(RHIANNON - “GREAT QUEEN”)
“IF A CITY WAS OLD, THE GUTTERS AND POOLS
WOULD ALWAYS GLITTER BLACK,
SODDEN BY THE DETRITUS OF AGES. “
Latter Hallow Rhealisse: Spirit of Seas, Storms, and Revolution.
Aliases: Aspect of Rhea, Queen Rhiannon, the Thunderbrand, the Godsbride of Tyren.
Symbols: Spears, wild horses, seafoam, lightning, seabird feathers.
Worship: Deny the will of the imperious and unworthy; match all challenges with overwhelming force; inspire insurgence through your example.
Dwelling: The northern coasts of Littoire, Tousav, and the storms of the Yiegdran Sea.
Equivalents: Rhea (Marathan/Mazzaroth), the Folk Hero Ríona (Tyric).
Rhealisse was not always a taboo subject for the Tyrics. The goddess has existed in some form since before the Second Age, praised in the oral traditions of the peoples of Yiegdra’s northern coast. To them she was “Ríona,” the human bride of the lightning god Tyren. The story goes that Tyren, smitten by her ferocity, manifested as a great storm to visit his betrothed on the anniversary of their wedding, causing the annual hurricane season in Tyric-Sedalic lands. How she earned the reputation of a godsbride is disputed: she may once have been another hero deity Eimhir, who captured Tyren in her sails to speed to the aid of her wife; or perhaps she was Arawn, a mountain dwelling mystic of Vardagh who could command lightning—and notoriously did, when a race of giants had risen from the sea to claim her parish for themselves. But no matter what she was, Ríona became Rhea when the Marathan Empire encountered her on the northern shores.
Rhea was, and to the Marathans still is, a god of change, revolution, and the defiant temperament of stallions. The association of Ríona with Rhea, and the depiction of them both as wild horses, is believed to stem from a Marathan proverb warning against indiscretion: “the blind man does not know storm from stampede.” When the Marathan Empire began its invasion of the Tyric lands in the Middle Third Ages, this saying was appropriated as a rallying cry by war-priests of Ríona, as if to say the Marathan legions had not grasped the true strength of the Tyric peoples. To some extent this was proven true: although they were conquered, the Tyric-Sedalic coalition held through the dissolution of the empire and the Late Third Age. Even when the Tousavi Empire invaded them, the worship of Ríona endured.
Come the conquest of the Tyric lands and their reorganization into Littoire, the goddess Rhea’s myth was massaged into something palatable by the Church of the Unsullied Soul. The Latter Hallow Rhealisse emerged from the synthesis of Chevalier mythology and the half-understood pieces of Ríona’s legacy. Rhealisse, the Thunderbrand, was a knight who commanded wind and waves from atop a seafoam steed. She was instrumental in some form to the liberation of the northern coast from the Marathan Empire, though her exact participation varies, and to most adherents of Virtudom is functionally irrelevant. Instead, the Latter Hallow Rhealisse stands as a symbol of their domination over the dissident lands of Littoire. A demonstration to the conquered people that not even their gods are beyond the Empire’s reach. To the Tyrics, who covet the tales of yore passed down between wisemen, the perversion of their hero Ríona is a bitter truth which they rebel against in body and in spirit
Acts of Favor
- A handful of salt dissolved in rainwater (1 Favor)
- A horseshoe or broken bridle (2 Favor)
- A vial of seawater, collected during a storm (3 Favor)
- The feather of a seabird (3 Favor)
- A broken weapon submerged in water (5 Favor)
- The mane of a wild horse (10 Favor)
- A living horse drenched in seawater (20 Favor)
Invocations
Waterwalk Complexity: 1 Favor: 5 Range: Touch Duration: Persist (6) AP: 1 Effect: The target is capable of walking on water for the duration.
Thunder Call Complexity: 2 Favor: 8 Range: Sphere (5) Duration: Instant AP: 3 Effect: All creatures within range must succeed a Willpower vs. Strength contest; on a failure, they suffer the Dazed (2) and Unsteady (2) conditions.
Lightning Crash Complexity: 3 Favor: 10 Range: Paces (10) Duration: Instant AP: 3 Effect: Lightning crashes down atop a point you choose within range, exploding in Sphere (2). Creatures within the explosion must succeed a Willpower vs. Dexterity contest; on a failure, they take 1d10 damage which bypasses DR.
Astride Complexity: 4 Favor: 15 Range: Self Duration: Persist (1) AP: 5 Effect: You create a steed from streams of silvery bubbles. On your next turn, you gain an additional 5 AP which exceeds your maximum and can only be spent on movement. At the end of the duration, your steed erupts into waves and all creatures within Sphere (5) suffer the Prone and Dazed (1) conditions. If a creature succeeds its contest, it suffers Unsteady (1) instead.
Wedding in Waves Complexity: 5 Favor: 20 Range: Touch Duration: Persist (1) AP: 3 Effect: Target must succeed a Willpower vs. Strength contest; on a failure, you both suffer the Suffocating (1) and Tethered (0) conditions. At the end of the round you may choose to extend the duration by Persist (1) for no additional cost.