Pharasma
| Pharasma, The Lady of Graves | ||
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| Alignment | True Neutral | |
| Divine Rank | God | |
| Pantheon | Golarion | |
| Portfolio | Birth, Death, Fate, Prophecy, Rebirth | |
| Domains | Death, Healing, Knowledge, Repose, Water; Subdomains: Ancestors, Ice, Memory, Resurrection, Souls, Thought |
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| Home Plane | Boneyard | |
| Worshippers | Midwives, Morticians, Pregnant Women | |
| Favoured Weapon | Dagger | |
Pharasma is the True Neutral/Unaligned Goddess of Birth, Death, Prophecy and Fate from the Golarion setting of Pathfinder. This makes her both one of the most invested deities when it comes to the mortal races and yet also one of the least interested; the Lady of Graves is responsible for creating all newborn souls, as well as seeing them come to their appointed ends and then judging them and determining whence they will go in the afterlife. Sort of like The Raven Queen with perhaps a dash of Chauntea.
History
Pharasma is sometimes considered to be one of the oldest entities in the multiverse; some go so far as to suggest that she predates the multiverse entirely and remains as the sole survivor of a previous existence who remained to shape the new reality and protect it from the alien Outer Gods and their heralds, the Great Old Ones; (though the distinction between Old Gods and Heralds is often meaningless). They are the only other entities that might be considered older that Pharasma, and exist beyond the concepts of reality such as time, faith, souls.
Her duties in her home plane of Boneyard are to collect the mortal souls that have passed away, and assign them to their appropriately judged location in the afterlife. Admittedly, Pharasma does not do this all herself and she is assisted by various Psychopomps and Demigod Ushers who do much of the legwork for her. Pharasma only gets involved in cases where judging souls are particularly difficult or interesting.
According to legend, when the first mortals appeared, they were afraid of death and were unwilling to let go when their time came for them. So Pharasma uplifted a snake whose venom would steal mortals vitality, passion, and grasp of mental faculties; starting to cause them to age and eventually leading them to accept death as a natural progression of life.
One of her few involvements with other divinities is when she joined an alliance of variously aligned gods in opposing the Qlippoth Lord Rovagug and imbued the vault intended to seal the beast with wards to prevent him from escaping. Though it is said that at the end time the beast will eventually escape and consume everything (Pharasma included) leaving only Groetus and a single survivor to begin the next multiverse anew.
Relationships
In her own pantheon, she generally doesn't give two shits about any of the other deities and is content to continue her duties of judging mortal souls; Iomedae, the Goddess of Valor, Justice, Honor and Rulership, holds a grudge for not warning of the impending death of Aroden, but they are not really enemies. The sole exceptions are Urgathoa (the Goddess of Excess, Disease and Undeath) and Zyphus (Demigod of Accidental Death), both of whom escaped Pharasma's realm of the Boneyard, attained divinity in doing so, and seek to pervert the carefully measured tapesty of life and death that Pharasma weaves and upholds.
She also has some relation to Groetus, the God of End times, who lingers ominously in the Boneyard, acting somewhere between being the plane's orbital moon and a hungry dog who looks like they're about to devour your dinner plate. When Groetus gets too close to the Boneyard, Pharasma occasionally throws him a bone by flinging atheist souls in his direction (who don't have a divine realm to go to in the afterlife), which he finds disgusting and is sufficient to get him to move back to his place in the "sky".
Servants
Pharasma is served by the Psychopomps, who aid her in facilitating the flow of the River of Souls. Some of the most powerful of them were elevated by Pharasma directly from the first few mortal souls who died in interesting ways, or they formed spontaneously as primal urges and represent fundamental forces of life and death.
One: Atropos is said to be Pharasma's youngest daughter and has the duty of judging the souls of dead children. Some believe that Atropos is being groomed to succeed Pharasma after the End-Times and become the prophesied sole survivor and creator of the next universe, in much the same way Pharasma was for the current one. Though Atropos is referred to as the "Last Sister" her other sisters are not explicitly detailed; however some of the more powerful psychopomps: the Fulgati were also said to be born of Pharasma directly and are likely the sisters being referred to.
She also has a consort called Mrtyu, who was the first mortal soul to have died with love on his lips. When he arrived in the Boneyard, Pharasma wooed him, and learned the POWER OF LOVE and began to understand mortal feelings while he remained in the Boneyards as Pharasma's bodyguard and general. Though Mrtyu is referred to as "consort" it's stated that the connection is emotional rather than physical. But then it is up to the reader to then determine how Pharasma gave birth to any daughters if this is the case.
Gallery
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A worshipper of Pharasma -
A temple of Pharasma
