Qatimat Qawm
Qatimat Qawm (a.k.a. Scion of Plagues, Wailing Wight, Rat King)
Qatimat Qawm, also known as the Wailing Wight or the Rat King, is the deity most associated with the spread of disease and the powers of undeath. When a diseased curse befalls a village, a city, or a kingdom, Qatimat is seen as the spreader of such ailments. Qatimat is believed by his clergy as being a keeper of vile secrets living in a citadel of sewers and meathalls, upon a throne of animated skeletons. The followers of the Rat King are the desperate diseased (such as lepers), necromancers and certain doctors. Churches to the scion of Plagues don't generally exist – they are more akin to temples and altars which are placed in secretive areas of the world – within sewers, in dead forests, in the dark reaches of swamps. These temples are often relatively primitive, wherein animal (or in some cases, sentient) sacrifices are displayed in their gore and filth for vermin such as flies and rats to feast upon. For the Qawmian clergy, undead is the purest form of status and being, in which one may bear disease but not be affected by it. Illriggers bound to Qatimat often willingly contract diseases to spread to others.
Divine Domains
Undeath, Disease, Vermin
Divine Symbols & Sigils
Symbol is a knot tied with the tails of a dozen rats.
Holidays
The unholy holiday of the Scion of Plagues is the Feasting, held somewhere in the weeks preceding a blue moon. During this period, the clergymen of the Wailing Wight gather in a temple and fast in order to weaken their bodies almost to the point of death (and, for certain participants, actual death). Once this ritual is completed, those who survive feast upon those who have fallen during the trial. In certain more extreme cases, some people willingly sacrifice themselves to be offered to the Rat King.
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