Cuinatre, She Who Weeps

Cuinatre (pronounced koo-NAH-der) is the goddess of religious entropy, the pacification of the zealous, and the preservation of the innocent. A selfless, unambitious goddess, Her dream is for a Material Plane where no one dies at the hand of another in the name of faith. Crusades, religiously motivated pogroms, and wars of faith are anathema to Cuinatre, and She and Her followers, called “Consigners,” will do what they can to disrupt, sabotage, and undermine the machinations of violent religious acts, up to and including the murder of those who would perpetrate them. Her brand of vigilantism is an affront to most legal institutions, and She and Her kind are often vilified by the status quo.  

Beliefs

From the shadows, Consigners exact Her divine will against religious actors who, in sincere faith or under its guise for selfish gains, act violently, or intend to act violently against someone else due to a charge of their own belief or because of a discrepancy in belief, whether that violence is between the irreligious, their own sects, or another religious faith.   Many faiths view Cuinatre and Her disciples as a dangerous, seditious element; to be fair, a faithful tenant is a religious and political dissident, if it serves to limit the power of large organizations to manifest the violent wills of their gods.   Although many religions find the undead abhorrent, Cuinatre feels specific sympathy for those brought to life. The half-state of undeath is a cruel journey for a soul, so Consigners have a concentrated hatred not only for undeath, but especially for those who perpetrate it. It is an inherent charge amongst Consigners to destroy undead on sight to put the innocent soul reanimated to rest.  

Alignment

Cuinatre is vehemently opposed to violence against the innocent, but She is fiercely in favor of the utilitarian elimination of representatives of oppressive or destructive governments of faith that would inflict greater harm. She despises order and public ritual because of their innate ability to fester into bias, collaboration, and reinforcement of dangerous ideologies. She empowers Her followers to use their own mind and judgment, act independently, and to go to any lengths to achieve Her goal.   She exercises Her will against religious leaders both good and evil; in Her eyes, both are equally capable of destruction. Consigners act with utilitarian precision: preserve the most life by destroying the least, regardless of justification. Instead, Her followers are justified with a sort of pre-emptive vengeance, a prescient vigilantism, used to protect more lives than it destroys.   Her chaotic good followers often follow a path of righteousness and are often less likely to draw a blade; they might attempt to disrupt through nonviolent methods, such as subversion and sabotage. Her true neutral and unaligned followers might attempt to emphasize the balance of religious power, looking to weaken the powerful more than weaken the dangerous. Chaotic evil followers will nearly always prefer murder and mayhem as the means to disrupt plans through assassination and terrorism, often going one step further to instill fear through torture and mutilation.  

Followers

Cuinatre’s followers emerge from many births, social strata, and vocations. Some hear of or witness Cuinatre’s “equalizing” nature firsthand and believe in the equalizing force She brings, or they themselves or those they love have become victims of religious exploitation or violence. An immaterial quality of these kinds of traumatic events inevitably draws together many of Cuinatre’s future disciples, even without prior knowledge.   Because Cuinatre is poised to act more than to teach, Her devotees can practice their faith in a variety of societal positions, though rarely are they from a place of political, economic, or social power. She does not have many powerful proponents in the material world, so tales of Her actions and religious vengeance are the most effective tools used to propagate Her faith.   Cuinatre’s followers make their own luck, are highly self-sufficient, reclusive, and keep few friends. Some act as sleepers, keeping normal jobs and societal positions, “activating” to execute Cuinatre’s justice if presented with a situation, while others are career Consigners, seeking out acts of persecution, relying on an alternate profession, legitimate or otherwise, to make ends meet.  

Organization

Cuinatre’s followers are thoroughly dispersed, loosely organized across Marafel by necessity due to both the controversial nature of Her methods and, in many societies, the abject illegality of Her worship. Most civilized systems either implicitly or explicitly outlaw the worship of Cuinatre, and most actions that Her disciples take in furthering Her methods are either illegal or truly criminal, in such cases as murder, fraud, sabotage, or sedition.   Her faith is decentralized, and no central clergy, method of induction, or selection exists. Ecclesiastical responsibilities common in other faiths take on more organic forms in Cuinatre’s fold. Estimates from religious scholars suggest that the largest concentration of Her followers is within urban metropolises, specifically those with powerful religious figures, theocratic institutions, or both. Still, even Marafel’s most populous cities support adherent populations ranging between several dozen and a few hundred. Most followers of Cuinatre within a city or region know each other, either closely or through indirect association.  

Religious Rites, Objects, and Texts

The practice of worshipping Cuinatre or invoking Her nominally is illegal in most jurisdictions as a matter of keeping the peace. History has proven the destructive potential of Her adherents, and the punishments associated with commiseration vary widely, from minor infractions and fines to jail time, forced conversion, or worse. Her diffuse church prevents the proliferation of ecclesiastic texts, rites, and the uniformity of initiation rituals or devotional liturgies.   The most well-known of Cuinatre’s traditions is the initiation, called the “donatada” in Celestial, most often translated as “consignment,” “relinquishment,” or sometimes just “offering.” This initiation conjures a personal, symbolic scar on the skin of the pledged, formed with Cuinatre’s power, a visceral concoction of blood and ink, and allows the divine powers of death, repose, and life to pass through the soul of the pledged. After combining sacred elements, including a living moth, Cuinatre will speak directly to the pledged, to which they respond. Upon the completion of the rite, the pledged is forever imbued with Her divine power, dissolved only through voluntary apostasy or temporarily if the portion of the body that bears the donatada’s mark is severed from the body.   Due to its illegal and isolated nature, the donatada is often performed alone in a secluded place, but occasionally, small gatherings of Cuinatre’s followers initiate new individuals as a group. “Organized” Cuinatre adherents often look down on pledged persons with the derisive term “palmer,” as most adherents who initiate themselves have no one to hold the pot of ink in place somewhere else on the body during the ritual, and so they must grip the inkwell, and bear the scar, on their own palm.   Encountering a moth in a city or town, not in the wild, carries different regional connotations. Non-adherents often interpret a moth as an omen, while Consigners consider it a call to attention, to prompt them to some injustice that Cuinatre is monitoring through Her servant, the moth. Some Consigners in particularly large urban centers raise and keep moths for donatada rituals or as messengers.   Her favored weapon, the hand crossbow, was not divinely appointed, but is customarily agreed to be Her favored weapon because of its wide availability and frequent use in clandestine assassinations. Any weapon used to assassinate a zealot can be blessed as a favored weapon, but it is most frequently a weapon of stealth, like the crossbow, dagger, shuriken, or dart.  

Diet, Hygiene, and Sexuality

Consigners do not keep to a specific diet, though some Consigners eat a ritualistic meal that varies widely by region before embarking on a mission, from bread, oil, and wine in southern regions, to the meat of a carnivore, such as a dog, cat, or bird of prey, in eastern regions. Any food blessed or used in religious rituals, including sacrificial food, is generally not allowed to be consumed by those within other religions, but Consigners often eat this food as an act of defiance to the gods to whom the food was pledged.   A Consigner does not dress conspicuously, nor do they have a code of hygiene, unlike most faiths. They only thing they bear on their body is the wound bloomed from their donatada, which they typically do not dress or treat as it heals.   Cuinatre is Herself female, but historically, Consigner genders have been evenly distributed. It is uncommon for Consigners to meet, let alone court or marry one another, but it is not extraordinary. Without codified rules, texts, or even much in the way of traditional practice, sexuality among and between both Consigners and non-adherents of any sex is accepted and encouraged, subject to local and regional custom.  

Manifestation

Cuinatre seldom appears in mortal form; but when She does, She takes the form of a dark-skinned woman, elegant, tall, hairless, and slender, with glass-smooth skin. She is undeniably alien and has trouble blending in with others, no matter what disguise She chooses. Her eyes glitter with starlight, faintly visible even in pitch darkness. Her voice is rich and low, proud and determined. Her clothing is simple, loose-fitting white linen dress without undergarments, but She wears a very long, linen headscarf that trails nearly to the ground. The tip is perpetually coated in splattered blood. She and Her clothing make no sound as She moves.