Mestama

Mestama is a Lord of the Abyss, whose dominion over hedge magic, fate, and the Black Arts has earned her the epithet Mother of Witches. She was once a demon, born of the chaos of the Abyss, but has lived longer than some gods and has risen to a commensurate level of power. While not widely worshipped by the mortals of Ahren, she nevertheless has followers among the outcast witches, deseprate healers, and mad sorcerers of the world.

A chaotic evil diety, her symbol is a human eye. Divine spellcasters inspired by the mother of witches gain access to the Chaos, Evil, Healing, and Magic domains. Her sacred weapon is the dagger, and is known to favour cats above all other base creatures.

History

Mestama's origins are shrouded in the mystery of time and the volatility of her native realm, the Abyss. Mestama is a Lord of the Abyss whose domain is expansive, and while her cult is extensive and she is generous with her gifts to her followers, the nature of her cults tends to attract opposition from more organized faiths quickly, making large and historic campaigns of her influence impossible.

Relationships

All of the Lords of the Abyss war with each other constantly, shifting alliances amongst each other in like manner to how mortals shift their clothes. Her domain puts her near the Bosom of Creation, a realm of San Verus in the Abyss. It is unclear in the histories whether she is an ally or an enemy to San Verus, and some even credit her with bewitching the Bosom of Creation into its current state, which keeps San Verus and other, lesser evils trapped within its extradimensional confines.

Appearance

Mestama rarely appears before mortals in her true form - a hag of a giant, hunched and wild-haired, whose cloak is made of the heads of her enemies (or perhaps her followers) woven together by their hairs. Instead, when she appears before mortals, she takes the form of a fair young woman, a patient matron, or a wizened crone, whose principle tell of their otherworldly nature is cat-yellow eyes.

Realm

Mestama claims rulership - and give stability to - the Bloodscape, a realm of the Abyss which surrounds the Bosom of Creation.

Providence

Mestama is the queen of the miraculous cure, the mother of the spoken curse, and the goddess of hexes. The sudden unlooked-for appearance of black cats is sometimes an omen of her intervention, and her faithful pay careful attention to the motion of the planets and stars, looking for the signs of her intervention.

Servants

Many species of demon pledge their loyalty to Lords of the Abyss, among whom Mestama is no exception. While Dretches are, as always, over-represented, she is also popular among the Hezrou. The Bloodscape is also infested in a rare species of Abyssal Hags which are said to be her direct creation.

Church

Mestama's church is disorganized, with individual cells of the church rarely containing more than a dozen full members. These cell structures occasionally gain influence over partial members, and care is taken so that few, if any of the members know all of the others, so that at least one or two have a decent chance to escape the intervention of the forces of good or law.

Worshippers

Mestama's worshippers fall under many categories. All seek magic. Some come to her on the road paved with the best of intentions, seeking cures for disease or injury when all other interventions have failed, or when the haughty local alchemist demands a price to dear to manage. Others come to her through her witches and their divination, lusting or longing over the same capability.

Clergy

A rare few of Mestama's followers, more often women than not, walk down the twisted roads of knowledge and lore far enough that they come into direct contact with Mestama or her abyssal lieutenants, and so form pacts that make them formal members of her clergy. Warlocks are over-represented in this cohort, but so too are witches and clerics.

Most revered - and most cursed - are the few oracles that Mestama empowers. While not properly a god, she can still reach into the Ahren when the stars and blood are right, and blast her followers with Abyssal wisdom and pseudo-divine insight. Oracles of Mestama are known as Grand Crones and are revered, recognized almost instantly among her followers and their own enemies alike.

Temples & Shrines

Raising permanent temples to Mestama is a dangerous game; her worship is illegal under punishment of imprisonment in the Hearthlands and by death in Bastonia and the Atarlie Empire. Even in the Lordless Lands, where intelligent beings have great latitude in their choice of diety, Mestama is seen as distasteful at best, and her followers are often driven away from the mainstream bands of the Orcish Nation or Confederacy of Sages at best, or warred against at worse.

Indeed, it is only recently, since the Great Collapse opened up the Shimmering Shore to the influences of the planes and threw the region into chaos, that any effort to organize the church beyond country cults meeting in secret was possible. She is rumoured to have now a temple known as the Obsidian Henge in the wilds somewhere near High Toor.

Holy Texts

The Lords of the Abyss consider nothing sacred. No word, much less a facsimile of their word, may be used to bind them. Their only teachings are that which they or their lieutenants or priest pass along to the next generation, and their only law is their current demand.

Church History

Mestama's church has never been organized enough to be a meaningful historical force.

Holidays

It is believed in particular that the followers of Mestama tend to hold their rituals on nights of the full moon.