Phaedra, the Heartless God (PHAY-drah)

Phaedra is an old god in a new form, forever changed after making an unfathomable sacrifice.

Phaedra's Doctrine

Phaedra calls to the soldiers who make sacrifices on the battlefield, to the fathers mourning lost families, to the lost carrying the burdens of those no longer around to hold them. In some folklore, she is considered a bad omen. In others, she is a necessity. Some believe those who make great sacrifice carry her mark on them regardless of if they search for it. Many of her followers are looking for atonement. She offers little comfort or moral justification, but she brings into her fold those who know death but have not been lucky enough to meet her.

Mother of a Fallen City

Before Phaedra, there was Ré, a patroness of beauty who inspired some of the great intricate and sprawling designs that mark the early Dawn-Age. By all accounts, she was the defacto queen of one of the very few mortal cities of the Celestial Age—it was her will that created the sprawling, maze-like city, and her design that protected it. No name or ruin accompanies the records of this place, but it was almost certainly destroyed when Ré was pulled from it in the Exodus. Perhaps it was the destruction of this place that inspired such anger in her daughter, Alephi, who raged against her and her mother's ascension. Alephi claimed that the mortals had no right to own the world her and her mother had created and protected for so long.
While Ré was diplomatic about the change, Alephi had arisen as a principality, and she wasn't bound to the Pillars like her mother. She returned to Kairos. What she saw, whether it was the destruction of her mother's city or some other atrocity, drove her to fury. With the intention of freeing her home, Alephi razed the new world, destroying what the mortals took from her.
Alephi ignored her summons back to the Pillars until they came from Ré. Alephi expected to rally her mother to her cause, but Ré pleaded with her to adhere to the new order, for the sake of everyone. Alephi was outraged, but before she turned her back on her mother, Ré revealed that the other gods planned to kill her before she returned to Kairos if she refused to stop.
Battle ensued. Who exactly was involved and how isn't known or understood, but Alephi was outnumbered and outmatched. It was her mother who landed the killing blow. They say Ré tried to make peace with Alephi as she died, but with her final breath, Alephi raised her bow and shot her mother through the heart.
Perhaps Ré died, or perhaps she was simply too changed to remain as she was, but after Alephi's death, Ré no longer existed, and in her place was Phaedra, severed from Kairos and the child who longed for it. She is much more reclusive now, and if she still has the same love for Kairos as she did when she was Ré, she doesn't show it. One can hardly blame her; where once she had a heart, there is now only an arrow, permanently affixed in her chest—the only piece of Alephi that survives.

Titles

the Heartless God, the Mourning Lady

Pronouns

she/her

Provinces

Sacrifice, Sorrow, Atonement

Domains

Blood, Death, Grave

Classification

Dominion

Alignment

Neutral

Pillar

The Pillar of Winter