and Verus as a wretch, driven mad by close contact to things he was never meant to understand, and therefore pitiable.

Quite naturally, she is an enemy of the Enemy and her realm, the Celestial Foundry, is instrumental in preparing the implements of war that both her husband and the Almighty use to defend Heaven or bring war to Hell.

Appearance

San Heather appears as a healthy woman in the prime of her life, red-faced from sunburn or forgeburn, dressed in the leather apron and sooty clothes of an artificer. Her left arm and both legs are entirely mechanical, forged of adamantine, though their delicacy and precision of craftsmanship give her dexterity near to or better than her flesh and blood right arm, and are certainly work beyond even the most gifted mortal smiths of any realm.

Realm

Like many of the saints, while San Heather is welcome in Heaven and frequently present there, the very nature of the universe is such that her true realm, the Celestial Foundry, is in Axioma. The Celestial Foundry occupies several layers of Axioma and is a resplendent factory turning out goods both improbable and practical, rarely visited by the other saints, apart from San Lukas.

Providence

As the patron saint of architects and engineers, the unexpected return to function of a mechanical contrivance or performance under load of an object or structure can be seen by her devout as a mark of providence. She's particularly known for sudden inspiration, particularly through dreams, revealing the one quick trick or small detail that would salvage an otherwise doomed idea.

Servants

Like many in Axioma, San Heather is served by Inevitables, especially the Arbiters, who she is said to have personally created, though inevitable of all descriptions fill her ranks.

Unique Servants

The Wenge Ambassador

San Heather's herald is a unique Kolyarut Inevitable, whose skin has been carved from Wenge wood, with hair made of rows of wisteria flowers. San Heather is known to send the Wenge Ambassador wherever her attention is needed, to speak and bargain in her place, and report to her all that he sees.

The Bastonian Church

The bastonian church is unified in the worship of The Almighty, which is observed by not just her direct followers, but even by those patronized by the other Saints of the Pantheon. The church teaches the performance of good works and the cultivation of compassion as the roadmap to ultimate salvation and an afterlife spent in Heaven.

Devotees of San Heather are known as the Heatherites, and form a religious order within the greater church.

Worshippers

All Bastonians worship the Almighty, and some further dedicate themselves to the saintly Architect, San Heather. San Heather's clergy make up its own order within the Bastonian Church, the Heatherites, who have a ranking structure similar to the hierarchy of the church at large.

Among her followers in particular are architects, craftsfolk, and laborers of all description.

Clergy

As what the Bastonian Church calls a religious order, San Heather's clergy have their own manner of uniform dress, distinct from direct priests of the Almighty through its simplicity. These tend to be grey, hooded robes, with a leather or woolen apron in the front suited to the trade.

Members of such orders are almost always craftspeople or tradespeople themselves, in addition to their religious or pastoral duties.

Temples & Shrines

Like much the rest of Bastonian architecture, temples and shrines to the Almighty are often masterworks of masonry or stonework, which in wealthy communities are often further embellished with stained glass and frescos, depicting a popular saint in the region or scenes from the sacred texts. Such structures are usually subdivided internally, with an area for public ceremony and worship (which is frequent) and an area for the sole use of the clergy and those who serve the clergy in liturgical preparation, and temple complexes almost always include an outbuilding or suite of rooms known as the rectory, where the priests serving a particular temple have residence.

Holy Texts

In addition to the holy texts used in the worship of the Almighty, members of the Heatherite order follow a document called the Manual of San Heather. In addition to being a treatise on the importance of common labour and shared effort within communities for the wellbeing of both the community and the individual, physically and spiritually, it's longer passages also describe a great many important technologies and tools well known in Bastonia in great detail. Such manuals are hard to come by, and are essentially considered masterwork books. Those copies which exist are highly prized by their owners as potential bastions of knowledge in the event of disaster.

Church History

The church and the state are intimately connected within Bastonia, with the state relying on the church for its legitimacy and the church relying on the state's realpolitikal power to stay in rule. The Almighty's church is considered coterminous with those of all other saints and is the only legally-permitted form of open worship within the Kingdom.

Holidays

San Heather's feast day is the first day of spring, and often marks the formal beginning of some community project or other, such as the addition of a new grainary or an effort to reconstruct a damaged section of wall. She is usually invoked on the occasion of the founding of important buildings or enterprises, as well.

Favoured Animals

Those animals which build in community - ants and bees among them - are considered sacred by the followers of San Heather and symbols of the truth of her teaching.