#deity spotlight

Pathfinder Deity Spotlight: Black Butterfly

The Silence Between flutters among and between the stars, representing distance, silence, and space. Often called Desna’s Shadow, the Black Butterfly is sometimes believed to be an aspect of Desna that has broken off and taken on its own life; her interest in distance and space certainly reflects Desna’s love of travel. The Black Butterfly finds the silence of the sea of stars useful for introspection and learning about oneself. Those who follow her take opportunities when they can to sit in silent meditation, in zones of silence and darkness when possible. Travel across large distances offers plenty to think about and contemplate, and the Black Butterfly encourages such journeys. She hates all evil, but she truly despises the powerful beings of evil that populate the Dark Tapestry, and her followers are expected to fight these beings and their followers without mercy.

The Silence Between manifests as the silhouette of a woman with butterfly wings, and white hair and eyes. Her wings contain a shadow—or reflection—of all of the Dark Tapestry and everything within it. Parted lovers, the isolated, the introverted, those who have sworn vows of silence or don’t communicate verbally, stargazers, explorers, and the melancholy are all found among the followers of the Black Butterfly.

--- Lost Omens: Gods and Magic (2020)

Technically speaking, the Black Butterfly is an Empyreal Lord, a demigod, rather than a main deity. She is linked to Desna, one of the primary deities, and a deity I do also love in her own right. Desna is the Song of the Spheres, an ancient goddess who created the night sky, a goddess of dreams, travel, stars and songs. I do love her as well.

But. I like the quiet of her smaller, darker reflection? I love the Black Butterfly’s emphasis on silence, on peace, on contemplation. Those long watches of the night where you come to terms with yourself and the world around you. If you’ve ever sat out on the back wall of your yard at night and just looked up at the sky and listened to the quiet? That’s her. If you like to go walking or driving at night just to see the world when it’s quiet, to enjoy your own company? That’s her too. Though cars aren’t a thing on Golarion, of course. But. A similar idea. Travel with yourself, with your thoughts, travel with the silence inside yourself. If you want a bit more of a contemplative, inward-facing experience, not Irori’s pursuit of perfection but something … quieter. More accepting. Then worship of the Black Butterfly might be for you.

On the flipside, however, is her antipathy for the beings of the Dark Tapestry. Because. The Dark Tapestry itself is essentially the void between the stars. And the beings that inhabit it are the Outer Gods. AKA the Lovecraftian gods. Because Pathfinder has those. By name. Nyarlathotep and Yog-Sothoth included. And the interesting thing is, I can’t find a source for it, but I’ve seen people discussing a theory that Desna, Black Butterfly’s parent deity, might be an Outer God, just a friendlier one. But. That aside. The Black Butterfly, this quiet, contemplative deity, this patron of parted lovers and stargazers and the melancholy, is also a driving part of the fight against Lovecraftian horrors.

And it makes sense. She’s the goddess of space, a flitting figure among the sea of stars, and the Dark Tapestry is the very fabric of space, and it’s corrupted. Or, at least, owned. By the cold, cruel forces of the Outer Gods. So it makes sense that she wants to reclaim it, or to make space among it, to make it so that at least some travellers may venture there without doom.

But it kind of means …

Do you want to play the quiet, mysterious traveller who shows up in a town afflicted by dark forces, the crawling cults of the dark things between the stars, to give their aid to people beset by horrors, and then vanish again, a drifter travelling ever onwards towards the next town or village where their services might be needed? Because that is what is asked of a worshipper of the Black Butterfly. To travel. To embrace silence. To know oneself. And to fight the strange horrors of the darkness between the stars. So. If that is an archetype you might want to play to? Here is your goddess.

ANUBIS ✨

D&D Deity Spotlight: Eldath

Eldath is the goddess of waterfalls, springs, pools, stillness, peace, and quiet glades. She is thought to be present at many such places, particularly those that serve as druid groves. Eldath is a goddess of comfort, healing, and calm. Her blessed waters heal the sick, cure madness, and comfort the dying.

Most rural places have a pond or a glade that locals ascribe to Eldath. Tradition dictates that it be a place of quiet reflection where others are left to their thoughts. A body of water such as a pond or a spring typically serves as a repository of offerings. If the holy site is a glade, a stream one crosses along the way might serve as the repository, or a prominent bush or tree in the glade might be the place where people tie offerings. Typical offerings are broken weapons or items that are remembrances of arguments, which the faithful discard while making a wish for peace in the future. Many of those who favor Eldath are pacifists or people who are troubled by violence they have witnessed or experienced.

Eldath's priests don't organize into large sects. Indeed, many are itinerant, wandering between various holy sites and shrines, seeing that the locations are cared for and that they remain places of sweet serenity. The faithful of Eldath are usually close to nature, and allied to druids, who count Eldath among the First Circle. It is taboo to strike a priest of Eldath, and killing one is said to bring great misfortune. Despite the measure of protection that this belief affords them, most priests of Eldath avoid conflicts rather than attempting to quell them. Those who serve Eldath are happy to preside over peaceful negotiations and to certify treaties, but they can't force others to engage in harmony.

--- Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide (2015)

I don’t talk about Eldath as much, although I do have one character concept for a semi-feral peace cleric of hers with amnesia. She’s a bit of a tricky fit for an adventurer’s life, given that many of her followers are pacifists, which … is a lot of work to make work in a D&D game. She’s maybe a goddess that you might think would work better for NPCs than player characters. But. I adore her. And the reasons for this are somewhat linked to my love of gothic horror.

‘Eldath is a goddess of comfort, healing, and calm’. ‘Her blessed waters heal the sick, cure madness, and comfort the dying’. ‘Many of those who favor Eldath are […] people who are troubled by violence they have witnessed or experienced’.

Eldath is a goddess of recovery. She’s not just untouched peace and pacifism, she’s a goddess of those who need peace because they’ve known violence. And I love that it’s specifically noted that her waters cure madness. Eldath is the goddess of those whose bodies and minds have been splintered and damaged by what they’ve experienced, and who now need a place of sanctuary and comfort and peace to recover. And not … not hospitals. Not places where the goal is to get people back up and back out and doing things again. She’s a goddess of nature and glades and places of ‘quiet reflection’, where people can be left to their thoughts. It’s not about healing you to get you back in the fight. Eldath makes places where people can rest. Can be at peace.

Which is, in so many ways, contrary to so many of the mechanics and even narrative needs of D&D. The whole point of healing in D&D is to keep people up and in the fight. Adventure, not rest, is the whole raison d’être of the game. But when you think of how many player characters are deeply traumatised. When you think of how many backstories involve straight up horror.

I feel like it’s not much of a stretch to imagine Eldath as a goddess who’s been very important to a character. Maybe you’re fit and well now, maybe you’re able to be out and about, maybe you’ve recovered enough to fight for yourself and others. But you needed time first. You needed peace. And you believe that other people need peace too, and you want to be able to help them find it. You want to keep … to keep places alive, safe, where someone can go to piece themselves back together. For however long that process might take, even if it’s forever. Maybe you can’t be a full pacifist yourself anymore, maybe you do believe that some fights need to be fought, but you also believe that there needs to be somewhere people can go where violence will not touch them. Where they can be safe. Where there can be peace.

So you guard the waters. So you love and long for the waters. So you help find the broken people, and you help guide them to the waters. You hold fast to the memory of Eldath, the Quiet One, and even if you have sacrificed your place beneath her gentle aegis for the moment, you still do your best to ensure that there can always be, will always be, a place of peace for those who need it.

She’s … She’s a good goddess for a peace cleric or a redemption paladin, definitely. But also just for anyone who at some point in their lives needed somewhere to put their shattered pieces back together. A sanctuary, a quiet lake, a place to wash the blood from their hands and wait for the shaking to stop. A calm hand on their shoulder while they grieve for everything they have seen and done and become.

Eldath. Eldath is such a good goddess. I love her. She’s such a good thing to have out there in the world. The goddess of still places and calm waters. The place someone can go to lay down their weapons and curl over and cry, a balm of stillness to soften the raw edges of the wounds.

Leira has worn many masks, and more than once has been thought to be dead or to be another deity altogether. Perhaps such a reputation is only natural for the goddess of illusion and deception. Her faithful agree that whatever the "truth" might be, their Lady takes great delight in the confusion sown by her various incarnations. Even the faithful of Cyric once taught that their god killed Leira, but now they espouse the strange idea that somehow she is his daughter.

Leira isn't viewed as malicious or as a trickster but is seen as enigmatic, quiet, and retiring. She is credited with inventing Ruathlek, the language of illusionists and the spoken tongue of Nimbral.

The faithful of Leira seem to be scarce, although it is difficult to know this for certain, because those who favor her rarely make their inclinations known. Leira is the patron of illusionists and liars. She receives little regular worship except from illusionists, who pray to the Mistshadow for potency in their magic, and con artists, for whom she is a kind of champion. Most people pray to her when they hope to keep something secret, or placate her with a prayer before making an important decision when they fear being deceived. Some folk perform a swirling motion with a finger behind their backs when telling a lie as a way of beseeching her for aid.

Her priests wear vestments of white and mist-gray, and their faces are covered by smooth, featureless masks. Only in Nimbral do temples to Leira exist, and shrines dedicated to her found across the continent are usually disguised as other kinds of sites, marked with signs that only the faithful would recognize.

--- Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide (2015)

Okay, so. First thing. I love illusion magic and I love illusionists. Playing with truth and lies, with perception and reality, it’s a theme I deeply enjoy. But more than that, I just love how utterly inscrutable Leira is?

What does she look like? No one knows. What is she doing? No one knows. Is she still alive? Absolutely no one knows. Other gods don’t know.

Leira is the goddess of operational security, essentially. I know Mask is often thought of as the god of spies (thieves primarily, but also spies), but personally I’d go for Leira. If I needed my lies to be believed, if I needed my cover to be impenetrable, if I needed all clues to my truth to be completely obscured, I would pray to Leira. Her description mentions con artists and illusionists, but if you’re a spy, a spymaster, if you have crucial information that you need to not become known by your enemies, the Lady of the Mists is your goddess. ‘Lady of Illusions, keep your eyes on me. Let my secrets remain secret, and let my enemy’s truths become known to me.’

If you’re running an intrigue campaign. If you’re playing a conman or a bard or a spy.

Also, I love the idea of hidden worship. Of shrines disguised as something else, of names and prayers never spoken aloud, because who would announce that they pray to the goddess of liars? But she’s not evil, she’s not malicious, it’s not like worshipping Asmodeus or Bane, it’s just that to worship her openly would be to announce your secrets, or at least announce that you have them. Because who would need to worship Leira save someone with secrets?

Or an illusionist. By profession. Someone who deals openly in illusion magic. But maybe there’s a taint there too. Why have you chosen to wield the magic of liars? Why, to entertain! But are there secrets lurking beneath?

This is why I love green dragons, this is why I love poisoners, this is why I love spies. Can good be done by dishonourable means? But if you need the Lord of Devils not to know your plans against him, who do you pray to? Secrecy and lies are not the sole preserve of evil. There are so many reasons why people might need to keep secrets.

And if you have one, if your character has one, and they need it not to be known, then perhaps they might be a secret worshipper of the Lady of the Mists. Perhaps on your adventures you might look for the secret signs of shrines. Perhaps you might hope, one day, when all your wars are done, to make pilgrimage to the mysterious (and sometimes vanished) island of Nimbral to thank her openly for her protection.

And I figured I’d start out with what several people may already know is my favourite god in the Faerûn pantheon: Deneir, the First Scribe.

D&D Deity Spotlight: Deneir

Deneir is the god of literature and literacy, the patron of the artist and the scribe. His is the power to accurately render and describe, to write and to read, and to pass on information. In legend, Deneir is often portrayed as being a scribe in service to Oghma, and he is sometimes thought of as Oghma's right hand.

It's common practice for someone who writes a letter or records information to say a prayer to Deneir to avoid mistakes. Similarly, artists acknowledge Deneir before beginning and upon completing paintings, particularly illuminations on manuscripts, tapestries that relate stories, and any such attempt to use art to capture the truth.

Followers of Deneir believe that information not recorded and saved for later use is information lost. They consider literacy an important gift of the gods, one that should be spread and taught. His followers are scribes and scholars devoted, like their patron, to preserving written works, and also to experiencing them, for they say that Deneir himself is hidden within the lines, shapes, and passages of all written works. Priests of Deneir take an oath of charity as well, compelling them to accept the requests of others to write letters and transcribe information.

The god's followers tend to be individualists, united by their shared faith but not overly concerned with religious hierarchy and protocol. This behavior is supported by the fact that Deneir's blessings of divine magic are more often bestowed on those who lose themselves in written works than on those who fancy themselves part of any temple or religious order. Contemplation of the faith's most holy book, the Tome of Universal Harmony, is the most effective way to become deserving of Deneir's blessings.

--- Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide (2015)

The knowledge domain is one of my favourite cleric subclasses, and I just deeply enjoy Deneir as a patron and a god. He’s the god of ‘receipts or it didn’t happen’ and ‘document your damned findings’. He’s the god of writing shit down. And reading it later, interrogating it, pulling texts apart (metaphorically, not literally, do not pull texts apart literally or he will smite you) to get down to the metatext beneath it. He’s the god of literacy, of teaching. And I deeply, deeply adore the oath of charity his priests take, to write letters and take dictation and transcribe information, all for free. Information must be free. Literacy and information should be accessible to everyone. I love that about him.

I do find it interesting that his followers ‘tend to be individualists’, that Deneir has no care whatsoever for religious hierarchy. You’d think a high degree of organisation would be required for the sort of large scale documentation and preservation of knowledge that he is decidedly in favour of. But I think that possibly comes back to that oath again. That literacy and information should be free to all. I think that might be part of the reason he doesn’t want everything concentrated in a single religious library institution, knowledge kept behind the gates of his priesthood. No. Anyone who writes and reads and interacts with knowledge comes under his purview, anyone who wants to read and write and interact with knowledge. He doesn’t want a centralised institution, he wants literacy to spread. So yes, his followers build libraries, and preserve collections, and keep records, but his followers also … write letters. Teach literacy. Make themselves available to transcribe information for other people. Make art, so that stories and information can spread even without the direct tool of language. (I feel like he would love Shaun Tan’s ‘The Arrival’, a wordless comic documenting a fantasy immigrant experience, and a story told in that format specifically to avoid/cross the language barrier, to relay the experience without the barrier of words).

Deneir is a scholar and a scholar’s god, but he’s also a god of teachers and artists and couriers and writers and journalists and historians and …

It’s about writing things down. It’s about giving people the ability to write things down. The ability to read. It’s about finding ways to communicate and preserve knowledge even outside of writing.

Like. This may be obvious, but one of the reasons I love Deneir is because he fits a lot of my real world beliefs over here. About literacy, about the joy and necessity and promise of literacy. About giving people access to whole other worlds of information and experience beyond what they can directly experience for themselves.

And maybe you’re like, okay, but what does that have to do with a fantasy game about fighting dragons? To which I would answer … Well, firstly, worldbuilding, obviously. He’s a great god to have knocking around in the background. But on a more direct, adventurer-focused level …

The first character I ever properly played was Kossi, a little rat-shifter knowledge cleric/fey wanderer ranger, and her whole thing was that oath of Deneir’s above. To go out and write letters for people. To teach literacy. She was a wandering postwoman and scribe and teacher. She had ranger levels because her oath wasn’t about sitting in a library or scriptorium somewhere, it was about bringing literacy to people who might not have it. Going to villages and offering reading lessons. Offering to write letters for people and also to deliver them if they were places she was going. Offering to read letters for people, read wills for people, help people document their lives. Send information. And if you think there aren’t a thousand little quests and adventure hooks that can be built into writing people’s letters and records for them and being asked to deliver them …

And even for the more formal adventurers she went on, Deneir believes that knowledge that is not recorded is knowledge lost. She was journaling her experiences. She was documenting everything she came across. She found a complex built to honour forgotten giant gods in a cave system, and she was so happy, because that knowledge would now no longer be lost, those gods might potentially no longer be forgotten, because she’d found them, and she’d written it down. Part of her deal was that she would make sure to leave her filled journals in towns or send them to archives every so often, so that her adventures wouldn’t be lost with her.

She also had a habit of buying books in one town or village or city, keeping them on her while she read them, and then gifting them to another town or village or city later on, so that the books and the knowledge they contained could travel and new people could encounter them. She spent a significant chunk of the loot she earned adventuring doing this.

I played her from levels 1 to 5, and four of those levels were ranger levels. Only her first level was cleric. But that level shaped her whole character. She was a cleric of Deneir first and foremost. Her faith shaped her whole way of life, her ideals, her reasons for choosing mechanical benefits (another reason for her ranger levels was that rangers have a lot of opportunities to pick up languages via their features), what she spend her loot on.

One of the things I do enjoy about the ‘portfolio gods’ thing you get in D&D and other fantasy ttrpgs, despite all the problems with the way it has been utilised over the history of the genre, is that it does … it lets you pick a god with an area of concern that you believe in, or want to interact with, and build a character around it. I love Deneir, wholeheartedly. He’s easily my favourite of the Forgotten Realms gods. And it probably is at least partly because he’s the god of something I do believe in in real life. Literacy, the importance of literacy and communication, the importance of making literacy available not just to the chosen few but to everyone.

And I think the other thing about the portfolio gods, as portrayed in D&D, is that … It’s not ‘I believe as my god believes because if I don’t I’m damned’. There are lots of gods, and lots of things those gods stand for and believe in. Which makes it more ‘I believe as my god believes, and that is why I chose them, and also why they chose to support me back’. There’s an element of choice, of being able to choose what god you support and what cause you will spend your power and your skill and your life on. It’s faith, but it’s faith by choice, and I enjoy that.

(Yes, I am an atheist in real life, this may also show here).

There’s also … There’s areas of conflict to run into. Because literacy isn’t morally or culturally neutral either. Deneir believes that things must be written down (or documented some other way, such as art) to maintain their value. What about oral histories? What about mythologies that are designed to change, stories that are designed to change in the telling to reflect the values of each new teller and audience? What about people who put more weight on writing, that it is too powerful a thing, and so can’t be used for more mundane things without risk? And here’s a scribe of Deneir trying to write everything. One of the interesting things about playing a character with a defined set of values is then testing those values against situations. Which can be done with any character, and doesn’t require a god or a faith, but I do enjoy it in that context. I’m a cleric player, you know?

… I think I have rambled off the point somewhere along here. Several times. But.

Pathfinder Deity Spotlight: Cayden Cailean

Once a mortal human, Cayden Cailean is now one the few deities known as the Ascended. In his mortal years, Cayden was a sellsword of no small fame, known for his boisterous manner, skill with a blade, and fearless resolve. During a particularly rowdy night of drinking, a series of escalating dares led the wandering mercenary to attempt the Test of the Starstone. He emerged from the Starstone Cathedral 3 days later, laughing, a fully realized god. Divine responsibility did little to change Cayden’s attitude from what it was in his mortal life. He continues to crave adventure, drink, and pleasurable company while abhorring bullies, tyrants, and cowards.

Cayden has no formal churches or structure clergy, but simple shrines to him appear in almost every tavern and roadside inn. Many of his priests own such businesses and offer healing to patrons, some of whom may have been injured during a drunken brawl. While Cayden’s faith is a charitable one, Caydenites still seek payment for such services— at the very least, the injured party is expected to purchase a round of drinks for the house. Only in places where worshippers of the Accidental God are in direct opposition to the local powers, such as where a rebellion is forming under a tyrant’s nose, is his church out of the public eye. Caydenites can bring themselves to be quiet in the face of oppression only for so long, however, and once a rebellion reaches full bloom, the god’s silver tankard is often proudly displayed across every bar.

As a mortal, Cayden often found himself at odds with the work he was hired to perform and abandoned jobs that went against his conscience. This gave him a reputation for being unreliable among his more unscrupulous employers, but it garnered significant respect from clients with stronger morals. Legends tell of him taking contracts to free entire crews of slaves, undoing the operations of predatory business owners, and other rebellious deeds for the good of the common folk. His worshippers often involve themselves in similar matters: safeguarding the freedom and prosperity of working-class people, overthrowing tyrants, and helping the oppressed to relocate to freer lands. His champions, in particular, embed themselves in nations with harsh laws and stir up rebellions— often from the back room of a tavern.

--- Lost Omens: Gods and Magic (2020)

Cayden Cailean, the Accidental God. God of alcohol, pubs, and freedom fighters. One of the things that the 2e source doesn’t mention, and one of the reasons that I love him, is a little tidbit I found mentioned on a wiki (so I’m assuming it’s from a 1e source). And that is that he’s called the Accidental God because he doesn’t remember how he did it. The Test of the Starstone. He doesn’t remember how he passed it. This mad lad got black out drunk, took a lethal test with a 99%+ failure rate on a dare, and then woke up three days later as a god with no idea what happened in between. Which is just. I mean. You’ve got to admire it? Exactly three people aside from Aroden have ever passed the test of the Starstone. In all of history. Three. Iomedae, goddess of paladins, Norgorber, mysterious god of thieves and murder, and this man. Cayden Cailean, the Accidental God. Who got drunk and did it on a lark, and became a god to his own surprise, let alone anyone else’s.

And who then woke up, abruptly an unplanned deity, and went right. I can do something with this.

And, okay. He’s a fairly typical Robin Hood type god? Rebel looking for a cause, champion of the little guys, an adventurer who stumbled into a lot more power than he ever could have expected. He’s the sort of cheerful, boisterous adventurer who you probably do want to punch sometimes, who has power in some ways because he lucked into it. But. But. In some ways, also, not because he lucked into it. Because he may have been drunk at the time, and he may not remember what happened, but he did pass the Starstone Test. A test that people have been attempting for four thousand years, and that killed everyone that attempted it except this man and three others. So there was skill there, as much as luck, and there was depth as well.

He's a cheerful, boisterous adventurer, an accidental god, the god of alcohol whose temples are all pubs, but he had principles even as a mortal sellsword, and he stuck to them even at the risk of his business. And he sticks to them still. He woke up from a bender as a god, and went, okay. I can help people like this. I can fight so much bigger tyrants, and protect people on so much bigger a scale. And I do respect that about him.

I also just enjoy his public house temples as well. It’s a fun sort of echo and reverse of how many medieval European breweries were in monasteries. Sometimes holy ground is the local pub. Heh. And the little detail that you can get healing services there, at the cost of at least a round of drink for the house. Like, that’s just a fun set-piece? You and your party get badly injured in a fight in the woods or the dark alleys of a city, and you drag yourself a nearby pub, and then scrounge up the coin to buy a round to get your guts put back in. A pub which, incidentally, may also be the meeting place and headquarters for the local resistance movement, with the full blessing and support of its divine patron.

No community that lives by the sea can ignore the influence of Umberlee, the furious goddess whose tempestuous nature reflects and is reflected by the waters of the deep. Any such community makes sure to host festivals to propitiate the Wavemother and seek her favor. Although mercurial in temperament, she can be generous to those who do her honor, as is any great queen.

The Bitch Queen is worshiped out of fear instead of adoration, and ship crews offer her gems, tossed over the side, to calm storm-tossed waters. As her most common moniker suggests, she is viewed as capricious and cruel with no firm ethical outlook; the sea is a savage place, and those who travel it had best be willing to pay the price of challenging her domain.

There is little in the way of an organized clergy of Umberlee. Her priests roam coastal cities, warning of doom and demanding free passage on ships in return for ensuring the goddess's pleasure. Often they wear the colors of waves and storms, and they decorate themselves with items that remind others of the sea's dangerous nature - a necklace of shark teeth, seaweed wrapped about a human bone, and so on. The preserved hand of a drowned person is thought to be a particularly holy object, and some of her few clerics use such severed hands as holy symbols. Umberlee does have a large number of shrines in the coastal cities, and sailors often leave flowers or small candies at them in hopes that she will spare them on their next voyage. Both Waterdeep and Baldur's Gate have true temples dedicated to Umberlee, staffed largely by the widows of sailors lost at sea.

--- Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide (2015)

You’ve got to love a deity who’s earned the epithet of ‘the Bitch Queen’, huh? But I actually quite like Umberlee in and of herself, even if I chafe at her being one of the only options for a tempest cleric, because it’s hard to be a cleric of Umberlee and not be an asshole.

Umberlee is very much the goddess of the sea at its most capricious and destructive. She is vicious, she is cruel, she is greedy, she is petty. Like Talona, she’s a goddess that people pray to for survival’s sake, bribing her so that she doesn’t kill them, and in Umberlee’s case, the bribery is extremely literal too. Prayers alone will not suffice, she wants gems, offerings, a nice good shiny reason why she shouldn’t drown you where you stand. And I have to admit that I kind of love that her priesthood are essentially there to run a protection racket on her behalf? They are there to go around and remind people that the sea is fucking deadly, and have you kept your payments up to date, and wouldn’t it be a real shame if this nice shiny new ship of yours was smashed to flinders on some rocks on its next voyage? That’d be a real shame. You know what would make the sea really happy? A nice shiny fistful of sapphires thrown overboard on leaving port. And, incidentally, if you grant me free passage, I’ll make sure to put in a good word for you upon delivering payment.

She’s so blunt. She’s so straightforward. She is essentially a divine oceanic mob boss running a vast protection racket and holding trade routes hostage. And honestly I kind of love that for her? And she has a killer aesthetic about it too. She has a priesthood that goes around carrying the severed hands of drowning victims as a pointed reminded of the consequences of not making her happy. If you’re playing a cleric of Umberlee, right, forget about priests, the mindset you need to get into is the dockside enforcer of a lovecraftian mob boss. Boost charisma. Put some swagger in. Your goddess holds whole kingdoms in her stranglehold, trade and naval power in the palm of her hand. Dress yourself like a fucking beachside tramp, have a necklace of drowning pearls and the severed hand of a drowned admiral on your belt, and walk into the highest-powered rooms in the city like you have every goddamn right to be there. You are the spectre at the ball, the prophet of destruction, the drowned and ragged harbinger of the storm. You’re there to tell them to pay up or else.

Knowing all the while, of course, that one wrong whim and she’ll smash you just as easily. You mouth off wrong to the boss, well, you’re sleeping with the fishes, ain’t ya. You’ll be rotting in the deep and it’ll be your hand on one of your colleague’s belts.

I also kinda like the little detail that her few official temples, in the big coastal cities, are staffed by widows of her victims. Hey sweetie. Your husband pissed me off, and that’s unfortunate, but you’re gonna make me happy, right? I swear she’s just a mob boss in my head. Lovecraftian aesthetic, full Innsmouth, and then the demeanour and the behaviour of your stereotypical mob boss. Give her a Jersey accent. She’s running a racket, but she’s got the power to back it up, and she’s raking it in. There’s even the detail that she’s generous if she’s happy with you. She’s all glitz and glamour and charm, if she likes you, but just underneath that paper-thin veneer, there’s a truth that’s vicious and petty and blunt as the face of a hammer, and everybody knows it.

Legend has it that Jergal is an ancient deity. The story goes that in the time of Netheril he was worshiped as the god of death, murder, and strife. Yet with the passing of time, he became bored with his position. Then one day three mortals, each a powerful adventurer, met Jergal in the lands of the dead, determined to destroy him and take his power. Instead, Jergal calmly abdicated his throne of bones and allowed each of the three mortals to take part of his divinity. Thus it was that Bane assumed the portfolio of strife, Myrkul the rulership of the dead, and Bhaal the portfolio of murder. Jergal lost his former stature and became a scribe of the dead.

Jergal is now seen as an uncaring custodian of the dead. He is thought to record the passing of the living and to aid Kelemvor in seeing that souls are properly bound to their appropriate afterlife. He is rarely acknowledged directly, except for being mentioned at funerals and among those who practice the custom of writing the name of the deceased on a sheet of parchment and placing it in the corpse's mouth. This rite is common in places where an individual's grave or tomb isn't marked with the person's name.

Few people favor Jergal as a deity, and most who do are concerned with the dispensation of the dead in some way. Priests of Jergal serve communities as undertakers and caretakers of gravesites. Jergal has no temples dedicated to him aside from abandoned places devoted to his old, darker incarnation, but his priests are welcome in the temples of Kelemvor, Deneir, and Myrkul. His faithful send their annual recordings of mortality to holy sites where records of that sort are kept.

--- Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide (2015)

I have so much fondness for this fed up deathly civil servant of a god. You have no idea. He was all, yes, yes, big drama, lord of the dead, throne of bones, patron of murder and strife, yada yada, but god I’m so tired of it all. Then the Dead Three rock up all ‘give us your throne or die!’ and he’s so happy. Like, thank fuck. Here’s my keys, I’ll help you air out the place, it’s all yours! I’m just going to go over here and take the notes from now on, and all the big shit can be someone else’s problem. Excellent.

And, like, it’s not a good plan? The Dead Three fuck everything up, and then they’re replaced by Cyric, who fucks it up more, and then by Kelemvor, who initially fucks it up in the other direction, too lenient, and that had to be sorted out too. His abdication makes a big continuous mess for everyone else for quite some time. But Jergal doesn’t give a shit, because it’s not his problem anymore. He’ll help them out, he’ll show them the ropes, he’ll do the paperwork, but the big messes? That’s on them. They’re the greater gods now.

Jergal is so very much the god of … You know when you want to be left alone to do the bit of your job that you’re good at, and you want none of the drama, or the infighting between your coworkers, or the corporate manoeuvring, you just want to clock in, do your spreadsheets, and clock out again? Jergal is that god. The dead are going to keep dying. I’m going to tally them up and point them in the right direction, and if anyone wants more than that, I’m gonna direct you to my nice shiny new ‘boss’ and you can address those concerns to him, yeah? I’m just the note-taker over here. Don’t mind me.

Jergal is unfathomably ancient. He’s possibly an alien. He was one of the most powerful gods in existence for untold aeons. But at the end of the day, he just wanted to do his paperwork and be left alone, and I love that for him. I am happy to help that man out!

I also do love the duties of his few remaining faithful as well. Given that my homebrew backgrounds for 5e include both the functionary and the gravedigger, you can likely see why. Is he necessarily the most logical choice for an adventurer, given that his whole philosophy is basically not wanting to do anything extra he doesn’t have to? Eh. Possibly not. But the bits that do need to be done he does well, and if things start happening like the dead wandering around, or records being destroyed, or aggravating necromancers mucking shit up, or souls being stolen, I’d say he’d be happy enough to have a functionary lore bard or a gravedigger cleric or some such person wandering around down here to help sort that out for him. And darling, I’m your girl! Don’t even worry about it. I’ll do my job, you do your job, we’ll get it squared.

I just like him a lot? I feel for him, you know? When you just want to be able to get the job done with no extraneous fuss. When everybody’s after you for like policy, or power struggles, or ‘what direction is this company going’, and you just want to do your numbers and go home. I support the rights of gods doing fucking endless jobs to just be goddamn lazy about it. And he’s not even that lazy. He keeps exacting records. He dutifully serves whichever idiot of a big god of death has ascended most recently to the best of his abilities. He’s not slacking off. He just doesn’t want to be in charge, that’s all. And I support that for him!