Eringarathe
From Hypercube
Eringarathe is the eldest of the gods, patient and calm. She is a considerable force for mechanization and systemization of all natural lands. Her voice is powerful, and she speaks with the royal We.
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Ethos
Though by most she is regarded as benevolent -- a builder of cities, instituter of higher learning and mistress of the highest magic, those who investigate soon find traces of her fits of passion that have caused her to unleash horrors on many lands, her petulance and her vindictiveness. The less initiated follow her out of idealism, the mid initiated out of fear, and the highest out of devotion to the powers she offers. Her people specialize in destructive and maiming magics and skills, and eschew benevolence and kindness.
Weapon
Her weapon is Arcor the Vanquisher. Sometimes a sword, sometimes a whip or mace, it is most famous for having dealt the killing blow to the most ancient god of healing, Theriault. When she married Halcyon she gave it into his custody.
Legend
Origin
Eringarathe is the goddess of magic and civilization. She is officially benevolent but actually evil, "a considerable force for systemization and mechanization of natural lands".
Once called Dameyante, and checked by Sere and Sere's minion Krital, as well as the vanished god Ceremon, since the Orchid Fall she has retaken her name and, it may be assumed, her old ambitions. Her Sixth Generation avatar is Isevain. She is sister to Arastar and her twin Deliana. She was Damorgon's protege and betrayed him. Her son by Atrivis, Ulcyk, is now the avatar of Vade. Ulcyk's twin sister Cielle is considered to be dead. Her consort is the saurian Halcyon. A record of the ceremony is preserved.
She was originally mentored and romanced by Damorgon, god of death. She started with a lot of power, but it was hard for her to control. As a young goddess she permanently lost a small part of her power to one of her worshippers that she met on the street. She found him so attractive that she invested him with some of her immortal soul with one look.
The tower
Eringarathe built an enormous tower for magical study in conjunction with her twin sister Deliana, goddess of chivalry and natural magic. At the head was Berengere, who had an altar to them both in her private quarters. To achieve immortality, Eringarathe forced Berengere to sacrifice "the one thing she loved most", which was her husband Alistair. Berengere thought Alistair was simply dead, but Eringarathe had trapped Alistair's soul in a locket. Deliana linked the locket to the altar in hope that Berengere would someday discover what had happened. Racked with loss, Berengere couldn't stand to look at her young daughter Cordelia, and locked her in stasis.
Deliana
Deliana was unhappy with how ruthlessly Eringarathe had acted; this was the beginning of the rift between them.
The rift was catalyzed when Deliana was raped by Damorgon, and made pregnant with Arethuse. Eringarathe refused to renounce Damorgon and publicly smeared Deliana for seducing her sister's lover. The two churches moved into open opposition.
Damorgon got greedy and ambitious, and told his followers to genocide to increase his power. The benevolent gods got worried, particularly Lynet, goddess of healing, and Tyla, goddess of law. They approached Eringarathe and appealed to her stated better nature to help check Damorgon. Eringarathe agreed because she realized she could add Damorgon's power base to her own. She sold him out. Tyla fought Damorgon to occupy him, and Lynet exiled them both to a lesser dimension.
Eringarathe immediately turned on Deliana, who she no longer trusted, thinking she could kill her and take her power as well. Deliana survived, but her followers were drastically reduced. Eringarathe now marshalled fully a quarter of all adventurers. She built a massive library as her church and kept torture chambers and demons in the basement.
Atrivis
Eringarathe allied with an exiled demon called Atrivis, who became god of misery and pain. They had twin children, Cielle and Ulcyk, also known as Danaquil and Tanaquil. She raised Cielle herself, openly, and hid Ulcyk to use him against Atrivis. Ulcyk escaped, and vanished for some time. Atrivis discovered Eringarathe had been holding out, and demanded she turn over Cielle to run his church while he tried to open the gates to his original dimension. Eringarathe, increasingly displeased with how unreliable and pointlessly bloodthirsty Cielle was, turned her over to Atrivis, and Cielle happily ran his church for a while.
Arethuse
Arethuse, the daughter of nature and death, saw that many gods were not attending to their churches correctly. She expended herself to force them all to examine what was best for their churches, and many gods released their power to surrogates: Lynet to Kaehlan, who failed, and then Akshara who also failed; Eringarathe to Zaediex the lich, who failed; Deliana to Maximillian, who succeeded. Akalatan killed his father and became god of thieves. Only Kargin, god of war, and Astolia, goddess of beauty and commerce, hung on, so Arethuse instructed Lakota the barbarian to have Kargin tried in court. Arethuse then dissipated entirely, but the citizens of the prime plane were so awed by her love that they named their dimension and its capital after her, in which they built an enormous park. Lakota was fighting Cielle at the time, with no assistance from his god. Kargin had not done anything to thwart Cielle, and she took particular interest in harrassing Lakota, who, despite being a barbarian, was honest, honourable and upright. He was also in love with Cordelia.
Berengere and Cordelia
Over the years Berengere got more powerful, and more interested in having a usable heir. She asked Eringarathe to release Cordelia and train her. Eringarathe trained Cordelia and Cielle together, with the result that Cordelia became a worshipper of Atrivis. Rather disgusted, Eringarathe gave Cordelia back to Berengere without telling her of Cordelia's interests.
Berengere put Cordelia to work in the tower creating artifacts. So, when Sticks, a ninja of Atrivis, came looking for an artifact to give his wife-to-be, Berengere told him to find Cordelia. Cordelia agreed to make the artifact if Sticks would help her escape. Sticks took her to the plane of Munesol and put her in a small inn. She stayed there for several months and they became good friends. Sticks asked her also for her help with his friend Lakota's quest to remove Kargin. Lakota came to meet Cordelia. She looked into his soul to see if he had the capacity to be a god, and was shocked by how virtuous it was. The two fell immediately in love, despite that she was an elf and he was a dwarf. Cordelia then asked Maximillian to help her convert to worship Deliana.
Cielle's best archmage stole Lakota's sword, and Cordelia offered to pay any price to have it returned, though since she had become a heretic, she though the price would be high. Eringarathe told Cielle to ask for some of Cordelia's blood as payment. Eringarathe used it to put a curse on the sword that Cordelia's love would be twisted, that she would choose power over love, and that she would emotionally torture Lakota. Then she gave it to Cordelia.
Akalatan and Cielle had worked together against Astolia, and fallen in love themselves. Eringarathe married them.
Waiting until Cordelia was nearly ready to convert entirely to Deliana, Eringarathe then kidnapped her, took to a fortress where she controlled time, and brainwashed her to become entirely her creature. Deliana tried to rescue her but failed. Eringarathe then told her that her mother had sacrificed her father for power, and returned her to Berengere. Cordelia, outraged, told Berengere about the locket. Berengere broke it open, releasing Alistair, and immediately became dust. Cordelia, now master of the tower, banished Alistair from it for, from her perspective, killing Berengere.
Alistair found Lakota and Sticks, and asked them to help reconcile him with Cordelia. Lakota went to visit her in the tower and found her physically cold and barely responsive. Even Sticks, despite being a follower of the god of misery and pain, was touched, since he had also loved her. She seemed to have been changed into a breathing statue.
Her consort Halcyon
Satisfied, but still needing an avatar, Eringarathe went to the desert, where there was a buried tower belonging to the saurian cavalier Halcyon. She told him that Astolia had ignored him and that he would do better with her. Halcyon said he'd had three gods approach him to date, including Cielle, and the price he asked her was dominion over Arethuse. He told Eringarathe that that was his price from her, as well as that she should marry him. Without knowing why, she found herself agreeing. Astolia, Akalatan and Cielle were all outraged. Astolia put a bounty on Halcyon, which caused him to have to win many duels.
Having already given her word - which, admittedly, she often broke - she told Cordelia to examine Halcyon. Cordelia asked who he was. Eringarathe said, "He has always served Us, though not in name, and though he knew it not." Cordelia's first look at Halcyon's soul showed that he was, despite in name following Astolia, fanatically devoted to Eringarathe, and craved her desperately. The violence of his emotional frightened Cordelia visibly enough to intrigue Halcyon, as did her evasive answers.
Halcyon went to the witch Aude, who used her artifact lenses to look at his soul more deeply. She discovered that Halcyon was the current incarnation of the original warrior to whom Eringarathe had lost part of her divine force. But because Eringarathe's magics were based on defying, denying and subjugating nature, she was least of all able to detect those of her own nature. This was why she was unable to find Ulcyk, or manage Cielle, or track down Deliana even when she was weakest, or recognize her own soul in Halcyon's previous lives.
Eringarathe was married to Halcyon "until the world is unmade", by the dragon Oress, or so she thought. During the ceremony Halcyon was backstabbed by Iridal and Eringarathe killed him bare-handed, having already given Halcyon her sword. Afterwards she discovered that Oress was actually her son Ulcyk, disguised, and he had cursed the wedding rings so that Halcyon was immobilized on their wedding night. He then extorted a countercharm from Eringarathe and vanished again for centuries.
Aftermath
Cielle, now calling herself Consanguine, became so corrupt and decadent that Eringarathe killed her. Cordelia was stolen by Lakota and Sticks, and for a long time there was no master in the tower. She married Lakota. Lakota charged Kargin with abandoning his church, and was tried by Akshara, who removed him. Lakota became the god of healing, justice and defense, and had three children with Cordelia: Garroway, Deirdre and Lorene. The latter two were purely evil.
The end of the world, part 1
Then it seemed the world was unmade, and all the gods exiled. Eringarathe, despite being outside the seal, enchanted the new Blademaster Metternacht so that he, without knowing what he was saying, said the countercharm to break the seal. Eringarathe returned, without Halcyon but with her brother Arastar the Exiled Swan, Master of Assassins. Later it was discovered Deliana returned with her ally Madoc.
Sere and Ceremon
The new god of magic, Ceremon, with the new goddess of thieves, Sere, trapped her while she was still weak. They put golden fetters on her that forced her to do their bidding and suppressed her powers. She brooded angrily, though outwardly complaisant, and waited for vengeance.
Sere's son Imoiran made excessive violence, and his son Angantyr excessive pestilences. Ceremon and Sere agreed to install Eringarathe in command of both their churches if she disguised herself, did not call on her old powers, and accepted Krital as their ambassador. "You mean spy," Eringarathe said, but she accepted. She called herself Dameyante. To gain the power to depose the other two, Eringarathe helped Arastar murder Ceremon's daughter Ourania, goddess of beauty, and take her power. Eringarathe also tricked Angantyr into taking power from her, and then "curdled the power in his veins", destroying him. Then, before Ceremon discovered what had happened to Ourania, all four moved against Imoiran, and destroyed him.
Eringarathe, now Dameyante, made the warrior Mok her avatar, and the two caused a lot of trouble for Sere and Ceremon.
Isevain
Krital did not watch Dameyante as he was supposed to, or was seduced by her, and she was able to recover her powers. She seduced Ceremon, became pregnant with Isevain, and then consumed his power. She assimilated his body so that she could romance Sere and rule Ceremon's church. Eringarathe translated Isevain into Sere's body, so that Sere gave birth thinking it was her own child. Eventually she discovered the deception, and rallied Ceremon's son Trecere (who had replaced Ourania as god of love, and fathered two children on Isevain) and Nyura, goddess of death, to attack Eringarathe in the battle known as the Orchid Fall. Trecere and Nyura did not return, and Sere and Eringarathe became more powerful.
Since then, Eringarathe has appointed Isevain her avatar, and her future goals remain to be displayed.
