Calistria

The mischievous goddess known as the Savored Sting extols the virtues of lust, revenge, and trickery. Though Calistria is most widely worshipped by elves, members of many other ancestries follow her as well.

Edicts pursue your personal freedom, seek hedonistic thrills, take revenge

Anathema become too consumed by love or a need for revenge, let a slight go unanswered

Follower Alignments CG, CN, CE

Devotee Benefits

Divine Font

Divine Skill Deception

Favored Weapon

Domains pain, passion, secrecy, trickery

Cleric Spells 1st:

Gods & Magic

As symbolized by the three daggers of her religious symbol, Calistria has three aspects: lust, revenge, and trickery. Silver-tongued and charming, she is a master of weaving insults into compliments and laying intricate groundwork for retribution at its finest. She is a goddess of vengeance, but it would be a mistake to assume that means she pursues justice. Calistria is fickle, shifting her loyalties and interests as her whims take her—though she never forgets a slight, and any who think she has forgiven will surely find it is only a matter of time before they are targeted by a long-term plot of revenge to lay them thoroughly low.

Though she is one of several elven deities, Calistria is by far the best known outside of elven communities, and thus many non-elves view her as the representative (or even the only) elven goddess. This conclusion is not entirely unreasonable, as Calistria represents those aspects of the elven ancestry that many other people see as alluring, intriguing, and fascinating. Among elves, she embodies characteristics endemic to elven culture and identity, such as free-spirited pursuit of one’s own path, and further embodies a truth lost on shorter-lived peoples: the flexibility and capriciousness of Calistria provides a model for maintaining perspective and composure over a centuries-long lifespan. As a result, she is closely associated with the elven people by elves and others alike. Of the elven deities, she receives by far the most worship from non-elves.

As the goddess’s whims are ever-shifting, her worshippers are also often somewhat transient. Even among elves, worship of Calistria is usually intermittent or secondary to faith in another deity. Prayers to Calistria arise from individuals who find themselves driven by lust, engaged in trickery, or driven to revenge, and the people offering those prayers may have no commitment to the faith beyond the prayer offered in that moment. As followers’ lives lead them in different directions, they move on to other deities, just as the goddess herself moves from one lover to the next to suit her shifting interests. This personal freedom is a value held dear by the goddess and her followers alike, and perhaps one of the most central values to elven society as a whole. Some of Calistria’s most devoted followers work to promote this tenet, quietly working to undermine tyrannical governments, exacting revenge upon slavers and freeing their captives, or simply demonstrating the benefits of a freedom-driven lifestyle.

Organized worship of Calistria is most common among elves, as befits an elven deity. Though rumor would suggest all her temples are brothels, these gathering spaces are often more akin to intellectual salons—albeit more encouraging and supportive of sexual interaction between attendees than most equivalent secular institutions. Others function more akin to a thieves’ guild, providing a place to sow and reap rumors, plot acts of questionable legality, and perhaps also engage in lust-driven interactions—all activities suitable to take place behind closed doors.

Clerics of the goddess endeavor to hold the three aspects of their goddess in balance, as a lifetime in service to any one can easily become monotonous, and Calistria abhors her followers becoming overly consumed by a single pursuit. Champions are sometimes more focused, such as those who dedicate themselves to fighting slavery, but even these are careful to avoid becoming so wrapped up in their work that they lose sight of the other aspects of life that make it worth living.

Special rituals, conducted as needed, include invocations of the goddess’s blessing when a worshipper begins pursuit of a desired lover, divinations to determine her approval or disapproval of set courses of revenge, initiation rites for those who wish to devote themselves to the faith, and birth and death ceremonies. But Calistria’s faith places little stock in marriage; between the goddess’s own shifting interests and the mercurial nature of relationships between long-lived elves, marriage is much less of an institution as it is among other peoples.

Wasps are iconic to Calistria, as widely recognized as a symbol of the faith as her formal religious symbol. Like the goddess, a wasp inflicts extreme pain in retribution for an offense, far beyond what it seems a simple insect ought to be capable of. Further cementing the similarity is the fact that the wasp seems to take a perverse pleasure in its attacks, pursuing offenders and stinging repeatedly. Many followers of Calistria carry yellow-and-black tokens on their person as a form of homage. Priests are known to cultivate giant wasp allies and pets, and many Calistrian gathering places harbor swarms of wasps under the eaves or in similarly sheltered spots. These swarms tend to ignore worshippers but descend in force upon any interlopers, defending such locations with even greater spite than expected from a typical wasp.

Divine Intercession

Signs of favor or displeasure from the Savored Sting are sometimes subtle and at other times incontrovertible. Calistria typically grants her boon to those on the path toward great vengeance and curses those who slight her followers, particularly if those followers are sex workers, though her fickle heart rarely commits to any absolute guidelines.

Minor Boon: Calistria smiles on the riskiest deceptions. Once, when you roll a failure on a check to Lie, you get a critical success instead. Calistria typically grants this boon for an extremely consequential lie.

Moderate Boon: A foot-long wasp finds and befriends you. It serves you as a familiar as long as you maintain Calistria’s grace. The wasp always has the burrower and flier familiar abilities.

Major Boon: Calistria guides you towards vengeance. You always know the direction and distance towards the nearest creature that has wronged you and thus far gone unpunished.

Minor Curse: Whenever a new person desires vengeance against you, you suffer a painful sting and are afflicted with

Moderate Curse: People react as though you’re insulting them, even in normal conversation. Whenever you attempt to Make an Impression, the outcome is one degree of success worse than the result of your roll. If you converse with someone over a long enough period of time but don’t attempt to Make an Impression, you still insult them, and you suffer the effect of a critical failure to Make an Impression.

Major Curse: You have wronged those unable to obtain revenge for themselves, and Calistria’s curse grants their revenge its own life. Whenever another creature imagines vengeance upon you but can’t pursue that vengeance because you are too powerful, well connected, or otherwise untouchable, a creature of roughly your level manifests out of their imagination and performs their desired revenge. Once the revenge is complete or the manifestation is destroyed, the summoned creature vanishes from existence.

Firebrands

Calistria is the impassioned goddess of lust, revenge, and trickery. She bestows blessings according to her whims, and wreaks vengeance from which there is no escape. Calistria is as quick to reward daring acts as she is to punish those who slight her or her faithful. Many in positions of power whisper prayers in hopes of placating the wrath of the Savored Sting. Meanwhile, numerous oppressed, downtrodden, abused, and betrayed people cry out to her seeking vengeance. One must consider carefully before abusing or betraying those loyal to the capricious goddess of luck and vengeance, as the phrase “I shall remember you in my prayers to Calistria” carries varying significance depending on the circumstances.

The very acts of revolution and overthrowing oppression require nearly all of the Unquenchable Fire’s aspects. To rise up against entrenched power is to risk everything. Only with trickery, charm, knowledge, and no small amount of chaos (and sometimes seduction) can one hope for success. Knowing only the smallest sliver of luck attracts or repels success, it’s little wonder nearly all Firebrands follow Calistria, or at least whisper prayers in her name. It’s also no surprise they carry this same lust for life into other aspects of their lives.

Many Firebrands and followers of Calistria throw themselves into their passions. No matter if they’re intellectual pursuits, devising cunning plots, meticulously planning lavish entertainment, or enjoying pleasures of the flesh, they revel in life and all its heady sensations. The high proportion of entertainers and sensation seekers within Calistria’s faithful naturally aligns with the Firebrands’ constituency. Passions ebb and flow and disparate interests frequently create what would seem to be irreparable fractures within the organizations. However, like a threatened swarm of wasps, they quickly set aside personal differences to relentlessly battle common threats, throw off oppression, or seek vengeance.

Firebrand safe houses are often repurposed apartments, manor houses, and homes liberated from former oppressors. Firebrands refurbish many of these properties as salons, guild houses, brothels, and temples to Calistria. Across Golarion, these richly appointed gathering places are centers of intellectual discussion, brokerage points for illicit information, intimate settings for rendezvous, and discreet waystations for traveling Firebrands. Although ownership of these properties and their locations within a city or region may change frequently, their size and chaotic nature often belies their potential to quickly focus numerous disparate talents toward a common cause. To tyrants, they’re like elusive swarms of deadly wasps, converging suddenly and shifting frequently.