Klothys, god of destiny

God of Destiny

Believed to have sprung into existence during Theros’s earliest days, Klothys is the god of destiny and, along with Kruphix, one of the plane’s original deities. She oversees the order of the cosmos, ensuring that all things remain in their proper place, knowing how easily the cosmic balance could be undone if she were not vigilant. On the heels of a near-catastrophic upset of the cosmic order—the rise to godhood and subsequent defeat of the satyr Xenagos—Klothys has emerged from the Underworld for the first time in mortal memory to untangle the strands of destiny and set the world right.
MYTH OF XENAGOS THE SATYR GOD The satyr Xenagos savored his reputation for presiding over the most raucous revels his people had ever known. However, when fate led him to discover the nature of the gods and how they were beholden to mortals for their very existence, the whole order of the world felt like a joke—one at his expense.
With immortal power no longer feeling so out of reach, Xenagos set into motion a plan that would propel him to godhood. His victory shook the pantheon, but his victory was short-lived. Heliod dispatched his champion, Elspeth, who faced many trials but ultimately killed the god-satyr by driving the spear, Godsend, through his heart. Many satyrs remember Xenagos as a satyr who lived life to the fullest and who played tricks that stirred up even the gods. Yet, he’s also an example of how bitterness can turn a great trick nasty and how schemes that get out of hand aren’t fun for anybody. What satyr wants the responsibility of being a god anyway?
This untangling comes in the form of the Twilight of the Gods, which neither God nor mortal are aware of. The seen power of a mortal or being to become a god out of sheer belief was too much power and as an eternal being vowed and created to keep a balance, Klothys cannot allow it.
The power of the gods exceeds that of any mortal being. Even so, a god killing another god—let alone a mortal attempting the task—is virtually inconceivable. Any kind of direct confrontation against a god by mortals would require the assistance of at least one other god, and ideally more than one, to have any hope of success. A group of adventurers might try to convince a group of gods to lend their aid against a god who has become a threat to the mortal world, hoping to get the gods to band together to restrain or punish the offender. Kruphix or Klothys might be able to force a god into a physical form that doesn’t fill the sky (perhaps something similar to an empyrean or the tarrasque), which could enable adventurers to battle the god, especially if they have access to a divine weapon. But defeating the god in that form would merely weaken the deity, allowing other members of the pantheon to capture, bind, or punish them.
This type of confrontation is what lies at the end of the campaign. The players must work with Klothys or less likely Kruphix to force the Gods into mortal forms and defeat each one's physical form to weaken them enough to be bound by a Klothys gifted binding spell. Once bound the Gods will be completely unable to affect the mortal world and disbelief in them is sure to follow. This, after centuries of inaction, will cause the people to stop believing entirely and the God will cease to exist. The players will need several divine weapons and the ancient remains of the long-dead Titans in order to stand a chance and to perform the binding spell.
Klothys typically appears as a woman with six curling horns and an impossibly long mane of pale hair that cascades around her horns, drapes over her eyes, and spools into her spear-like weapon and the various other spindles she carries.
Beneath her outward calm, Klothys seethes at the way mortals and gods alike have pulled apart and rearranged the threads of destiny to feed their petty ambitions. Her peaceful mien falls away in the presence of such villains. In her rage, her red-glowing eyes come into view through the veil of her hair, and she wields burning strands of hair as a devastating weapon.
As the players work to bind Heliod and Erebos, her visage in this raging form will come down to strike a cataclysmic blow that will allow the players to weaken them enough to seal them away.

Divine Relationships

Klothys views many of the gods with disdain, considering them to be complicit in Xenagos’s theogenesis, Heliod’s acts of arrogance, or both. She reserves special contempt for Heliod and his champions, relishing every opportunity to teach them humility.
Klothys also clashes with other gods associated with order and progress, seeing their defiance of the natural order as a dangerous affront. Ephara’s ravenous colonization, Iroas’s passion for overcoming insurmountable odds, and Karametra’s taming of nature all run the risk of inspiring ambitious mortals who lust for ever more power and strain to break away from their proper place in the cosmos.
Klothys respects the other gods whose interests balance creation and destruction, such as Thassa, Purphoros, and Nylea, considering them better attuned to Theros’s needs and destiny’s myriad outcomes. Nylea shares Klothys’s delight in the world’s natural cycles. Purphoros’s willingness to build and demolish appeases Klothys—as well as the fact that he despises Heliod as much as she does.
It was with Klothys's help that Nylea was able to birth, transform, and hide Tyrael from Erebos. In doing so, Klothys knew that she was be helping to create the champion needed to bring about the Twilight of the Gods. Though, he would need help.
Klothys’s relationships with Erebos and Athreos are complicated. Ages spent in the Underworld with Erebos have driven home for her how arrogant and tyrannical he is, as ready to commit the same sins as Heliod if given the opportunity. Even so, Erebos and Klothys maintain a level of mutual respect. Until recently, Klothys and Athreos were unflappable allies. But now her emergence from the Underworld has blurred the borders between the realms, as she draws horrors into the mortal realm with her and thereby raises Athreos’s ire.
However, unknown to Athreos is the fact that these creatures/horrors are not, in fact, the result of Klothys leaving the Underworld. They are diversions, distractions, and ploys from Erebos to get Athreos to dislike Klothys because he is beginning to worry about what was so important that she left the Underworld. Erebos has always worked behind Klothys's back to amass souls and beget more cruelty and power. Klothys upon leaving the Underworld is able to clearly see what Erebos was doing, and that revelation is what spurs on the Twilight of the Gods.
Of course, Klothys trusts no other god as much as she does Kruphix, who also recalls Theros’s earliest hours. The two have a deep respect for one another.
Also unknown to the Gods and mortals is that Kruphix and Klothys are actually facets of the same being. They can occupy a single body or take on separate forms as needed.

Divine Domains

Klothys’s Influence

Klothys is the embodiment and enforcer of destiny. Largely forgotten after ages spent in the Underworld, Klothys has only recently emerged, brimming with silent frustration at the state of Theros.
Each strand of Klothys’s hair is part of the fabric of destiny, the natural order that underpins all existence. Her followers claim to see these strands woven into all things, granting them understanding of cosmic truths and insights into how the future should unfold.
Klothys withdrew to the Underworld ages ago to keep watch over the imprisoned titans and ensure they couldn’t escape and destroy the order she had established. Due to this undertaking, she is also the god of secrets best kept quiet and powers best untouched.
The Loom of the Fates was created using strands of her hair, and though it has allowed her to employ the Fates with watching over the mortal realm while she is safeguarding the Titans, she understands now that Fate and Destiny serve the mortals better when they are soft whispers in the background.

Holy Books & Codes

MYTHS OF KLOTHYS

Klothys is barely remembered in the mortal world, having sequestered herself in the Underworld while human civilization was in its infancy. Some surviving myths speak of a personified “destiny” in a way that vaguely suggests the possibility of an actual god’s involvement.
Rage of Titans. The greatest threat to the young world of Theros was the godlike race of titans, born from the same swirling chaos as the world itself. Before any order could be imposed on the world, the titans had to be contained. Kruphix and Klothys worked together to imprison the titans in the deepest pits of the Underworld. Klothys voluntarily bound herself in the Underworld to keep the titans imprisoned, but that is, after all, the nature of destiny: once the natural order of the world had been put in place and preserved, no further action should have been required on her part to maintain it.
The Smoking Strand. Hidden far from civilized coasts lies a strand of Klothys’s hair that she purposefully plucked. Knotted in on itself, the strand appears as a seething ball of dense smoke. Any who touch the strand risk having it invade them, infecting them with a pernicious destiny that Klothys herself tore from the natural order. None can say what terrible destiny the Smoking Strand drives its possessor toward, but the ruins within which it lies might give some hint—caverns burrowed deep into a mountain of petrified bodies, the twisted obsidian corpses of humanoids and animals alike.
The Smoking Strand is a divine weapon that the players must obtain, the only one, in order to perform the binding. This binding is the predetermined fate that Klothys worried over long ago. While many believe it will drive a person mad, it only does this to a person who has not accepted the Twilight of the Gods or who wishes to use this god-making belief to make themselves into a deity.
Twins at War. The newly formed gods Kruphix and Klothys emerged from opposite sides of the roiling tangle of possibilities that eventually gave birth to Theros. At first the two battled for supremacy, but they soon realized their conflict left their young world vulnerable to dangers from both inside and out. Putting their rivalry aside, the pair agreed it was better to share and have something than let their struggles destroy all creation.
Walkers of Woe. The nightmarish creatures known as woe striders are said to be products of Klothys’s punishment. These beings descend from an age when some mortals learned to unshackle themselves from the strands of destiny, namely by attempting to use the belief system to make themselves into Gods. Klothys put a quick end to these blasphemers and now works to bring about the Twilight of the Gods so that the strands, Fate, Destiny, and the mortals themselves will never befall the consequences of too much power. Ever since, the shades of these accursed mortals have walked the Underworld as woe striders, monstrosities endlessly seeking strands of destiny that they might use to replace their own discarded lots.

Divine Symbols & Sigils

Drop spindle

Tenets of Faith

Worshiping Klothys

Klothys doesn’t trace her origins to mortal devotion, and she has languished in obscurity for almost the whole of human history. Unlike the other gods (except Kruphix), she doesn’t need worship to sustain or empower her, and she doesn’t seek out reverence or demand it. By and large, mortals are irrelevant to her, except insofar as they have played a role in tangling the strands of destiny by defying nature’s order.

Earning and Losing Piety

You increase your piety score to Klothys when you expand the god’s influence in the world in a concrete way through acts such as these:

• Defeating a creature that has stepped out of its place
• Repairing a significant wound dealt to destiny by the gods’ ambitions
• Teaching people about Klothys, her nature, and her return

Your piety score to Klothys decreases if you diminish her influence in the world, contradict her ideals, or threaten the integrity of destiny through acts such as these:

• Undoing a deserved punishment or curse suffered by another creature
• Willfully destroying a natural wonder
• Assisting a creature in undermining the natural order or exploiting destiny

Klothys’s Devotee

Piety 3+ Klothys trait
As a devotee of Klothys, you can manipulate the bonds of destiny that invisibly entangle every living thing. You can cast command with this trait a number of times equal to your Wisdom modifier (minimum of once). You regain all expended uses when you finish a long rest. Wisdom is your spellcasting ability for this spell.

Klothys’s Votary

Piety 10+ Klothys trait
You can cast clairvoyance with this trait, requiring no material components. Once you cast the spell in this way, you can’t do so again until you finish a long rest. Wisdom is your spellcasting ability for this spell.
In addition, you have advantage on saving throws against being charmed.

Klothys’s Disciple

Piety 25+ Klothys trait
You develop a second sense, allowing you to intuit the tug and pull of destiny. You can’t be surprised, provided you aren’t incapacitated.

Champion of Destiny

Piety 50+ Klothys trait
You can increase your Strength or Wisdom score by 2 and also increase your maximum for that score by 2.

Divine Goals & Aspirations

Klothys’s Goals

Once content to oversee and preserve destiny from the Underworld, Klothys now endeavors to undo the cosmic damage caused by Heliod, Xenagos, and ambitious mortals in recent years. The ways in which they ravaged reality to realize their selfish dreams has threatened Theros, and only by untangling the strands of destiny can Klothys set things right. The status quo she seeks to restore, however, comes with a cost in mortal casualties and societal upheaval that would accompany this process. She intends to humble the same institutions that condoned or committed these crimes against Theros. When her efforts have laid low the proud, the defiant, and the exploitative, then Klothys will have restored the natural order and ensured the world’s survival.
She wishes to bring about the Twlight of the Gods by embuing the Chosen, or the players, with the ability to chain and bind the Gods so that they may cease to be over time. They have twisted destiny and their arrogance and thirst for power will destroy Theros before long. This must be stopped.

Divine Classification

Eternal Being

Religions

• Meletis

Alignment

Neutral

Current Location

Nyx

Realm

Nyx

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