#pharika

Pharika, God of Affliction

my localization of mtgjp's comic

Villain: Kallebonna, Stone Cold Crimelord

I hope for both our sakes you can finish this job. You want your brother back and I don’t want his ugly polluting the next concrete foundation I pour. 

Setup: Crime can be a sucking wound in the guts of a city, bleeding out lives and prosperity, or it can be a malign illness, working unseen to the slow degradation of its host. If boss Kallebonna had her way, crime would be an ossified pillar upon which the entire city could rest, an irreplaceable part of its own rock hard skeleton. 

Taking the underworld by storm in a flurry of petrification and hostile takeovers, Kallebonna carved out a space for herself among the city’s criminal class over thirty years ago that none have been able to wrest her from since. Despite her loansharking and the people she takes as collateral, the gorgon boss likes to think of herself as a keeper of the peace, ensuring the city’s power players cooperate with her guiding philosophy of “Play nice or I’ll have one of my men take a sledgehammer to your loved ones”. Kallebonna facilitates her threats by using agents to spy upon those who begin accruing influence within her city, determining who in their life would provide the greatest emotional collateral and then spiriting them off for a visit with the gorgon. 

Adventure Hooks: 

A caravan the party has been hired to guard is attacked by a band of mercenaries disguised as common bandits. Using Diversionary tactics, these attackers forgo the wealth of the caravan to instead target a specific crate, which the party only barley manage to wrest from their hands. Opening the box reveals a statue of a beautiful young man carefully dismembered and packed in such a way to minimize the risk of damage during transit. unbeknownst to anyone save the mercenaries’ mysterious benefactor, this statue is in fact the petrified lover of a powerful noble, being sent off to one of Kallebonna’s allies after his beau got in deep with the crimeboss over gambling debts.  The mercenaries will try again at some point in the future, and the caravan master’s contract (as does the party’s) specifies that she needs all goods delivered in tact in order to receive her pay.  The players may end up inadvertently working for a kidnapper, especially after the criminal contact spins a yarn about the statue being the last image of a dear friend that his enemies wish to cruelly steal away from him.     

Over and over again the local magistrate comes down like a hammer on the party’s criminal dealings, quashing their enterprise, putting bounties on them for seemingly minor infractions, and throwing them into the darkest dungeon should they ever be caught. In that gloom, the lawkeeper will approach the party and explain her plight.  One of her children has been abducted by the gorgon crimeboss, and she needs the party’s help in finding and retrieving their petrified body.  Kallebonna has numerous staches, ranging from the walls of tenement buildings she owns to an abandoned saltmine turned fortress to a warehouse off the city harbor where bodies lay deep below the surface. Discovering these hideouts and which one the magistrate’s child resides in is going to take some careful infiltration, to say nothing of heisting a marble statue from under the nose of Kallebonna’s loyal gang. 

Magic: The Girlbossing Round 1, Match 36

She/her

Aasimar planeswalker (half human, half Orzhov angel), GB, Ravnica

(Image made on heroforge.com)

Lys was the creation of an Orzhov family trying to create a human successor who was bindable by duty and law magic like angels were. The binding process caused Lys to spark to Theros, where she made a life in Setessa and joined the priesthood of Pharika. Once she learned to harness the power of her spark and returned to Ravnica, she moved to the Undercity and joined the Golgari. She despises the Orzhov, their greed, and their hunger for control.

Known as the Angel of Rot, Lys currently inhabits an abandoned cathedral which she's slowly restoring with undead butlers and fungal amenities and passes judgement on all who pass through her domain—usually guiding them to safety unseen singing Golgari folk songs, but she is also judge, jury, and executioner to those who would grind others under their heels. In practice, this mostly means Orzhov oligarchs and war-loving Boros officers.

Hippocrexe, oracle of affliction