Brightwell

"

n Darkness is my strength."

-- From the The Conferences of Victor Gagné V, Quoth the Raven Issue 28.

Brightwell (Deity)

A goddess first introduced in the Lilliend Gazetteer (see Quoth the Raven Issue 25), Brightwell is primarily a patron of arcane magic (she specializes in witchcraft but also sponsors other mages) and dreams, but her portfolio is wide and covers a great number of subjects. While Brightwell appears to be unknown in the Core, she is well-known in the Wartorn Cluster.

Dogma

There is no grand scheme, no matter what deities like Ezra or the Lawgiver claim. All there is, is the Hollow; we dwell in a realm of profound darkness, full of horrors eager to drag us down, debase and devour us.

Brightwell will not cup you in her palm and protect you from all danger if you do as she says. Brightwell will not tell you what to do every day of your life. Brightwell will help you unlock your power, will kindle the fire in your belly that encourages you to improve yourself, and she will whisper clues in your dreams to help you along your chosen path, but you must choose to act on these gifts ... or not.

Be a saint. Be a sinner. Simply be. But do for yourself; do not trick or force others to do for you what you should accomplish by your own hand and wit. Hone your mind. Train your muscles. Acquire and improve upon skills. Sharpen your fangs. Cut your own path, and know Brightwell will not guide you any further than she absolutely must, but she will hand you the keys you need to unlock your own power.

If you can, tear down the Hollow that traps us all, and build a better world.

Alignment

Chaotic Neutral

Cleric Alignments

Chaotic Evil, Chaotic Good, Chaotic Neutral, True Neutral

Aliases

Auntie Thirteen, Breaker of Chains, Breaker of Worlds, Dreaming Vixen, Enemy of Ezra, the Great [Redacted], Mother of All Evil, Mother of All Good, Our Lady in Darkness, Queen of Keys, Rising Fiend, the Vixen, Witch Goddess

Portfolio

Arcane magic, darkness, dreams, fertility, knowledge, martial arts, monsters, moon, night, prostitutes, science, the Shadow Weave, thieves, witches

Symbol

In the Core and presumably on the island of Castra in the Domain of Malopelagio in the Wartorn Cluster: a disk of red metal, with the image of a sleeping vixen with her nose tucked in her tail etched into it.

In the domain of Lilliend in the Wartorn Cluster: a sleeping vixen with rainbow-coloured fur.

Spell Domains

In D&D 3.5

Chaos, Darkness, Dream, Knowledge, Lust, Madness, Magic, Mind, Moon, Strength

In Pathfinder 1E

In the domain of Lilliend: Chaos, Darkness, Knowledge, Madness, Magic, Rune

Spell subdomains

In the domain of Lilliend: Arcane, Insanity, Language, Loss, Memory, Moon, Night, Nightmare, Thought

Favoured Weapon

Sword cane

Rules of the Faith

Unlike fellow witch- goddess Hala, Brightwell provides very few moral or ethical guidelines for behaviour. What she gives to her worshippers are the keys to power to act as they wish, with little in the ways of guidance or restriction. She does not actively call upon her faithful to conquer or seek revenge, but also does not urge them to make peace and live quiet lives. What Brightwell does forbid, is slavery. Using magic or other means to twist and weaken creatures in mind and/or body with an eye to permanently enslaving them is considered to be a greater sin than murder or torture, and those found guilty of it are soon excommunicated -- if not executed. Young children are sacrocanct and should not be harmed in any way.

Mythos

On Castra in Malopelagio, Brightwell is the Rising Fiend; a succubus whose intellect matched her beauty, only for her demonic masters to avail themselves of her body and ignore her mind. When her superiors caught her studying, she was considered to be rebellious, subjected to hideous punishments and cast into the Mists. Coming to the Great Hollow, Brightwell suffered madness, but this she forged into a will of iron. Reforging herself to gain knowledge, power and strength, the demon clawed her way out of the darkness and back into the Mists, ascending to the estate of a goddess. She calls on mortals to help her tear down the Lands of Mist so a new, better world may be built for mortalkind to inhabit, and so Brightwell may rise higher still to shake both the Heavens and the Abyss.

In Lilliend, Brightwell is feared as the Dreaming Vixen, who elected to sleep away eternity in the Mists while her sister Haurau chose to live in the blue dome of sky as the consort of Thunder-Father and mother of all life. Brightwell's dreams manifested as arcane magic and her nightmares as monsters, but neither was a threat until Thunder-Father, motivated by lust, cracked the blue orb of sky so he could get at her.

Because of Thunder-Father assaulting her, Brightwell gave birth to, and was consequently assaulted by, the evil god known as il Demonio, which lead to her giving birth to the good goddess Ashar. Driving all from her company, Brightwell warned Thunder-Father of the dire consequences that could come of his behaviour as he fled home. When the sky-god nevertheless ended up letting il Demonio and Ashar into the world and destroying Haurau in an attempt to keep her for himself, Brightwell's voice resounded from the Mists, reminding him of her prophecy. Magic and monsters now flow into the world through the cracks Thunder-Father made in the blue orb of sky as Brightwell sleeps, and Good and Evil are at war within the world.

Worship

Due to her wide portfolio and chaotic nature, Brightwell is worshipped in varying ways by varying people in varying domains. To one, she is a divine archmage; to another, a fallen fertility goddess prayed to by prostitutes; some see her as an inspiration for groundbreaking science; others believe she is a fiend who clawed her way onto a divine throne by pure stubbornness and grit. Brightwell is both a brilliant scholar of the occult and the scientific, and a fearsome warrior. She is the screaming voice of madness and chaos, seeking to upend civil order. She is the dreaming goddess, who wishes to sleep away eternity. To the Centurions of the Night, she is the goddess who oversees the Shadow Weave[1] in the Demiplane of Dread, even though they acknowledge that she did not create it. Brightwell is many things to many people, with no two cults exactly the same. Her followers are broadly divided in Chaotic and True Neutral sects.

• The True Neutral sects generally prefer to let the world go its own way while they tend their own affairs, interpret dreams and teach the next generation.
• The Chaotic sects are all engaged in rearranging the unsatisfying world as it is in some way. Chaotic Neutral followers tend to do a lot of research and development in search of perfect understanding, which will allow them to reorganize the world. The Chaotic Good seek to pull down tyrants and uplift the downtrodden. The Chaotic Evil want to burn down the world so they can build a new, perfect one on its ruins.

Worship in the Core

Brightwell is currently an unknown quantity in the Core, but Clerics of the Cult of Castra and Centurions of the Night who worship her are operating covertly there, gathering information on possible opponents of their mission to destroy the world that is and create a new, more idealised world on its ruins.

Worship in Lilliend

Brightwell is feared as the source of all magic, all monsters and the conflict between good and evil in Lilliend, and her worshipers are few. The ones she does have focus on group dream interpretations and secretive spellcasting.

• An apocalyptic cult known as the Dark Dreamers conspires to sow chaos and destruction throughout the Wartorn Cluster, based on dream omens they believe are divine messages from Brightwell meant to lead to the end of Thunder-Father and all his works.
• Another cult, the Daughters of Doom, worship Thunder-Father in a similar way, in the belief that Brightwell is their patron's destined future bride, and that she will be the Mother of All Life in a new and perfect world.

Worship in Malopelagio

On the island of Castra in Malopelagio, the local cult owes much to the beliefs of Obissol and the individual interpretations of the Red Haunt. The cult sees its goddess as a former Succubus who combined beauty with intellectual genius, who was cast down into the Mists for studying and clawed her way to a divine throne. Unlike the Cult of Obissol, the Cult of Castra believes that Brightwell wants them to help burn down the world so a better one can be built. Unsurprisingly, this makes them staunch allies of the Centurions of the Night.

Holy Book

None. Brightwell is mercurial and has many faces. No two Domains agree completely on her mythology, and it is perfectly possible for people to become her priests and priestesses without having to draw on a community. No one book could hope to contain the whole spectrum of what she means to people. Besides which, the number of commandments the goddess has issued could comfortably fit on a single sheet of paper.

Instead of holy books, individual sects maintain communal dream books, spellbooks and science journals. On the occasion that individuals split off from a sect and remain at good terms with it, they are often given copies of their former group's dream book, containing what they believe to be their store of prophecies and hints granted by the goddess in their sleep.

Other

There is currently no proof that Brightwell has any connection to the Brightwell Coven of Gothic Earth.

"I will repay."