Uba'Shssta

Mother of Monsters Uba'Shssta (a.k.a. The Shrieking Queen, The Howl in the Woods)

The day of The Shattering, a great wail rippled through the fabric of the astral plane. The psyche of all the warped creatures in their roiling minds sought comfort from their pain, their turmoil. Given new, haphazard, forms by the calamity, the misshaped creatures cried out for succor. They languished in collective agony for weeks until finally, a hush on the wind bid them peace. Those who live on the outskirts of society know to offer a sacrifice of their livestock in Uba'Shssta's name to appease her and her children.

Divine Domains

Monstrosities, Chaos, Rabidity, Fertility, Motherhood

Holy Books & Codes

Clergy

While Uba'Shssta has no official clergy, it is speculated that certain fringe druid circles appeal to her for protection, power, and guidance. These groups tend to eschew interactions with civilized folk more so than other druidic circles, choosing to forage and hunt for any and all of their necessities. If these circles have any connections to each other, there is no evidence to support the thought. However, they do share a number of traits:

1. They congregate at the new moon.
2. Their sabbath includes any of the following activities: sacrifice of intelligent creatures, orgies, feasts, and hunting parties carried out in the night.
3. Outsiders are usually not privy to these rituals.
4. Those wishing to join must provide a trophy showing their prowess at one of the following: Hunting, foraging, or procreating.

Tenets of Faith

Mother to the Dispossessed

The Shatter truly left much of the world in absolute shambles. As new, freshly-conjoined creatures roamed the land in massive pain and anguish, their collective cries reached something in a strange place between places. The entity that was borne of their great torment came forth from an unknown space and pacified them. Answering the millions of cries for succor the entity gave itself form, but knew that it needed to be of its children to help them. This formless thought then gained a vessel by possessing a pregnant woman who was passed through by a tear in reality as a result of the Shatter, allowing the entity to contact the prime. Raw instinct came crashing into consciousness and the resultant mixture produced Uba'Shssta. A surrogate mother for the world of wailing, misshaped children waiting to be comforted.

Unnatural Selection

One might assume that Uba'Shssta actively protects her grand litter of children from being hunted or harmed due to her well-known status as a defender of monster-kind. While there are elements of her being that harbor deep maternal instincts, she is still a predator and knows that at any moment the hunt can turn sour and roles may be reversed. It is this close paradox between nature and nurture that pervades her being. As a result, if one of her children slays a dwarf in combat, it was well earned. However, if one of her spawn is caught in a trap to a band of human hunters, that creature wasn't cunning enough to evade capture. In this way, it matters little who is the victor. To her, the winner is the one left standing.
Reports have slowly flowed to the larger settlements that in some far flung reaches of the world Uba'Shssta grants her favor to those who can best her children. Strange men and women have returned from weeks in the wilderness with odd abilities or strange appearances. What they must have to vie for her favor is known only to them, though their numbers grow every year.

Baser Instincts

Many whispered stories and lascivious rumors surround the enigmatic Uba'Shssta. Reports ranging from those of a naked wild-woman tempting a lumberjack into a secluded spring, to sirens and mermaids luring sailors along battered rocks on the shores of the world. The fact that the tales often vary from region to region are indicative of Uba'Shssta's great appetite, if true. It is no small wonder that she is also considered a symbol of fertility in many corners of the world, if not outright lust and rapaciousness. Some cheeky young women often whisper a prayer to Uba'Shssta for luck in their "hunts" and even some among the nobility do so in attempts to appear avant-garde or daring.
The varied stories of her across the world also suggest that she is constantly expanding the ranks of her children with new and ever more extraordinary hybrid children. How she does this is unknown, but new, never-before-seen creatures have been spotted in the wild places across the world. As such, hunters from all four corners of the map have sent word to their betters pleading for assistance.

Holidays

New Moons

Divine Goals & Aspirations

The propagation of her brood.

Physical Description

General Physical Condition

Regardless of her form she as as physically strong as a Tarrasque, and as agile as the Tempest winds.

Body Features

Much like her brood, she is an amalgamation of many different animals put together. When traveling in her more "natural" humanoid form, she sometimes chooses to appear as a woman in her mid-twenties with dark, wild, flowing hair reaching her hips, retractable claws, prehensile monkey tail with a snake's head at the end, scales on her hips extending along the exterior sides of her legs down to near her ankles, cloven feet, pronounced canine fangs mouth, the ears of a firbolg, the horns of a ram, and the wings of a nondescript dragon. She is capable of reducing almost all of these manifestations at will, but appears to prefer this form when choosing to appear humanoid.

Identifying Characteristics

Since she is capable of transforming into whatever form she chooses, it can be very difficult to identify Uba'Shssta. Perhaps her most notable feature is her yellow eyes that give off a faint glow when in a transformed state, similar to the reflection of light off a cat or hyena's eyes in the dark. This glow is present even when not transformed, but is more subdued.

Special abilities

'Mother of Monsters' is no empty title, as Uba'Shssta is capable of performing any of the feats that her children are able to perform. However, she appears to have developed certain preferences over time.

Mental characteristics

Gender Identity

While her form is entirely mutable, she prefers to portray her self as a member of the female sex when and where possible.

Sexuality

Pan-sexual

Education

Much like the creatures created during the calamity known as The Shatter were pieced together and physically became something new, Uba'Shssta mental faculties are greater than the sum of her parts. She knows the perilous sky dance of territorial eagles just as much as the rhythms sprinting feet of a cheetah closing in on her prey. The marks of bear claws upon the trees at the fringes of their domains read like an artists signature. A spider's web is a marriage of form and function with a cold simple purpose completely unnoticed by the spider, but Uba'Shssta appreciates its grace and its cold purpose like no spider could. She knows the meanings of all activities and behaviors of her twisted children's original and composite forms. The peryton's frightening screams float like pristine melodies to her ears, but the manticore's taunting speech is also known to her and grants her the ability to parley with mortals on more familiar terms.
In essence, she has the accumulated knowledge and wits of her adopted children. From hunting habits to the languages known of poor human-animal amalgamations, as the consciousness of her children came together she came to be the ultimate predator and embodiment of unnatural selection. This allows her to perform a variety of high-level stratagems far beyond even the most cunning humanoid hunter. Due to her malleable form, she can take whatever shape necessary to hunt her prey from as close or as far as the hunt demands.

Personality Characteristics

Motivation

As a relatively new major power, many of the roiling thoughts that produced Uba'Shssta almost a millennia ago have finally begun to settle and a more unified persona has emerged. She is still most preoccupied with creating more and varied children, but she has begun to ease off her creative process as of late. It appears as though she has made several forays into civilization to learn more about the creatures that live there. After all, it is from them that many of her own children were modeled - those poor humanoids that meshed with various other creatures gave her the gift of language.
It is unclear if anyone knew that they were speaking to Uba'Shssta herself, but an unlikely few would have thought to even pose the question of "why" she ventured to the towns and cities of the world. Perhaps it is simply to complete the part of herself that she lacks, but those who are aware of her presence fear that civilization may do more to worsen her relationship with the civilized races than to help it.

Divine Classification

Titan

Alignment

Unaligned

Species

Monstrocity

Church/Cult

The Circle of the Mother

Year of Birth

1 Trespasser 979 Years old

Circumstances of Birth

The product of The Shatter

Gender

Female

Eyes

Variable, usually Amber

Hair

Variable, Usually black

Skin Tone/Pigmentation

Variable, usually mottled, scaled in certain places, and covered with fur in others

Height

Variable

Weight

Variable

Known Languages

Common, Sylvan, Aquan, Primordial, Draconic, Giant, Undercommon, Beastspeech, Telepathy