Blevika

Introduction

Despite being one of the strangest and most insular of Gods, Blevika is truly a marvel: the Goddess of Destruction, Regrowth and Upheaval, she has often time acted as a herald of change throughout Atharen's history, and long before it. A godkiller and purifier of all forms of degeneration, she sears shut the cracks that form throughout time, driven by a maddening impulse to annihilate all forms of corruption, moral or arcane. Seared by the Bleeding, Blevika has fallen victim to her own fixation, now purging herself in an endless loop from within Muid, unable to either end her own life or become entirely free of degenerative raw magic.

History

Before the Gods were allies, Blevika considered them errant strangers, or even enemies. Born seething with prejudice and paranoia, any perceived betrayal would stoke her to violence, taking up arms against other Gods with an unfaltering fury. Alongside Malek, Blevika was one of the few Adac innately capable of killing their kin, without the aide of technology. She would challenge her peers to duels that would last for years, rending the surfaces of planets as their raw energy stirred cataclysmic reckonings. At the pinnacle of every battle, Blevika would destroy the godly essence of her foe, running them through with her divine blade.

Blevika's most renowned title, among the Gods and their eventual creations, has always been "Blevika the Purifier." Where she perceives the putrefaction and rot of a righteous social order, she draws her weapon, an executioner of those who falter from moral alignment for too long. Decadence her foe, she would appear before a people whose society had stagnated and begun to wane, offering them the tools for rebellion and violent rebirth.

When Blevika chose to join Venadak and the other Gods, it was out of fear. She admired the Outsider for its peerless ability to cleanse and reforge reality, but did not view her time alive as an experience nearing its end. With great reluctance, she consigned herself to the rules of the pact her kin had formed, reserving her destructive impulses until the Gods deigned to unleash her might.

And then, she lingered and observed, peering upon the world beneath her feet, her conscious mind projecting away from Muid to witness the chaos that reigned below. Blevika fulfilled her oath to Venadak with no shortage of unease, her hand oft gripping the pommel of her sword as she witnessed corruption, degenerative rhetoric and ideology, and structural decay. When she was finally given the chance to act upon her instincts, to cull the ruling order of the Unbroken Empire, Blevika followed the other Gods eagerly into battle, severing the head of Valen Dres herself.

And like the others who swore to defend their own, she was imprisoned within Bel, struck with corruption as the convergence of the planar boundaries ignited the world with cataclysm.

Blevika was enraged, furious at Venadak who had deemed her too corrupted to roam Atharen. She had become a walking contradiction, a failure of her own ideals: a creature who sought to cleanse rot and blight who was, herself, mired in atrophying filth. She could feel blight consuming her mind, her body flaking and becoming putrid, her disfigurements too severe to leave untreated. Unwilling to lie within Bel, and subject herself to steepening rot, Blevika broke the seemingly impenetrable planar boundary between Bel and Muid, piercing through it with her spear and emerging on the surface of Senia. When she arrived, it was to the terror of the other Gods, who isolated her and decided whether or not to end her life. Malek fought her into submission, landing blows onto the waning Goddess until her mind became dormant, the last remnants of defiance leaving her.

When she awoke, she was within her Divine Realm of Alea Nel, surrounded by wards that would prevent her from ever leaving. Isolated, the Gods sequestered her blighted form within the grounds of the realm's vast cathedral, confining her there as if to bandage what was Muid's festering wound.

Since then, Blevika has lived as the outcast of the Living Gods, always seeking a method to cleanse her soul, cutting off limbs and regrowing them, annihilating her own form and reshaping it from its foundations. She lives in idle, flagellating madness, finding an unfailing comfort in her quest to cleanse the most proximal source of degenerating rot: herself.

Depiction

Where she is still worshiped, Blevika remains largely depicted as she was before the Bleeding: a long-haired woman of flowing, wavy red locks, cladded in well-crafted golden armor, lined with silver-red embroidery and divine embellishments. She wields a blade and a spear, her sword a faceted object of marvel, while her spear appears fairly simple in design, able to shift forms between a spear and halberd, but otherwise somewhat mundane save for its golden color.

Blevika's historical icon, a golden-red moth escaping chrysalis, is still worn by many who follow the Path: a symbol of rebirth and new beginnings, the end of an era of stagnation, or one drenched in strife, purposelessness, abuse. Many who escape painful or harrowing experiences and find fulfillment owe the end of their old life to Blevika, finding solace in her teachings and donning amulets with such symbols, sometimes simply a medallion depicting her image.

In truth, Blevika no longer appears this way, and some occults have built statues and monuments depicting her far more accurately. Those who have seen her in the rare period she is not immersed within a cocoon have described her as nearly nude, covered in grey, necrotizing rot, which she will purge from herself by force by ripping away her own limbs, only for them to grow and become infected once again. Blevika is often covered in burn marks from where she sears herself, seeking to purify specific pustules of corruption. Her armor has largely reformed into wings that cling to her back, forged from its metal sheets, and she is rarely seen with her old weaponry.

Blevika has always been seen as ambivalent and harsh, an unforgiving force for ruin and cataclysm. In the face of her corruption, however, the view of the Goddess is increasingly somber. While she remains harsh, most of her purifying ire has been directed towards herself, internalizing all of her boundless wrath. In some strange way, corruption has made Blevika far less cruel, enduring her own eternal walk of penitence as she seeks her freedom from impurity.

Domains

Blevika's domains, rather than being viewed as separate entities as with many other Gods, tend to bleed into one another, forming a whole picture within their parts. In truth, while Kala is known as the God of Change, this aspect of him is largely scientific: the changing state of energy, of biological epochs, and other, similar things. Blevika is viewed by many mortals as the Goddess of Change, of a different kind; the changing eras of one's life, the changing state of society, the cyclical nature of rising power, Empire, collapse and decay, of old systems becoming fraught with corruption and abuse, only to be torn down by violent revolution.

To this effect, Blevika's cycles of change begin with the corrosion of a social or political order, or the festering of tension, disarray or violence in interpersonal relationships. This phase proceeds into 'Destruction'; the devastation of that dynamic, the collapse of a society in a violent chorus of rage. Always, in the aftermath of destruction, opportunity for revitalization flourishes: Regrowth proceeds, a new and perhaps superior state of being coming into fruition on the foundations left by old ruins.

This constant state of transition from creation, to becoming tarnished, to being torn apart, to embracing rebirth and change, is the crux of Blevika's 'Upheaval'. She presides over the progression of people, realms, systems, philosophies and ideologies, all through a state of flux, emphasized always by turbulence that lends into recognition and tranquility.

Influence

Blevika's influence is her mark upon history. Once among the most influential of all the Gods, she has since become a shadow of herself, even more insular than the Lords of Bel; ostracized by her own, imprisoned physically and by her own, compulsive mind. Blevika's state makes it difficult for her to influence the world, though those loyal to her - a populace surprisingly ample in number - continue to spread her word. Throughout history, and even today, societies that have become deeply corrupt and unstable always tend to see a great swell in Blevika's faithful, their numbers surging and calling for a calamitous end.

Dogma

Blevika calls for growth through suffering. In her view, the greatest fools are those who face no adversity, but equal to them are those who steep themselves in immiserating pain without any attempt to escape, learn from their displeasure and their folly, and become a changed person. To the Goddess, there is no such thing as truly pointless or arbitrary pain. Even the act of a person killing a helpless child has some degree of meaning: their pain is shared by the people around them, perhaps even their murderer, leading to an opportunity for insight and reflection. The infliction of woe upon a person or a society can lead to reformation, the ultimate aspiration of the Goddess.

Blevika's teachings are reflected in her own form. Even before her corruption, the Goddess would often rise from a cocoon all the same, becoming somehow different, improved. While many Gods feel complacent within their own power, Blevika's drive is one of constant self-improvement, learning from flaws and reshaping them, or - from those imperfections - even deriving strength. For this reason, many across Atharen continue to find Blevika's guidance uplifting, with her current, painful predicament viewed as inspiring: a Goddess unable to give up on her own ideals, committed to restoring her previous self.

As tragic and somber as her story may be, the Purifier is seen as a heartening force for many, a symbol of hope for change even while the other Gods seem to turn their backs.

Notable Religious Factions

The Syncretic Moth

The Syncretic Moth, typically known as 'the Moth' or 'the Red Moth' is a disparate order of Blevika's loyalists, coming together across national and ideological boundaries to help lead nations of decaying systemic cohesion towards ruin, and helping to establish new foundations in those realms as they arise. The Moth is generally run by a man or woman known as 'the Shepherd', a charismatic, ideological reformer who arises in an era of discord to bring about change. The Shepherd is chosen by Blevika herself, even now, and while the Moth is currently absent this leader, they continue to operate. Currently, the Moth is most active in the Kingdom of Lorien, though they have a smaller presence within Daravin. Given the anti-Path (Living God) inclination of both of these nations, the Moth operates within them in secret, seeking those dissatisfied by their society and passionate in invoking change.

Alea Nel, Mantle of the Purifier

The Mantle is a storied realm, known to be a grounds of divine bloodletting: the site of Blevika's great conflict with Malek, and even Evitrix in the year 167. At the zenith of Blevika's battle with Evitrix, the two Goddesses nearly deformed the realm of Muid, Alea Nel falling from its axis and colliding with the fields of Senia below, razing vast swathes of Muid's tranquil core as Blevika's home lay a smoldering ruin. While most realms of Muid are disconnected from Senia's fields, typically floating around the main celestial body like planets around a star's gravitational pull, Alea Nel relocated to Senia's heart after its collision. Thousands of years later, it has since become warded off by a divine cage as a response to Blevika's corruption, a barrier of Divinity that allows none of its rot to seep into the outside realm.

The center of Blevika's realm is a grand cathedral of immense scale, broad and crowned by an impressive vertical spire, extending thousands of feet into the sky. While most simply call the entire realm 'Alea Nel', this is in fact the name of this expansive, beige colored cathedral, while the realm as a whole - mostly dilapidated fields of cindered arcane rot but including the cathedral body - is the 'Mantle of the Purifier'.

The cathedral looms beneath a grand series of cliffs, colossal peaks that lead into a waterfall at their center, an endless tide of deep, orange-brown corruption that bleeds into a vast moat below, which surrounds Alea Nel. Near the very height of the cathedral lies Blevika's prison, home to the Goddess herself, while the remainder of the cathedral is filled with her idle Noradac, waiting for their turn to be invited to her side.

Alone, Blevika resides in a cocoon through the vast majority of the year. When the cocoon fills with corruption, she springs from it in a vibrant rebirth, razing it to ash with a ray of disintegrating heat. Corruption sopping onto the floor beneath her, Blevika calls upon a number of Noradac to her side, forcing them to become the sub-organic base for her newest cocoon, which she will reside within until she has filled it with her corruption again. When the time comes for the Goddess to leave her shell, Blevika will purify the cocoon and execute the spirits that formed it as she is reborn, destroying them as they become Dregs.

The corpses of these Dregs grow into foliage after their deaths, immense ropes of ivy draping all across the cathedral from her chamber at its height, flowers and darkly colored vines burgeoning outward from her residence, often falling from above onto the lower features of the building. As Blevika continuously purifies herself in these cyclical phases, the Mantle itself seems to slowly regrow, the scattered seeds left by the seared Dregs reforming the fields surrounding the corrupted moat. The corruption within these seeds, not totally destroyed by Blevika's ray, will over time begin to corrode the blooming foliage, seeping the land in rot again which will evaporate into the sky, come down as corrupted rain and collect in reservoirs that will eventually empty out into the waterfall. As such, Blevika's cycle of self-purifying is truly without end, a maddening eternity merely to prevent herself from becoming deeply impure.

Demigods

Blevika has borne trivially few Draedan throughout history. Never a Goddess interested in romance of any kind, or sensuality, the few Draedan she created were gifts to her greatest champions, those who she wished to offer a token of her favor towards in the form of a child who might serve her will. Nearly all of Blevika's Draedan -- few as they have been -- have left their marks upon history, becoming influential warriors and apostles of her purifying order.

Desryne

To be written.