Dagniya (5e Deity)
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Alignment. Lawful Neutral
Domains. Life, War, Blood
Divine Rank. Lesser Deity
BASIC INFORMATION
Titles: Lady of the Scourge, The Dark Phoenix
Adjectives: Dagnite
Pantheon: Faerûnian Pantheon
Gender: Feminine
5E STATISTICS
Alignments: Lawful Neutral
Symbol: A crane cutting itself to feed her offspring drops of her own blood, ascending into a rising phoenix
Portfolio: Resistance, Resilience, Uprisings, Steadfastness, transforming Pain and Fear into Action
Channel Divinity:
- Preserve Life - War God's Blessing - Vow of Enmity - Crimson Bond
MANIFESTATIONS
Favoured Animals: Sandhill Crane, Butterfly
Favoured Monsters: Phoenix, Erinye, Angel of Valor, Einherjar
Favoured Minerals: Bloodstone, Amethyst, Black Tourmaline
Favoured Colors: Black, Purple, Pink, Silver, Red
Dagniya, also known as Lady of the Scourge or The Dark Phoenix, is a fledgling goddess recently ascended to the Faerûnian Pantheon after immolating herself with the Phoenix Flame spell to defeat an aspect of Shar, absorbing the divine energy and a few traits from the defeated aspect before returning to life as a newly ascended deity. She is involved in an eternal struggle to guard the realms from the invasion and corruption of the Far Realms and, mirroring her solitary struggle, she is the goddess of Resistance, Resilience, guerilla fighters, rebels and those who seek courage to rise up in arms, transmuting their internal pains and cowardice into courage and boldness.
In her mortal days, she was was a Damaran priestess and War Cleric of Loviatar, seeing the Goddess of Pain in an uncommonly positive light, not as a cruel torturer, but as the ultimate manifestation of life and vital energy, seeing how the fear of pain moves all living things forward and save them from apathy. She was an itinerant cleric, who roamed the world seeking battlefields to consecrate the pain of the wounded to Loviatar, and overtime, Dagniya sought to reach a more philosophical understanding of Loviatar's doctrine, one that aimed to prepare the individual to deal with, and withstand, any kind of pain, ultimately becoming fearless, unmoving and full of life.
"We shall awaken from our dullness and rise vigorously toward justice. If we fall in love, deeper and deeper, with the essence of Life, we will respond to its endangerment with bold, violent passion."
Dagniya
DESCRIPTION
She is often seen as a tall, pale woman with straight black hair and pointed bangs, citrine yellow eyes and a calm, but serious demeanor. She wears a cape made of black phoenix feathers that burn with a purple flame, and she is always armored. Her benefic manifestation sometimes appear with a magical mirror made of silver and black tourmaline, with which she encourages her worshippers to stare deeply into themselves until they find and face their weaknesses. Sometimes she answers to prayers as a faint luminous butterfly passing by.
To those who are oppressed and too afraid to react, she appears carrying a bloodied scourge and a heavy toward shield, inspiring righteous courage and a spirit of righteous revolt. To manifest her favor to mortals, she appears as an aggressive sandhill crane fighting off a larger, stronger beast like a bear or an alligator.
PERSONALITY
Dagniya is polite and serene, with a piercing gaze and a strong insight that reads into the souls of others to identify what trait, habit, memory or trauma hurt them the most. Her words are gentle on the surface but sharp and surgically precise. She has a genuine desire to protect, inspire and encourage people to overcome their psychological weaknesses, but her lack of euphemisms can make her healing words sting. In her inner sanctum there's a beautiful garden with a large mirror in the centre. It is said that this mirror is magical and makes the petitioner face himself and reach a divine catharsis, weeping for hours and washing away all of their weaknesses and traumas. Despite being a deity of war, she focus heavily on the psyche and emotions of her allies, and seeks to be a mentor, being harsh but surprisingly forgiving and patient.
She encourages steadfastness, resilience and self-sacrifice and leads with example, holding by her own a bulwark on the hidden side of the moon against a portal to the Far Realms that's impossible to close. Her terrific aspect is a larger version of herself, heavily armed and with blood flowing down her face from bloodletting rituals she performs to enhance her power and enter a battle frenzy that lasts as long as there are enemies in the battlefield. She often sends divine inspiration to bards, flag bearers, and horn blowers, making them inspire soldiers around them to do valorous deeds in war.
ABILITIES
Her avatar could perform any Cleric spells, and channel divinity abilities from the Life, War and Blood domains, as well as blood maledict curses from the Bloodhunter class. If pressed into battle, she starts by emitting a banshee Wail while scratching her own face to evoke a blood maledict before activating a vascular corruption aura. She tends towards direct melee attacks with her magical scourge and direct damage spells like Harm, Blight or Flense, advancing in a frenzied, aggressive state and blood curdling screams and wails. She also heals allies occasionally, and her healing magic is felt not as a caressing, warm energy, but as an adrenaline rush induced by a slightly painful, but harmless shock.
ACTIVITIES
Dagniya oversees the battlefield in the dark side of the moon, where a powerful sorcerer opened a portal to the Far Realms that can't be closed without great harm to the structure of the Multiverse. She seeks to build up an army of volunteers and petitioners to fight by her side, and for that end she established a church in the Realms that is popular among warrior tribes, soldiers and political rebels, strenghtening their valor and resolve in life to select new Einherjar after death.
She tries to be a confidant and counsellor to her faithful, and follows their lives closely, offering encouragement, and eventually bringing the most promising ones to the Garden of Sorrows, to be purged of their fears.
DIVINE REALM
Dagniya's divine realm is located on the very borders of the Gates of the Moon, behind a mountain range that projects a large shadow zone known as the Dark Side of the Moon. It's a misty, dim-lit realm, lit by an eternally new moon above that emits a faint halo, and a mixture of familiar and alien stars giving the whole shadowy realm a faint, bluish glow. Auroras are everpresent in the sky, in shades of green, blue, purple and pink, and the smoke and ashes of the battlefields beyond are quickly swept by strong high altitude winds.
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Her palace, called the Last Respite, is a star shaped fortress made of onyx and black marble sculpted on the side of a cliff and overseeing a vast battlefield below. It's hard to see in the distance due to the dim ambient light, and the way leading to it is punctuated with abandoned battlefields, trenches, towers, defensive structures, and dead warriors and aberrations. Inside the fortress, there are armories, pubs, halls, healing grounds, a war academy, training grounds, and all kinds of facilities for warriors to train, socialize, have fun, recover and rest. There is also a luxurious garden in the center called the Garden of Sorrows, where a few selected petitioners and worshippers of Dagniya undergo a special kind of catharsis and mental healing that only those who went through can describe.
RELATIONSHIPS
Loviatar is amused by the rise of the fledgling goddess, annoyed by their potential overlap of portfolios, but also willing to see how far her former cleric and Truescar can go. Similarly, Dagniya has a respectful but tense relationship with Ilmater, seeing that the God approves her desire to heal the pains of mortals, but deeply disapproves her methods and insistence that pain is not to be avoided, but felt over and over to the point of insensivity. Dagniya has the gratitude of Selûne, given that her actions as a mortal helped restore the balance of the conflict between her and Shar, and was given permission to reside in the frontier of her divine realm, the Gates of the Moon. She strongly opposes the forces of gloom, apathy, cowardice and despair and, in the other hand, has both explicit and undeclared sympathies among the deities of war, courage and transformation.
SYMBOL
Her symbol, inscribed in her tower shield, is a crane stabbing herself with her beak, blood flowing from her wound to the mouths of her newborn babies, symbolizing courage and self sacrifice through overcoming the fear of pain and death. A diagonal line of swords meaning struggle and sacrifice leads to the upper pane, a Phoenix rising from the ashes, symbolizing the transmutation of the crane into the phoenix and a new rebirth into the initiated Einherjar.
WORSHIPPERS
Dagniya is sought among warrior castes in general, soldiers, rebels and freedom fighters who look for courage to do 'the right thing'. She also has a following among people with deep sufferings who were mentored by her priests and adopted her philosophy and dogma, and a minority following of philosophers and alchemists who believe alchemy is a symbolic language to describe internal, psychological transformations rather than transmutation of literal metals. Dagniya also has small following among extraplanar beings who revolve around the themes of war, strife, inspiration, valor and courage, from Angels of Valor in the upper planes to Erinyes in the lower planes.
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