Editing The Elemental Gods (section)

==Beira - the Queen of Frost==
Mother Crow is a goddess of permanence and stasis. She has found, in Scalgard, a perfect place, and she wishes that it would never change; she would cover the world in the stasis of her bitter cold, and rule forever as its queen. She has already begun, for far to the north, past even the frosty shores of Orcheim, the goddess lives in a palace made of crystal. So cold and still is her domain that not even Mannanan's winds can reach her - they die in silence while clouds fall to the ground as snow. A thousand frozen statues of men dot the approach to her home, testament to her implacable will.

In her goal, though Beira stands opposed by every god, the last laugh may yet be hers; Beira's interest in an endless time gives her the gift of prophecy, and the furthest futures she predicts always end with ice.  The Queen of Frost may tell a petitioner what she sees, and for this reason alone many lords of Scalgard have asked one of Beira's priests to advise them.

Beira is an older, serene woman with painfully sharp features and bluish skin and hair. She wears a mantle of furs above her gown, and cradles a crystal scepter in her arms. On her regal brow she wears a crown of icicles. Her priests are called '''Rime-hags''' and are most often Devoted Clerics, and their powers do Cold damage rather than Radiant.

A character knows the following with a successful Religion check:

* '''DC 20''' - ''Getting A Head'' - Knowledge and wisdom are not the same, and though Beira's priest Branwen had knowledge of the doom of Mathol, Saeson Duke of Harlech, he did not have the wisdom to keep from speaking his prophecy.  He lost his head as a result but even that didn't stop his tongue.  Within the season, Mathol had the head placed far out of sight in his tallest tower, where it continued to tell of the future.  Mathol's doom came from the sea soon after, though, in the form of giants, and what's happened to Branwen's head since no one has been willing to find out.
* '''DC 25''' - ''The School of Ice'' - Few have ever survived the tundral cold long enough to find Beira's icy palace, but for those who do the Strigamarche awaits.  In this dread school, Biera teaches her greatest rituals of prophecy, divination and control.  The cost of such knowledge is simple - each student must, at the end of one year of study, divine the time and nature of their own death.  Few to begin with, fewer students still return to the world of men, either driven mad by the knowledge or finding that their life ends there, with Mother Crow's cold hand on their warm hearts.
* '''DC 30''' - ''Standing On Native Snow'' - Of the five gods, Beira alone was born within Scalgard, and raised herself to godhood only after Cerithwen traced her path to this world.  Her history is sung in the howling of the winter wind and written in the patterns made by snow drifts.  Learning the whole of this history would undoubtedly grant insights into the origins of her sorcerous power, and how possibly to usurp it - or to claim new godhood of one's own.