Ashtra

Concepts of the Faith

Ashtra is an ancient goddess by moral reckoning, though she is still a worldly deity. It is possible that she is somehow connected to Yog-Sothoth, some small avatar or an agent of its will (much like Ragnora and Drakahnia are to Shub-Niggurath), though there are many who view her as a sort of force of destiny rather than as a thinking being. However she came into being or whatever she truly is, she is worshiped as the goddess of Fate and as such is said to have interests in making sure that everything follows its natural course. To this end her faith fights against anything that perverts destiny, such as undeath, manipulation of time, and anything beyond temporary planar breaches. Her clerics teach a sometimes grim dogma that everything is preordained, believing that all that happens was meant to happen, but at the same time encouraging all to strive for the best that they can attain stating that while the future’s destination is set, its course is fluid.

The Official Sects

Generally the faith is split into three branches, each revering a different aspect of the Spirit Mother, with smaller sects or cults popping in and out of existence over the span of history. The three main branches exist more or less in cooperation and form the bedrock of the Faith revering their own versions of Ashtra.

The first are those that revere her as the Midwife, seeing her as a kind force that gently ushers the souls of the unborn into existence and then out when they finally die. To them death is just a natural part of life’s never-ending cycle and should not be feared or perverted through magic.

The second faction reveres her as the Judge and while Ashtra is widely viewed as neutral this sect contains a large number of Justicars and Adjudicators that believe she is a paragon of law. This group sometimes comes into conflict with the priest of Erabis, but the confrontations are rarely more than spirited religious and legal debates. To the Judge sect Ashtra watches the actions of all mortals and when their time comes she shows them their lives and then sentences or rewards them accordingly, sending them into the arms of whatever power they served in life.

The third is one of the grimmest and least popular to the common folk, venerating Ashtra as the Reaper, and there have been incidents in the past where certain zealots have tried to usher in what they considered a holy apocalypse. In general though this sect is not dangerous and is actually beneficial to the people as it is their duty to perform funerary rites and consecrate the bodies upon death lest they be raised by necromancers or unclean spirits.

The church at large keeps one dark secret, and that is their unofficial fourth branch, or rather the joint arm of the Judge and Reaper sects. Many of these men and women are not clerics but assassins called by Ashtra to help end the suffering of thousands by eliminating the few that cause it. They are steadfast in their duty and trained to be almost fanatically loyal to the church, especially the Reaper sect. These Death Angels, as they are code named by the clergy, are tasked with killing savage warlords at the head of barbarian hosts, despot kings that try to conquer and expand their territories and enemies of the faith that become too much a threat to ignore. They are masters of stealth and disguise and have a number of ways of taking down their targets, but all usually say a prayer over the dead as they watch the life fade from their eyes and commit their souls to Ashtra’s judgment. In recent years a string of incidents throughout the assassin cells has revealed a startling amount of corruption with clerics using the unwitting or also corrupted assassins to take out rivals not because their deaths would benefit the world but because their deaths would benefit the cleric in question. The church leadership is still debating how to handle this delicate situation.

Heresies

Over the years there have been numerous heretical sects that have split off from the main branch of the church but two have been around almost as long as the church itself and don’t seem to be going anywhere anytime soon.

The first is the least malevolent but no less dangerous Revelers. These clerics are always chaotic neutral believing that any natural compulsion is meant to be and thus should be followed without shame. A number of anarchists follow this belief but the sect has little in the way of organization which has made them particularly hard to eradicate by the Judge sect or various authority figures. The Revelers generally walk uncontested in the Freedlands but often have to keep their icons and beliefs somewhat hidden when further south in larger cites.

The second sect, calling themselves Nihilists are those that dedicate themselves to death not as a natural part of the cycle but as an end. Unlike the Reaper sect that they originated from, the Nihilists see themselves as instruments of death on earth. They revel in mass destruction, plagues, and war. To them all things are meant to die eventually, but the strongest are meant to live longer and therefore cause humanity to become stronger until their time also comes and their children replace them. They are generally insane, serial killers and death priests of war that clash their armies with those of Erabis and Atalos. Whenever the Nihilists are discovered all other faiths and sects will set aside their differences and try to eradicate them, even heretics like the Revelers.