Umberlee
Umberlee, the Captain of the Waves, is patron of sailors or people traveling by sea, ships, favorable winds, and naval combat. She was sometimes feared as a malevolent sea goddess in the Celestial pantheon, most often for her destructive powers. At times she is known as a particularly malicious, petty, greedy, and vain deity who controls the harshness of the sea while reveling in her own power and is not hesitant to drown people if she so pleased. Like the sea itself, she is fickle in nature.
Priesthood
The priests and priestesses are to spread the holy word of Umberlee and spread the fear of her rage, and perform no service in her name without collecting high tithe. They are to promote the fear of Umberlee's waves and winds unless her clergy accompany the travellers.
Clergy
The church of Umberlee is loosely organized. Many clerics serve as captains or sailors aboard ships and they usually meet each other only if they happen to serve on the same ship or be in the same port. The clergy are known for helping sailors who are down on their luck.
Monastic Order
It is said that the Order of the Calming Wave was founded by a group of pirates. They believe that if they show her enough favour, they will survive by her hand. As such, they dedicate their life to serving their deity and growing the monastic order.
Worshipers
The Great Queen of the Sea is worshiped out of fear by most Celestial aligned worshipers living in the north, dwelling the coastal, and those who work as sailors. Umberlee acts on her turbulent whims when making deals with mortals. Temples of Umberlee are few and far between, universally hated throughout Kai, and perpetuated out of fear of the goddess. Umberlee's church rests on her chaotic nature where disputes are ruled in favor of the strongest individual.
Some Druids who venerate Umberlee, consider her as a representation of nature in its cruel form.
Rituals
It is a typical tribute among sailors and ship crews to toss gems, gold, and valuables overboard to appease Umberlee and calm the storming waters. On cargo ships, sailors often toss their valuable trade goods overboard to gain favorable winds, while the sounds of mouthpipes play tunes dedicated to the goddess. When the danger is especially severe, sailors make sure the goods tossed overboard contain living creatures.
On some occasions, ships with Umberlant priests on board run aground or founder; in anger, the sailors turn against the priests who promise them safe passage. Desperate sailors make sure the treacherous priests of Umberlee are killed before the ship sinks. There have been bloated corpses of Umberlee's priests washed ashore with as many as 30 cutlasses stuck in them.
Before a voyage, sailors often leave small tokens on Umberlee's shrine altars in hopes of calm waters. The most common tributes are flowers, candles, coins, and candy. Such tributes are also often paid by merchants who transport their trade cargo by sea, as well as the townsfolk of coastal cities and islands who do not have a powerful patron deity and are in danger of storms and hurricanes. When no other is present, the clergy of Umberlee remove the offerings from the shrines, washing the altars with seawater and kelp to symbolize the goddess claiming her tithe.
Umberlee's clergy perform the rite known as the Drowning. It is a ritualistic drowning of the Untaken supplicant (novice cleric of Umberlee). If they survive, they are confirmed in the service of the Queen of Depths.
It is said that some Celestial worshipers eagerly accept any dead body to perform a burial in their catacombs just to avoid performing burials at sea. They believe that performing the rites of the burial at sea strengthens Umberlee. Those who perform the rites against the tradition are told that the earth is going to reject their bodies, and upon death, Umberlee will claim their bodies and use them as her sea zombie servants.
Umberlee is also a common namesake for ships.
Places of Worship
There are numerous shrines dedicated to Umberlee, predominantly located in port cities. Travellers by sea are sure to pay their tribute to Umberlee, as the preaching of her clerics are built upon the terrible fate that will befall any who does not bring a sacrifice to her. Clerics are available at these temples, who, for a price, will travel with sailors to ensure no harm is inflicted.
Divine Domains
Divine Symbols & Sigils
Tenets of Faith
The Undrowned and Umberlants hold no ethical standards nor persuasions; the only thing that is set in stone is their belief in the cruelty and viciousness of the sea, the most dangerous place. The folk who are brave enough to travel the savage seas should be ready to pay the price for their challenge to Umberlee's domain. The Church of Umberlee's doctrine is fear; all are to tremble before the Queen's power, as her waves and winds are all-reaching. The mercy of the Great Queen of the Sea is to be bought with generous offerings, as they brought fair winds. All who dare to travel through her domain are to know that Umberlee controlls the monsters of the deep, the drowned dead.
Holidays
The Shattering
The exact date of the festival varies but it was always celebrated in the spring. The purpose of the festival is to celebrate the breaking up of ice floes in the north, which mark the beginning of the sailing season.
Fair Seas Festival
It is the festival to appease Umberlee during which the worshipers pay tithes by throwing the valuables, and the coin made off of the temporarily raised docking fees, into the deepest reaches of the harbor. The valuables are said to be swept away by the currents and taken to Umberlee's Cache.
Physical Description
General Physical Condition
Umberlee’s primary avatar appears as a 10 feet (3 meters) tall femme humanoid.
Her alternate, seldomly seen avatar, is a giant femme humanoid. The goddess appears in this form to scare and impress the mortals on board dying ships.
Body Features
Her primary avatar is of broad girth.
Her alternate avatar has a body colored like the sea, of blues and greens. Her hands have talons, and her elbows have fins.
Facial Features
Her primary avatar has brown eyes that sparkle with derring-do.
Her alternate avatar has hair is the same green of seaweed and kelp. Her white eyes are reminiscent of pearls.
Special abilities
Umberlee's avatar has access to divine spells (except earth, fire, sun, thought, and time magic) and arcane spells (except earth and fire). All of the water magic the avatar is able to cast manifests at triple strength, making it extremely hard to avoid. The trident the avatar wields is a powerful magical item that combines the powers of a trident of submission and a trident of fish command. She can summon 6-12 sharks or 2-6 giant sharks to do her bidding every 30 minutes. Every 12 hours, the avatar of Umberlee is able to summon water elementals of various sizes and power to serve her. All the creatures summoned by Umberlee can not be controlled by any mind-affecting magic.
She is able to perceive anything within 17 miles (27 kilometers) of worshipers, holy sites, and sacred objects, as well as any location where her name or one of his many titles have been spoken in the last hour. She can focus her senses on up to twenty locations.
She is capable of commanding most non-divine aquatic creatures, conjure water elementals, and create new forms of life.
Manifestations
Favored animals
- Albatross
- Silver sea gull
- Dolphins
- Whales
Favored colors
- Blue, white
- Blue-green
The most common manifestations of Umberlee are waves and winds of the seas. Sailors know that when storms hit their ships, and the winds or waves carry sinister cold laughter or hissing words, they are facing the cruel goddess herself.
She can manifest gales of wind, and her watery manifestation in the form of waves does not have many limitations in the sea. These waves reach 160 feet (49 meters) in the length, and have considerable power. These waves can kill an unlucky victim or grab and carry away items and treasures of value from ships.
Another common manifestation of the Great Queen of the Sea is the shape of an aquatic monster of terrible size. She takes on many shapes, including monstrous-sized sharks, krakens, and aquatic undead and undead lake-dwelling monsters. Her most notable aspect is the kraken-like Dweller, which is said to be slowly increasing its strength and influence.
Apparel & Accessories
As buffeted by uncountable storms as she seemed, Umberlee primary avater always looks dapper. Her fantastic captain's outfit consists of a blue frock coat with gold braid trim and brass buttons over a colorful brocade vest and white shirt with a ruffled collar and cuffs, along with knee-length trousers, hose, and shoes, with silver buckles. Her tricorn hat shares the same color scheme, blue but trimmed in gold braid, and features a large, white plume.
In her alternate form, the towering avatar wears jewelry made out of seashells, carries a trident, and is dressed in a flowing cape made out of countless pale-purple jellyfish.
Personality Characteristics
Vices & Personality flaws
This deity is very volatile, temperamental, and prone to rage. She is known to express her displeasure through extreme acts, such as flattening coastal cities with earthquakes or flooding them.
At her worst, Umberlee is temperamental, selfish, and malicious. She does not feel the moral obligation to honor any of her agreements or promises if the end result is not beneficial to her. That, and her desire for valuables and excessive tributes, characterises her insatiable greed and cruelty. She can be power-hungry and loves exercising it, toying with her worshipers. She feeds her sadistic nature by destroying naval vessels and feeding shipwreck victims to her sharks while watching the others drown.
Umberlee does not tolerate any one member of her clergy becoming famous, overshadowing the church and the goddess herself.
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