Portfolio: Love, beauty, loyalty, justice, truth
Alignment: Lawful Good
Titles: Lady Faithheart, Lady Justheart, Lady Trueheart, the Heartseeker, the Mother of Lovers,
The Queen of Hearts, Our Great Mother of Compassion
Astral Domain: The City of Fidelity
Holy Text: The Codex Fidelitus
Symbols: A ruby circled in gold, a golden arrow with a heart-shaped tip
Chosen Weapon: Scourge (Order of Autumn), Bow (The Heart Seekers)
Dogma: “All power begins in the heart. Love is the sharpest sword, the strongest shield, the most resilient armor. The strongest love is born in the fires of affliction, and therein faith and faithfulness burns brightest. Seek out and foster love wherever you go. Nurture the wounded heart, and encourage those who have love to share to be generous in their affections and the forming of attachments. What love unites becomes stronger. Never proceed motivated by the darker heart, for such will invite only betrayal. Though there be many kinds of love, not each is sufficient for the day.
“Beauty is the child of love. Wherever love grows, beauty soon follows. Seek always to protect and amplify beauty, both within yourself, in others, and the world around you. Never destroy a beautiful thing, for its loss will always bring sorrow. Be always fastidious in appearance and style, for what a true heart perceive as beautiful, it perceives as good and worthy of trust. Strive to look your best and help others to do the same, that they may hear your words of love and hunger for the same.
“Loyalty is the fruit of the greatest love. What the heart wants, the heart protects. Never lie or break trust with another. Be always just and true in your dealings with your fellow man and true to your word, for if you prove worthy of trust, you will prove worthy of love, and others will long to follow the Mother of Lovers. When hearts are joined in trust, love, and loyalty, they become the children of Sin-del, and her power grows as love reaches across the planes.”
Worshippers: Spouses, parents, lovers, judges, law enforcement, bounty-hunters, matchmakers, actors, musicians, artists, prostitutes, nobles, politicians
History: Sin-del, the Keeper of Hearts, is one of the three lost Elder Gods of Aeinia who was imprisoned by the Forgotten Gods during the Lost Age. From the dawn of creation, Sin-del was the most beautiful, the most desired of all goddesses. Her mere presence created distraction and forgetfulness among gods and primordials alike and she relished the ability to manipulate others for the sake of manipulation. Sin-del was vain and haughty, casting aside her lovers and dalliances on a whim, and such was her charisma that her forgotten paramours held no resentment. The Keeper of Hearts did not earn the ire of her fellow deities until she began to use her divine influence to garner the favor and adoration of the mortal races. Sindel took mortal form and began to wander the world, taking mortal lovers at will and leaving them fawning, obsessed shells of their former selves in the wake of her love. In time, Sin-del personally reigned over a great mortal empire of her devotees that spanned the whole world. Followers of the other gods abandoned their own faiths as they joined the Kingdom of Passion and that was when the Forgotten Gods took action. As punishment for her pride, Sin-del was bound into a mortal form permanently and stripped of her divine connection to her worshippers and followers and the Kingdom of Passion was destroyed by a divine curse.
It was during her mortal days that Sin-del began to experience the great change that created her current incarnation. At first, the loss of her power and the love of her followers devastated her. Several times, the Keeper of Hearts attempted to establish her own kingdom, but each time the curse of the Forgotten Gods brought the work of her vanity to heel. Sin-del wandered for millennia taking comfort where she could and exploring the world on her own terms. It was during her wanderings that Sin-del awoke to the challenging state of the mortal beings she had believed previously existed only for her amusement. As her sympathy grew, so too did her compassion, and Sin-del gradually began to quietly offer succor to the beleaguered and lovelorn, always taking care to avoid garnering authority lest her curse befall those around her. During her mortal sojourn, Sin-del has had an invisible hand in guiding the affairs of major world events and shifts in power. When the Forgotten Gods were trapped outside of reality within the Nether by the Outer Gods, Sin-del began to feel the curse upon her lifting and her divinity reasserting itself. Sin-del is unique among the gods in that she personally understands the plights of the servitor races, and she has allowed the lessons of her imprisonment to shape her newest incarnation. The Keeper of Hearts now tempers her passions with justice and values loyalty along with beauty, and she expects the same from her followers.
The Order of Autumn: Established by a wandering priestess in the year 62, the Order of Autumn began as nothing more than a halfway house for the victimized of the city’s harsh streets. Over the centuries, the location of the order changed numerous times as did the services offered by the caretakers and the clientele. In the last hundred years, the order has become a formal religious organization and the center of the Goddess of Love’s faith. The Order of Autumn recruits their clergy from among the downtrodden and abused of Talispun and other kingdoms, and the vast majority of them are former prostitutes, slaves, prisoners, and homeless. These, according to the teachings of the Words of Truth, are those whose love eventually burns the brightest and whose hearts are truest.
The Order of Autumn’s mission is to foster environments where love and loyalty can be nurtured and grow. To that end, the order works towards making positive changes on personal and community levels. The clergy are expected to be actively working towards bettering specific lives and specific areas, and although clerics are given a large degree of autonomy in their pursuits, each is expected to report to senior clergy about where their efforts are currently focused and the methods they are using to accomplish their goals.
Another subtle tenant of the order is that love cannot be forced upon others, and the clergy are encouraged to avoid brazen, forceful attempts to bring about change unless absolutely necessary. They are encouraged to work behind the scenes through persuasion and guile, employing manipulation first and falling back on boldness as a last resort. These methods have acquired an enormous amount of good will for what is arguably a very young faith.
The Secret known only to the Lady of Justice of the House of Repose, is that the Order of Autumn was established by Sin-del herself in the final mortal incarnation of her divine imprisonment, the priestess, Maevan Caritus. In the centuries that the Outer Gods restored balance to the world of Aeinia, Maevan felt the mystical shackles of her curse slowly eroding and knew that her mortal sojourn would soon be over. She spent that time serving the people of Talispun and studying the secrets locked in their hearts, all the while formulating the shape and role her faith would take amongst them. When Sin-del ascended to the Astral Plane to create her own realm, she left behind a portion of her divinity with the mortal priestess Maevan, who wanders Aeinia in secret, first among the Goddess of Love’s exarchs.
The Heart Seekers: The Heart Seekers are a knightly order of paladins archers based within the Adar cities of Horta and Leyer. The Heart Seekers are the more militant arm of Sin-del’s faith, exercising force of arms and aggressive defense, whereas the Order of Autumn’s role is one more of subtle influence. The Heart Seekers travel the length of the Eastlands and beyond fighting to preserve beautiful places and protect the love in men’s hearts towards one another. Seekers are frequently called in to tense negotiations where hostility is a possible outcome, and their stable, calming presence often prevents such situations from escalating. Seekers are also called into service whenever the truth of some local problem is being obfuscated by some external force, particularly a divine or diabolical force. Stories abound within the Adari Republic of their ability to discern truth from lie, and the order is renowned for ability see past surface problems to the true concern.
Heart Seekers are found in all climbs and extremes, raising bow and sword whenever necessary to protect others, but each is expected to report back to their chapter house of origin at least once a year to make an accounting of their journeys and receive their orders for the coming year. The Seekers include both genders, but differ again from the Order of Autumn in that it boasts slightly more men than women.
The head of the Heart Seekers order is the Grand Abbot of the Temple of Truth, located in the city of Horta. All knights and clerics of the order answer to the Grand Abbot and adhere to his edicts. The current Grand Abbot is Nathan Edris, an aging but comely cleric who took up the sword in defense of Horta decades previously during a goblinoid invasion. Grand Abbot Nathan has struggled patiently to advance and maintain his order in the face of the state religion’s stranglehold upon the government. The clergy of the Church of Healing are constantly reaching out to vex the Temple of Truth in ways both small and oblique, and the temple has faced closure several times throughout its history.
Order of Autumn Titles
Sheltered Sister/Brother (1st)
Heart Keeper (6th)
Heart Warder (11th)
High Priestess (16th)
Lady of Justice (20th)
Heart Seeker Titles
Devoted Brother/Sister (1st)
Sir/Lady (6th)
Truth Seeker (11th)
High Seeker of Truth (15th)
Radiant Abbot (20th)
Grand Abbot of Truth (25th)
