Cult of The Minerva

Devotees of the demigoddess known only as The Minerva, her cult seeks to insinuate themselves into every crack and corner of the political and magical hierarchies of the world. Once they’ve amassed enough authority (both arcane and mundane) they plan to aid their mistress in her ascension to a fully fledged deity, upon which time she will reward her most loyal servitors with immortality and power beyond the reckoning of their mortal ken.
Symbolized by a fox laying on a stone altar, the Cult is composed of a complicated membership. They use their own currency - square, with concave curves on the top and bottom sides and stamped with the cult’s insignia.
Goals: The accumulation of arcane power and political authority that their demigoddess may one day ascend and reward their service with her divine favor.
Typical Cultist: Anyone willing to trade their fealty in exchange for the promise of unimaginable power.
Ability Score Adjustment: Up to +4 to Intelligence, Charisma, or both.
Signature Spells: Toll the Dead (Cantrip, Xanathar’s Guide to Everything), False Life (1st level), Minerva’s Binding (2nd level)*, Animate Dead (3rd Level)
Minerva’s Binding
2nd-level necromancy
Casting Time: 5 minutes (ritual)
Range: Touch
Components: V, S, M (a ruby worth 75 gp)
Duration: Permanent
This spell binds up to 4 HD of undead creatures created by Animate Dead or other similar effects to the soul of a touched, willing, living creature. When so bound, the duration of the raising effect becomes permanent, ending only upon the death of the target creature or the destruction of the bound undead.

Blessings of The Minerva

Esoteric Vitality. The creature gains immunity to necrotic damage and has advantage on any saving throws to resist or ignore reduction of their maximum HP.
Body Leech. When the creature deals damage through any means to another creature that is neither undead nor a construct, it heals for 1d8. The health restored in this way cannot exceed the damage dealt and cannot heal a creature past its maximum HP.

Structure

Cultists: The Cultists come to The Minerva voluntarily, but are ensorcelled not to recall the acts and atrocities they commit in the name of their living goddess. When a Cultist dons their robe and mask, they also breathe their memories out and into a small phial worn around their neck. Only once their grim work is done do they unstopper the phials and rebreathe their memories back, forgetting all the atrocities committed in between.
Goblins: The “ugly faeries” who assist in the cult’s heavy lifting. Far more common than the actual cultists themselves, the goblins come in a variety of shapes and sizes from the hideous, and dangerous, “Bound Goblins” enspelled with magical iron shackles and sent alongside the cult’s undead hordes, used to sustain the magics manipulating that abominable army, to the tall, statuesque and almost human-seeming “Hobgoblins” who guard and maintain the cult’s ritual sites, to the tiny, hummingbird sized “droxies” who impersonate pixies to act as the cult’s eyes and ears in the light of day.
Knights: There are twelve Knights of The Minerva, champions often brought into the fold against their will and without their knowing. Their memories are stored in much the same way as the cultists themselves, save that the process can be initiated from afar, and only by The Minerva herself.

Type

Religious, Cult

Divines

• The Minerva