Deities and patrons

Religion plays a very important role in the world of Varris. This page contains information for players who wish to make characters with a connection to the divine — whichever of the three planes of reality it comes from. Note that your class does not restrict the source of your magic to a certain class of beings. Rather, the class determines the manner in which you obtained it and how you can use it. A warlock can strike a bargain with an angel of the Archfey, a paladin can swear fealty to a chromatic dragon tyrant, and a devout cultist of an archfiend can be granted the powers of a cleric.

The term "deity" is used in the world of Varris for any being powerful enough to bestow magical powers upon mortals. It can be an archfey, an angel, an ancient dragon, or even an immortal sorcerer. Though there are no "gods" or "goddesses" in the world, the word itself may be used to describe a deity from the perspective of its worshipers.

The Archfey and the Varszi religion

The Archfey (capitalized when used as a plural) and their angels are worshiped in most settlements of Varris, but their followers do not form a monolithic religion. Instead, the Varszi religion is defined by what it is not — fiend or dragon worship. The modern Varszi religion has its roots in the pre-Varran faith of the elves (see: "Divergent faiths" below) and both share the same objects of worship: the Archfey and their angels, all traditionally presented as feminine. The Ladies, as the Archfey are often called, have abstract domains, while their angels are created to perform specific tasks and act as their messengers in the material plane. While they seem to exist in harmony and act in tandem when facing a common threat, each archfey and, to some extent, angel, represents a different set of beliefs and ideals. Since their worship has such a long history, their original Sylvan names are included, along with modern Common versions and popular titles.

A selection of Archfey and their angels

Sylvan	Common	Title	Type	Domain
Enkhebet*	—	Spellweaver	CN Angel	Teaching magic
Ireshau	Lehani	Sightbringer	LG Angel	Granting visions
Irhenuet	Irana	Nurturer	N Angel	Preserving nature
Mermeset	She Who Sings	Joyful One	NG Archfey	Kindness
Nebet	She Who Sees	The Lady / White-Eyed	LN Archfey	Divination
???	Vampyr*	Master of Blood	Unknown	Unknown

The information above is common knowledge to anyone living in one of the Varszi kingdoms. The two beings marked with asterisks are no longer revered by the Church, with very little being known about them. Enkhebet fell before the Varran Age, and as such has no Common name. Vampyr is the Common name for an obscure entity that is often assumed to be a mere folk tale. You can find out more about both of them in the Heart of Darkness campaign book.

Important deities

She Who Sees is often considered to be the queen of the Archfey, or at least the most powerful among them. She is said to wield the power of absolute divination, knowledge of the past, present, and future, hence her symbol is a white (or platinum) eye, which some equate to the sun and the moon. She is the one who ordered the creation of metallic dragons, and the one who steers the world's events towards its ultimate salvation. Some followers of the Archfey reject all other deities and focus solely on Nebet due to her overwhelming power and importance. To others, she is a symbol of the universe itself, and the laws that govern it. Heretics and fiend cultists view her as an oppressive tyrant, a microcosm of everything they despite about Varszi society and its rigid beliefs.

Mermeset, better known as She Who Sings, is almost the polar opposite of Nebet. She is the embodiment of love, joy, and mercy, and as such is very popular among common folk. Her angels are said to protect children who stray too far from their homes and shelter travelers lost in the woods. Some worship her as a provider of abundance and bountiful harvests, to others she is an inspiration to seek joy in the mundane, the grim, and the painful.

Though she is not of great importance to humans, the angel Lehani is the creator and patron of the elves. She was the one who enchanted draconic eggs with a spark of the divine, and the one who watches over elvenkind to this day. As an angel of She Who Sees, she shares some of her domain of divination and can impart visions upon mortals, especially those who are nearing their death. To the elves, she is the embodiment of the moon and the giver of life. Her worshipers seek to commune with her in dreams, where she is said to dwell as an eternal guardian of her people.

Another important angel is Irhenuet, or Irana, who has a small but dedicated following among druids and hermits. She is seen as a preserver of balance in nature — the balance of growth and decay, life and death. Followers of Irana rarely mingle with cityfolk, believing civilization to be a distortion of the Archfey's original plan for humanity. Many of her priests leave their old lives and families behind to pursue a life of harsh ascesis and meditation in their secluded hermitages. Others live on the fringes of the wilderness, offering aid and guidance to travelers who respect nature and punishing those who would abuse its kindness.

Divergent faiths

It was the elves who taught humans of the Archfey and their angels. The elves worshiped these beings long before the Varran Age and the appearance of divine magic. This, along with the largely divergent practices of the modern wild elves, has lead some human clerics to declare the elven religion to be separate from the "true" Varszi faith, with some going as far as to declare it a heretical distortion. The Church of the Archfey as a whole remains neutral on this topic, though most of the clergy and the faithful alike view the elven religion as an earlier, but still acceptable, form of worship. The most apparent differences are largely cultural, such as using Elvish in prayer as opposed to Sylvan, or differences in ritualistic practices. There are, however, more significant differences beneath the surface.

The most important concept of the elven religion is cite (tsih-TEH), or radiance. It is a substance believed to flow down from the upper plane into all living beings to animate them. Upon death, one's cite is released down into the lower plane, where it is purified and eventually transported back to the upper plane to sustain new life. The moon is where cite from the upper plane is distributed to the material plane, and supposedly a dark anti-moon does the same for the lower plane, so the lunar cycle is of great cosmic importance. The waning moon ensures fertility and abundance, and the waxing moon can provide a more peaceful death. The elven system of elements includes cite beside the standard five elements of fire, ice, air, force, and death, though unlike them it is not of the material plane. Platinum elves are considered to be blessed with pure cite flowing through their veins, unlike the other elf types whose blood is thought to be primarily composed of one of the elements of the material plane.

Wild elves also differ from Varszi people in matters of morality. The Varszi religion, though it adopted many of the elven concepts and deities, is primarily concerned with sin and damnation. Acts thought to incur the wrath of the Archfey are strictly forbidden, and often outright illegal. This includes not only heresy and blasphemy against the faith, but also breaches of social norms or hierarchies. Elves, of course, have social norms of their own, but they are typically enforced with banishment, and only when the offender in question is guilty of some violent act or betrayal of their kin. Elven culture is much more open to divergent beliefs and open contemplation of the universe, which prevents it from ever codifying the principles of their faith in any form other than deeply personal hymns or poetry.

The Archfiends and their cults

An archfiend is a powerful entity who was damned as a result of a great offense against the Archfey. Damnation is a process in which a creature is eternally banished to the lower plane known as the Depths. A creature powerful enough to survive this process becomes an archfiend. Once it is imprisoned in the Depths, its power transforms into one of the six elements that correspond to tiefling subraces — fire, ice, air, force, death, or shadow — and this element is used to create a demiplane known as that archfiend's domain, as well as spawn lesser fiends in their master's image. Whatever the archfiend once was — whether it was a chromatic dragon, a power-hungry wizard, or a fallen angel — their current form and state of mind is transformed into that of a fiend of godlike power that can only be contained by the boundaries of their domain. Only certain fiends, such as the infamous succubi, can travel between domains and the material plane to make pacts with mortals or act as an archfiend's envoys.

Cultist characters

The archfiends are much more obscure than the Archfey. In Varszi kingdoms, there are scholars within the Church of the Archfey who collect and attempt to make sense of accounts of convicted cultists, but what little is known is often purposely obscured from the masses to prevent the worship of those beings. If you are interested in your character having a connection to an archfiend, it's most likely through its cult — for more ideas, check the tiefling ancestry. However, even most cultists know the archfiends they worship only by cryptic titles, symbols and associations, like color schemes by which they may identify other members of the cult.

View the table below at your own discretion, as the information contained within is not common knowledge in the setting. To illustrate the general themes of the archfiends for the purposes of character creation, the element (tiefling subrace) and color scheme associated with them, as well as a typical school of magic used by its cultists is given for each of them. Work with your GM to integrate your backstory into the setting and adventure.

Title	Element	Colors	Magic
The Alluring	Flame	Red/purple	Enchantment
The Destroyer	Force	Black	Evocation
The Exile	Shadow	Gold/black	Illusion
The Harbinger	Death	Green/gold	Conjuration
The Hermit	Ice	White/silver	Abjuration
The Nightmother*	Shadow	Platinum	Divination
The Ravager	Flame	Red/black	Evocation
The Shifter	Air	Blue/gold/red	Transmutation
The Sleepless	Death	Green/black	Necromancy
The Wise	Air	Blue/white	Divination

The Nightmother is the title of Bethem, a fallen angel. Prior to her fall she was known as Enkhebet, the creator and patron of dark elves. As a fallen angel who played a significant role in elven history, she is the only archfiend who is vaguely known to common folk.

Alternative views

Though most adventures in the world of Varris are grounded in the Varszi cultural context, fiends and their cultists are and were treated differently in each culture. Ancient elven chronicles hint at a much more tolerant approach to fiends than that of the Varszi religion. A wild elf might view fiends and the darkness of the Depths as just another aspect of the cosmic cycle of light and dark, life and death, just a necessary part of the universe or even a source of greater understanding and magical prowess. In the northern Kingdom of Tisenya, zealous knights and investigators have gathered a vast enough body of knowledge about fiends to craft weapons and items that counter or outright block the magical abilities of fiends and the spells used by their cultists. Varszi people are often intimidated by how severe the Tisenini are when it comes to arcane magic, but the Church of the Archfey has been known to purchase their anti-magic technology.

The Aisone Islanders are known to be much more tolerant of various arcane practices than the people of the continent. Though warlocks are often shunned by their communities, they are not persecuted as long as they cause no harm. This is why some cultists from the continent have fled to the Aisone to seek refuge from the oppressive grip of the Church. Even more shockingly to Varszi people, the Madhdine Islanders live in peace with fiends who pass down their arcane knowledge to mortals wishing to learn. The human Madhdinar rulers view the fiends as the original inhabitants of their land and afford them a degree of autonomy and even respect.