Kahla-Ran


Pronunciation: KAH-lah-RAHN
Epithet: the Mistress of Spiders, the Queen of Murder
Terminology: Kahla-Ranite (KAH-lah-rahn-ite)
Organization: Since nearly all of their churches are underground and often isolated, Kahla-Ranites are poorly organized.
Symbol: the "arachnigram": a stylized spider inside a circle. Rarely displayed in public!

Kahla-Ran is primarily intended to be used as a villain; she was created to be used as an "evil goddess" with a secret, dangerous cult.

Her murderous followers are also meant to be villains, and thus non-player characters. PCs may only worship Kahla-Ran if they have a fringe, unorthodox view of her that still allows the character to comply with the Code of Conduct.

Overview

Goddess of murder and quick death. Kahla-Ran is shown as a scowling female with long nails, holding a dagger and surrounded by spiders; sometimes she appears as a spider herself. Kahla-Ran is a truly vile goddess who believes that all mortals have their value eventually; sometimes one is worth more dead than alive.

Depiction

The goddess of murder and quick death is shown as a scowling female with long nails, holding a dagger, and surrounded by spiders; sometimes she appears as a spider herself.

Theology and Practice

Kahla-Ranite theology holds that all mortals have their value eventually; sometimes one is worth more dead than alive. Kahla-Ran places a special demand on her "blessed": on holidays and special events, she demands human sacrifice through bloody ritual. It is believed that the souls of the sacrificed bypass Tralados and are immediately at the disposal of Kahla-Ran herself. Common belief holds that once Nen learns of this, It then sends the soul to where it was supposed to go.

Where the other gods reside in the heavens, Kahla-Ran resides in the hells. Common belief is that the other gods tolerate her transgressions because she's got the job no one wants: containing the demons within the hells.

Since she is a goddess of destruction and not creation, she has no celestials of her own. Instead, she employs some demons from the hells to do her work.

Worshipping Kahla-Ran isn't technically illegal. Committing a murderous sacrifice certainly is, but non-violent veneration isn't technically against the law. However, the law will certainly act upon whatever excuse it can use to bring down Kahla-Ranites, and will look the other way when people take action against Kahla-Ranites. (For this reason, known Kahla-Ranites get the Stigma disadvantage; see below.)

It also means that Kahla-Ran's churches are all hidden from the public. As a result, there isn't really a very solid corpus of theology, and her church's hierarchy is weak at best. Instead, there are mostly-isolated sects here and there that communicate through a loose, secret network.

Stigma

Kahla-Ranites are feared and distrusted for obvious reasons. Because of this, characters who are self-evidently Kahla-Ranite have Stigma: Disliked Race. (The Stigma does not apply with other Kahla-Ranites.) "Self-evident" means that your faith must be immediately obvious, for example, prominently wearing a Kahla-Ranite symbol and making no secret of your faith when talking to others.