Brazen
Lord of Graves
God of Earth, Death, Fate, and Prophecy
Alignment: N
Cleric’s Alignments: NE, N, CN, CE
Domains: Death, Healing, Knowledge, Repose, Water
Symbol: Winged-Robe Figure
Favored Weapon: Scythe
Centers of Worship: Brazen Thicket, Underdark
Nationality:
Obedience (need the Deific Obedience feat):
Sacrifice an unwilling living creature in the name of the Lord of Teeth. Draw the process out to inspire the maximum terror and suffering in your victim. The death blow you deal should be savage and destructive - do not grant your sacrifice a clean death. Once the creature is dead, remove one of its bones and sharpen it to a point. Use the bone to cut yourself deeply enough to leave a scar. Leave the sacrificed creature's mutilated form in the open where scavengers may devour it or travelers may see it and know of Xellix's power. Gain a +1 natural armor bonus to your AC.
Evangelist Boons:
1: Quietude (Sp): forced quiet 3/day, silence 2/day, or hold person 1/day
2: Strike the Unrestful (Su): As a free action, you can grant the ghost touch weapon special ability to a weapon that you hold. If that weapon is not magical, it is considered magical while under the effect of this ability. This ability affects only weapons held in your hand; if you drop the weapon or give it away, the effect ends on that weapon. You can affect a weapon in this way a number of rounds each day equal to 1 + 1 for every 4 Hit Dice you possess (maximum 6 rounds). These rounds don't need to be consecutive.
3: Ally from the Tomb (Sp): Once per day as a standard action, you can summon a pair of vanth psychopomps and gain telepathy with them to a range of 100 feet. The vanths follow your commands perfectly for 1 minute for every Hit Die you possess before vanishing back to their home in the Boneyard. The vanths don't follow commands that would cause them to aid or permit the existence of undead, and they could attack you if the command is particularly egregious.
Exalted Boons:
1: Preserver (Sp): sanctuary 3/day, gentle repose 2/day, or speak with dead 1/day
2: Decomposition (Su): You can ensure the final rest of a creature. As a standard action, you can touch a corpse and cause it to dissolve into black ash. A corpse dissolved this way cannot be raised by any means short of a miracle or wish. The black ash left behind can, however, be used as the "corpse" for spells later.
3: The Veil Is Drawn Aside (Su): You gain the Extra Revelation feat, choosing a revelation from either your chosen mystery or the Bones mystery. If you don't have the revelation class feature, you instead gain a +4 sacred or profane bonus on saving throws against necromancy spells and death effects.
Introduction:
Brazen is the stern observer of life and death, scrutinizing the tangled webs of fate and prophecy, mercilessly cold in the administration of his duties. Having seen infants die, the righteous fall too soon, and tyrants live to advanced age, he makes no judgment about the justness of a particular death, and welcomes each birth with equal severity. At the moment of a mortal's birth, he knows the many possible paths each soul could follow, but reserves his official verdict until the last possible moment. Though prophecy is no longer reliable, prophets continue to be born, and most of them are rendered insane by their confusing and contradictory visions.
In art, Brazen is depicted as a mad prophet, or a reaper of the dead, depending upon his role. his visage usually has gray skin, white eyes, and white hair. As the prophet, Brazen is wild-eyed and tangle-haired, and his words echo like thunder. As the reaper, he is tall and gaunt, with a hooded black gown and an hourglass with fast-flowing red sand, and is often shown seated on his throne and passing judgment on mortal souls.
Situated atop an impossibly tall spire, Brazen's realm in the afterworld—the Boneyard—looms over the perfectly ordered city-plane of Axis. When mortals die, their souls join the vast River of Souls that flows through the Astral Plane, and eventually deposits them in Brazen's Boneyard at the top of his spire. Once there, they stand in a great line, filtered through several courts according to their alignment and supposed planar destination. Those who die before experiencing their full fate might be lucky enough to return in this life or the next, either spontaneously or by getting called home by resurrection magic, but more often those who feel that they've met an untimely end discover that their destiny was in fact always leading them to their particular moment of death, however unjust or ignoble.
At the heart of the Boneyard is Brazen's Palace, a gothic structure built over the exact center of the Spire. Psychopomps walk its pathways and quietly fly above its walls, performing the administration of souls, and Brazen's faithful are housed within. Despite its light color and mood, the Palace is obviously a creation of the goddess. It's unknown whether he made the Spire itself.
Brazen manifests his favor through the appearance of scarab beetles and whippoorwills, both of which function as psychopomps (both in the figurative sense as guides for dead souls, as well as in the literal sense as manifestations of the outsiders called psychopomps). Black roses are thought to invite his favor and good luck, especially if the stems sport no thorns. his displeasure is often signified by cold chills down the spine, bleeding from the nose or under the fingernails, an unexplained taste of rich soil, the discovery of a dead whippoorwill, or the feeling that something important has been forgotten. Brazen also sometimes allows the spirits of those who have died under mysterious conditions to transmit short messages to their living kin to comfort them, expose a murderer, or haunt an enemy.
Brazen's holy symbol is a winged robed figure, representing a soul, its journey from birth to death to the afterlife.
The Church:
Brazen's church is a somber and structured organization, and staunchly neutral in matters unrelated to its tripartite roles—as stewards of life and death, most priests see nationalism and other petty concerns as beneath them.
Traditions passed down by the god and his prophets are followed stringently, though the various branches of the church differ with respect to which rituals and practices they assign the most weight. These differences are never severe enough to force different factions to open conflict, but may make it easy for worshipers to distinguish between members of their sect and other adherents.
Most members of Brazen's priesthood are clerics, though a significant number are diviners, oracles, and adepts. Roughly two-thirds of his clergy are women, though the gender mix varies regionally, and worldly details like gender and species matter little to most followers. Brazen's followers are morticians and necromancers who study applications of the magic of undead creation. Harrowers, palmists, oneiromancers, cloudreaders, and others who use nonmagical forms of divination also call upon his. In smaller communities, a Brazen priest may assume several of these roles, or a team of spouses might split the duties between them.
Prophets often go mad in this age of conflicting omens, and the church has taken it upon itself to care for these poor souls, devoting portions of major temples to be sanitariums, which are operated by the goddess's clerics.
Of course, as the god of earth and death, Brazen has many lay followers as well, and even in lands where his faith is not large or organized, commoners pray to his for guidance or protection, much as farmers everywhere pray to Alarant for good crops.
Brazen encourages his followers to procreate, whether they're married or in less formalized partnerships; he also supports childless couples adopting and orphanages taking care of those who have no living parents. Church weddings may be simple or ornate, depending on the social status and wealth of the participants.
His temples are known to provide assistance to women dealing with pregnancies that would inevitably end in the death of both mother and child, or to end the torment of a mother whose child is already dead in the womb, but on the whole he believes killing the unborn is an abomination, for it sends the infant soul to the afterlife before it has a chance to fulfill its destiny. The god's midwives take all the precautions they can to reduce the risk of pregnancy and childbirth; some church midwives, called casarmetzes, are so skilled in a combination of medicine, magic, and surgery that in dire circumstances they can cut a living child from its mother's womb and save both.
Worshipers of Brazen—as well as commoners in many regions—trace the god's robed symbol on their chests, typically as a form of prayer when hearing ill news or witnessing blasphemy, and before or during dangerous events or events with uncertain outcomes. Different lands perform this gesture differently. Especially devout folk repeat this gesture in everyday activities, such as stirring soup or scrubbing a floor.
Prayer services to Brazen are a mixture of somber chants, stirring ritualized sermons, and joyous song, often based upon regional music, and usually end on an uplifting note—for while death comes to all, new generations stride forth in its wake. During celebrations, the god's followers often eat kolash, bread braided into a tight spiral and topped or filled with diced fruit or sweet cheese.
During the winter feast, the center portion of the spiral is left open and a wax candle is placed within; the candle is lit at the start of the meal and extinguished when the bread is to be eaten. Each temple keeps a record of births and deaths of its members, and on the anniversaries of death dates, priests speak the names of the departed while those close to the deceased honor them by lighting votive candles that burn for an entire day and night. Many tombstones have niches to protect soul candles from the wind.
Temples and Shrines:
In heavily populated areas, Brazen's temples tend to be grand, gothic cathedrals adjacent to graveyards, although in smaller towns they might be humble structures with artistic flourishes meant to echo the great cathedrals, and even a single bleak stone in an empty field or graveyard can serve as a shrine. Large temples usually have catacombs underneath, filled with corpses of the wealthy and of former members of the priesthood, as burial under the god's temple is believed to soften his judgment of the deceased.
Even a remote Bazen monastery has ample cemetery space, and might be the final resting place of generations of wealthy and influential folk—as well as an uncountable accumulation of tomb treasures.
Many local temples have only one ranking priest, but the largest temples have a high priest or priestess for each aspect of the faith—birth, death, and fate. In theory these high priests are all equal, though the high priest of prophecy has assumed a lesser role in recent decades, and the person holding that position is often strange or unstable. Temples that include crypts also have a cryptmaster in charge of that facility. Rank within a temple is based on seniority, as well as on knowledge of the faith, magical power, and personal achievements.
Hierarchy between churches depends on the size of the populations they serve; a large city's temple has greater influence than a small town's temple.
A Priest’s Role:
Priests of Brazen take responsibility for all three of his concerns in the mortal world. Priests (of any gender) who are skilled in midwifery assist at births, and the presence of a Brazen priest during childbirth almost always ensures that both mother and child will live. Priests focused on prophecy bear its questionable gift, or record and interpret the ravings of those who do. And all priests of Brazen are stewards of the dead, familiar with both local funerary customs and those of neighboring lands.
A typical priest earns his living acting as a mortician, digging graves, selling spellcasting services, or building and blessing tombs for wealthy patrons. Followers of Brazen tend to be brusque; some people attribute this to haughtiness, but more often it's simply due to the fact that most of a Brazen's interactions are with the dead or dying, mad prophets — groups who rarely care about social niceties. When their services are needed, Brazens give orders and expect to be obeyed, as a mortal soul (either recently departed or about to arrive) is usually at stake.
All priests carry a skane—a double-edged ceremonial dagger with a dull gray blade, often with a stylized depiction of the god's winged robe on the pommel. They use these daggers to hold open prayer scrolls, to touch parts of a corpse when performing death rites and to cut shrouds for the dead. It is not forbidden for a priest to use a skane to draw blood or take a life, but some refuse to do so and carry a different item to use in combat. A casarmetzes carries a special skane bearing Brazen's likeness on one side of the pommel and a crying child on the other, and uses this to perform her surgeries.
Though Brazen priests worship the death goddess, they have no taboo against preventing death through healing, either mundane or magical. Brazen priests who sign on with adventuring parties usually act as healers—if not particularly gentle or sympathetic ones— and most temples raise money by selling healing and other spellcasting services. Even spells like raise dead, reincarnate, and resurrection are not forbidden, though churches usually charge a great deal for these.
Adventurers:
Many adventurers follow Brazen because they believe in fate, and in the inescapable path of destiny. Everyone worships the god to some extent, for not even the most hubristic of mortals or gods can deny that his is the hand that shepherds souls into the afterlife, sending those bound to other gods to their rightful destinations. It's said that even gods are judged after their death by the Lord of Graves.
For those who worship Brazen above all others, the most important things in life are birth, death, and prophecy. When they adventure in his name, it is often to seek out and attempt to understand strange prophecies.
Clothing:
Brazen clothing takes two different routes. For many traditionalist or more ascetic priests, the only acceptable color for formal garments is black, sometimes accented with silver (such as spiral brooches or amulets) and tiny vials of holy water. In recent generations, however, there has been a movement in many temples away from such dour fashions. Pointing out that the solemnity of death is only part of their concern, such iconoclasts celebrate the birth of new life by wearing more colorful and fancifully designed raiment. Instead of traditional black robes, they gravitate toward silver, gray, and purple. In addition to color, these iconoclast priests often add highly artistic elements to their clothing, designing their own unique outfits as a reflection of their unique threads in Brazen's great tapestry. While outright conflict is rare, the two camps of Brazen have strong opinions regarding each other's clothing choices.
Holy Texts:
Brazen's holy book, The Bones Land, mostly consists of the words of an ancient prophet. The faithful debate which events its predictions foretell, and whether the prophesied days have already passed.
In older temples, the holy book consists of collections of scrolls illuminated with rare inks and bound in metal filigree, each held in a gray silk mantle to protect it from wear and mishaps. Some of these collections are historical artifacts worth thousands of gold pieces, and priests bring only the scrolls they need to temple services, leaving the remainder in a safe place. Church doctrine mandates that worn-out protective mantles can't simply be discarded, so used mantles are either walled up in tiny compartments within temples or sewn into a burial shroud for a priest or other notable member of the faith.
Holidays:
The church has two common holidays shared by all temples.
Day of Bones: On the fifth day of Harven, priests carry the enshrouded corpses of the recent dead through the streets of the city in an honored procession. These corpses are interred at no cost in a church graveyard, tomb, or sepulcher, which is considered a great honor to the departed.
Procession of Unforgotten Souls: In lands where the Lord of Graves is a prominent deity, this ceremony is held nightly in the weeks leading up to the harvest feast, during which the faithful ask the god to delay when he takes them to the afterlife. Priests wear thin, black robes over their festival clothes, and carry lit candles in a procession into a large fountain, pool, lake, or quiet river. As they enter the deeper water, the candles go out, but as the priests reach the other side, the candles re-light, and the water makes the black robes transparent, revealing the festival colors beneath.
Aphorisms:
Along with its abundance of rituals, ritual objects, and ritual clothing, the church has developed many habitual phrases. In most cases, a member of the faith makes the sign of the spiral over the heart when speaking one of these locutions. Three of the most common are as follows.
Not This Year, Not Yet: This is a brief prayer, spoken in response to hearing a tragedy or bad rumor, asking that Brazen delay when believers are sent to his realm, for they have much to do before that time. The devout speak it at each morning's prayers and when they pray before bed.
All Who Live Must Face His Judgment: This is a promise that another person—typically an enemy, but possibly just a flippant or disrespectful person—will suffer whatever fate is in store for them, even if it takes longer than the speaker would like.
The Lord of Graves Shall Keep It: This is an oath to bear a secret to the grave, swearing that only Brazen shall hear it in person (and only once the oath-maker has died), or that he will claim the oath-maker early if he breaks his promise of secrecy.
Relations with Other Religions:
All deities deal peaceably with Brazen, for their agents must have access to his realm to escort souls under their protection to their respective homes. While he approves of some actions and disapproves of others, he remains aloof and distant, with no true friends or enemies. Most of the other gods understand and appreciate his impartiality.
Brazen followers are free—but not compelled—to make alliances and enmities with anyone they choose, on an individual level or as a temple, just as the Lord of Graves works with all the gods to guide mortal souls into their realms.
Brazen priests are renowned for their impartial natures, and regularly minister to both sides in a given conflict, caring foremost for the proper treatment of the dead and newborns. A few fanatics take it upon themselves to pursue wizards, sorcerers, and other magic-users who attempt to improve the world through magical means; the fanatics see these attempts as defying the will of Brazen.
Realm:
Brazen's realm is enormous, and layered like an onion. The whole of the Spire is his, with no other god disputing his claim on the thin mesa that rises far above the city of Axis and supports his Boneyard. At the same time, however, the Boneyard is split into several different regions, with the most notable being the various courts where souls with obvious destinations are divided up and sent on to their just rewards. Particularly complicated cases, however—such as those who sell their souls and then genuinely repent and work toward redemption—end up judged by Brazen himself within his palace, with representatives from the planes involved arguing the matter. Brazen's Palace is also the eventual home of those who worship the god directly. A soaring gothic edifice, the palace stands in contrast to PBrazen's often somber and dour nature. Constructed of white marble glowing with an inner light and with floors paved in onyx, it represents the god's dualistic power over life and death.
Planar Allies:
Brazen's divine servants are usually psychopomps, though spirits whose destinies were especially bright or unusually dark may visit the mortal world to carry a message on his behalf, even if they went to another deity or realm as part of their final judgment. The appearance of such a spirit usually relates to its activities in life or the god it served. For example, to warn his followers of a bloody battle, Brazen may call forth the spirit of a mighty warrior of Dragar. In addition to his psychopomps, some of Brazen's servitors include the following, which answer to planar ally and similar calling spells from the faithful.
Lived-in-Sorrow (unique linnorm): Resembling a gaunt, gray, wyvern-sized linnorm, this creature can channel positive energy like a cleric and can animate objects, forcing them to serve her. She loathes undead, and often blasts and grapples packs of them, reducing them to dust and vapor. She prefers offerings of magic items useful for destroying undead or healing the living.
Echo of Lost Divinity (unique ghost): This spectral soldier wears fine clothes in green and gold. One would think this is the remnant of a long dead warrior god. Echo of Lost Divinity denies this, however. He prefers to heal and support those who call him rather than attacking their foes directly.
Steward of the Skein: This skull-adorned, armor-clad, winged woman is Brazen's herald. The Steward is a loner, and has little interest in the desires of mortals. She is personable with other planar servitors of her creator, but her unique role places her above them in the religious hierarchy, and she does not like fraternizing too much with her underlings lest she distract them from what Brazen has planned for them. Conversely, she is extremely interested when one of the god's other servants is due to give birth or die. Though the Steward has no interest in procreating on her own, she arrives at the moment of celestial and half-celestial births to witness them with great interest—perhaps as a proxy for Brazen himself, whose presence would certainly overwhelm the newborn and confuse its role in the tapestry of fate. Likewise, the Steward has an almost morbid curiosity about one of her fellow servitors dying, and has an almost precognitive sense for such things, making her sudden appearance next to other servants of Brazen in the Material Plane slightly worrisome.
For Faithful Characters:
Priests of Brazen that follow his tenets and graces often are granted special powers by Brazen.
- For each soul (killing blow) he sends to Brazen in combat, a cleric of Brazen receives a paladin's lay on hands ability usage.
- Spreading life or death is the primary goal of Brazen - if the cleric channels negative/positive energy in a burst, he can incorporate either the stabilize or bleed orison entwined in the channeling if it currently one of his prepared spells. Any creature that dies as a result of this cannot be brought back from the dead by anything short of a resurrection spell.