Shauku (shao-ku)
The Blind Seer; Material Goddess of Fate, Omens and Insects
Shauku is the divine matron of omens, curses, possibility, weaving and redemption on the plane of Waking Materia. She is an ascendant demigod who was born Shennuvriex Shauku of Talaus, in ancient Nireau.
Shauku is often known as the Blind Seer: all visions and portrayals represent her as blindfolded or with closed eyes, for sight is only used to observe the present and recorded past. The future is not considered part of ‘time’ in Material understanding; rather, all tomorrows exist already as a chaotic material of sorts, waiting to be woven into the present reality. Thus she is associated with weaving, both manmade and natural (spider webs are a common icon in her church).
Shauku currently exists within The Wane, or Interesoteric Reality, a dimension outside time, where the complex threads of potentiality "exist" in a sense unfathomable to most beings. To her and her visitors, the threads manifest as an infinite, labyrinthine fortress known as Liminos. It is here that she hosts her oracles and other chosen mortals, granting insights on a basis theologians can only begin to comprehend.
The Blind Seer is thought to be the one who gave the gift of "godsight" to Waking Materians: the ability to see the "Halation" or reality-distorting effects about a god's head.
Shauku's alignment is True Neutral.Appearance & Heraldry
See also: Shennuvriex Shauku Image Gallery (External)The Blind Seer is an obscure figure in Third Age theology, with little in the way of recent artwork. Though only a few modern scholars have made this connection, considerably more antediluvian artwork remains of Shennuvriex Shauku, mortal oracle of Tallari-Anaviri-Irallat. Shennuvriex was known to be a tall, willowy, dark-featured humanoid, possibly of human-eladrin or human-drow ethnicity. She would often wear masks covering the top half of her face, possibly meant to hide the scarring or birth defects that caused her blindness.
Domains
Shauku's primary Domain is Fate. Her secondary domains are Omens, Swarm, Void and Knowledge.Favoured Weapon
The Blind Seer's favoured weapon is the short sword. Her Relic sword is the Claw of the Ur-Mantis.History
The Blind Seer is one of only two Material Gods still known by their mortal name. While she was known through the First Age by titles such as I-Ju-in Glyphspeaker, Lady Mooncrescent, The Betrayer of Nir and more, her name in the cradle was Shennuvriex Shauku, which in Old Rozsan means “Star that Leads the Way.”
New Rozsa
Long before a cascade of events that would lead her down the path to divinity, Shennuvriex was a known factor in New Rozsan politics. A brilliant orator and philosopher, talented diviner and with a regal bearing despite her modest lineage, it was said she had the ear of the God-Empress Nir herself. She was a heavy favourite to be granted Lichlorddom and inducted into Nir and her brother Nef's council of fortune tellers, known as the Temporal Vanguard.
However her relationship with the godlords of New Rozsa was a tumultuous thing: while the twin god-emperors had an appreciation for expansive thinking, Shauku's insights into Rozsan society grew from critical to seditious, and once it was clear she had overstayed her welcome, she took to the road as an itinerant soothsayer. Before she left, she had already become an icon in certain heretical Hyperion Cults, who seek to wroship gods beyond their ruling Lichlords.
Tallari
It is unknown how she encountered the God-Queen of the Tiam-Anzu, in those days named Nanatsusaya, but by all accounts Shennuvriex Shauku's loyalty to the Duskscape Regent of Secrets was unflinching. Over the following decades she became an influential director of the Servants of Causality—the humanoid wing of the interspecies alliance—and a likely warrior-mage of The Dragon Knights of Tallarax. Even before she left Nireau, Shauku was rumoured to be a member of Hyperion Tallarax, a Hyperion Cult dedicated to Tallari.
Liminos
Stories vary on how and why Shennuvriex Shauku abandoned conventional space-time. One story holds she was fighting an Interesoteric being as a Dragon Knight of Tallarax, a battle so epic it thrust both of them back to the creature's home dimension. Another holds Liminos existed long before her presence, and she is merely the current keeper, perhaps on behalf of Tallari. At any rate, she is either unwilling or unable to leave.
Living within the complex web of potentiality would break lesser minds, so it's possible Liminos looks like a maze of hallways and statues only as a favour to its visitors. What things actually "look" like in the Interesoteric layer of reality (assuming sight is even relevant) is impossible to guess. What visitors have seen are infinite hallways, sometimes changing in mood and architecture, punctuated by rooms with a single statue as a centrepiece. These statues seem to represent especially important events in the branching potentiality; major temporal crossroads, if you will. It is thought by some scholars that these events are immutable or inevitable, and must thus be "resolved" sooner or later, though the resolutions again branch into multiple potentialities.
Apocrypha
It is whispered in hidden-away places that Liminos is Shauku's prison, and furthermore that her beloved former goddess, Tallari, is the gaoler. Her crimes vary from region to region, Tallarite school to Tallarite church.
The Juran Order of the Sphinx believes Shennuvriex Shauku—in her elder years an archmage of immense power—sought revenge against the gods. She snuck into her divine matron's sanctum and stole knowledge of a forbidden ritual that gave all Material mortals hereon-born a humble but world-changing ability: to recognize gods in their presence, no matter their appearance of means of hiding. The archmage completed the ritual, resulting now in a phenomenon known as "halation" in Middish Common: reality apparently warps strangely around the head of divine beings, perceivable only faintly and out of the corner of the eye, but nonetheless impossible to miss. This would drastically reduce the ability of the gods to take advantage of mortals against their will, noble cause or no.
This, however, does not exclude the Duskscape Regents—even elder beings like Tallari—and thus the ritual was also an act of religious treason. Tallari sent Shauku to Liminos, perhaps to force her to look on the fabric of fate, realize its intricate fragility in the hands of an archmage bent on revenge.
Comments