Haldora
Titles: Mother Nightmare, The Hag, The Vulture
Domain: Fear, Envy
Symbol: Lantern
Sphere Granted: Dark
Some don’t wish to sleep for fear of nightmares. Other don’t wish to wake for the same fear. Haldora, the Mother of Nightmares, fear and envy, makes her home in the wastes and grey abyss of the Deadlands. Born into this world to care for those that died valiantly in battle but cast down into the purgatory of Deadlands, Haldora is cursed to see the life she could have had through the thin veil of death. Twisted with envy she uses fear and horror to take those living spirits destined for other heavens to her nightmarish realm.
True to her motherly nature, Haldora has become the goddess most often worshipped by the outcasts, undesirables and the monsters that can find no peace or home in the civilized world. She takes them all into her cold, putrid bosom.
Haldora is not without redeeming qualities. Those that serve her faithfully are granted boons of magic and insight from the spirits trapped in the Deadlands. For this reason she is often revered by mystics, wytches and those that dabble in the occult.
Contents
Appearance
To the living, Haldora takes on the visage of a walking nightmare. A large and naked obese woman, whose putrid grey skin hangs off her bones in bulging folds. Her exposed breasts ooze acidic poison that smolders and burns the ground she shambles over. Maggots and carrion slither where hair should be. Her forked tongue darts quickly forth from dry cracked lips, tasting for the spirits of the living.
She is often seen with a large white vulture at her shoulder. It is said that vultures in the land of the living act as her eyes and ears, picking at the flesh of the dead to collect the fresh spirits to bring their mother.
Tenets
Five things a follower of Haldora should do:
1. Cause dishonourable death to all spirits by any means; through poison, assassinations, manipulations, and the like.
2. Cause others to become lost, physically, emotionally, and spiritually.
3. Take tokens from those you have defeated and bury them to tie them to the land, and anchoring their spirits to the Deadlands.
4. Use fear and horror to test the weak, the young, and the misshapen. The weak are to be given to Haldora through sacrifice.
5. Thin the veil between life and death. Engage in mysticism, find lost things, and encourage other to speak with ghosts and spirits.
Five things a follower of Haldora should not do:
1. Show fear yourself. Embrace it and turn it into a weapon against others.
2. Grant anyone an honourable death for any reason, outside your own defence.
3. Kill or harm those society deems outcasts, simply based on their appearance.
4. Tolerate the beautiful. Instead employ your skills to destroy, scar or maim.
5. Turn away those innocents that society has shunned.
History
Haldora, the Mother of Nightmares, was not always a hideous creature of fear and disgust. She was destined to be the mother to a new race of savage gods, long before she claimed the Deadlands as her home. Haldora was created from a golden acorn but stolen by her son, Sverin, in an attempt to relieve his eternal boredom. He grew tired of her quickly and convinced her to enter the now empty halls of Valhalla, where the spirits of valiant warriors waited for the end of times. Seeing the spirits of the dead in need, Haldora embraced them. Unbeknownst to her, Sverin had tricked Valdr, the God of Valour, telling him that Haldora had broken into his home and was consuming the essence of the dead he had sworn to protect. Valdr, in a fit of rage, dragged Haldora, kicking and screaming, to the edge of the Bifrost bridge. Haldora tried to explain her actions to Valdr but his ears were deaf to her pleas. He cast her down into the nothingness of the void between realms and, in doing so, sealed her fate for eternity.
When Haldora awoke next she was in a dismal world of greyness and misery. She was banished to the Deadlands, a place where lost spirits roam the vast, unending wastelands. Her body became twisted and distorted. Her heart swelled with rage and hatred. She claimed this land as her home, vowing revenge on those that had ruined what should have been a life of love and tenderness. Still, even beneath the disgusting horrifying creature she had become, there remained the need to nurture. Haldora embraced this parental instinct, taking in creatures unaccepted by society. The horrible twisted monstrosities, the outcasts and the misshapen, all call her mother and seek her putrid embrace.