Sealticge

Sealticge (Sil-teezh) is the goddess of beauty and the performing arts. She is also the patron and protector of youth, maidens in particular. She values self-expression and beauty for beauty's sake, although she equally values the transmission of cultural forms of art and expression. She occupies a significant place in high elven cultures specifically, but any culture where music and oral traditions are considered valuable offer at least token worship (human, halfling, and orc cultures in particular). Her epithets include the Lady of Grace or simply Lady Grace.

Symbols and Depictions

Sealticge's most common written symbol is a stylized hand-mirror. Other tools of beauty - the hairbrush, cosmetics, or silks - are considered appropriate offerings. A budding flower is also used to represent her in writing or art, although one should never be made as an offering until it has bloomed. (Contrast this with the budding leaf, used to represent her daughter, Nophica.)

Like all deities, Sealticge can choose her appearance on the Material Plane, but is almost invariably female. Although she is recorded most commonly as an elf, the only preference for race she has shown is that of the supplicant to whom she shows herself. Often, this is in order to be able to join them in a performance. She notably delights in vibrantly colored and elaborate hairstyles, but is just as likely to appear with short or long, unbound hair.

Worship

Whole temples dedicated to Sealticge are few in the Vale, but exist within more cosmopolitan settings, such as Old Bay or Drakehall, or on the borders of the elf-lands, in Elmark and Elfield. Smaller shrines are common in other cities inside performance spaces like amphitheaters.

Sealticge's holy days are a three-day festival that is held between late March and early May, depending on the full moon and the blossoming of flowers (so the date can vary between years and even settlements). The celebration is marked by parties held in flower gardens, where flowers are traded between friends and chained together into crowns among music and dancing. Another holy day, the full moon in July closest to the end of the month, is a smaller celebration of summer flowers.

Clerics who worship Sealticge are usually of the life, nature, or peace domains.

Myths

Sealticge's demiplane is the Flower Path, a resplendent flower garden in the Blessed Fields of Elysium. The greatest of musicians, dancers, and painters are invited to perform or create in this beautiful paradise, where there are many nooks and fountains to perform in.

Sealticge, with her brother Alephan, are the children of Dohter and Dreisang. She has four daughters: two with Balogar, Draefendi and Nophica, and two with her husband Aelfric, Ascima and Menphina.

Sealticge's romance with Balogar is the subject of a famous epic poem. Alephan, her brother, seeks to thwart Balogar from courting her (the poem, interestingly, does not delve into the basis of their rivalry, which pre-existed these events). Balogar, entranced by Sealticge's song and dance, began to spend time with her, creating the most beautiful music heard on any plane. Alephan, seeking to prove Balogar's unworthiness for his sister, challenges him to a contest of magical skill. Sealticge protests that this is unnecessary, but despite this, Balogar accepts the challenge and wins. The couple reveals to a shocked Alephan that they had already had one child, with another on the way, and Alephan departs (though never actually admits defeat). Regardless, at some point in history their relationship ended and both found other partners although it's well-known they're on good terms, and are often worshipped together by bards seeking divine inspiration.

Her relationship with her husband, Aelfric, has a far less dramatic story. Famously quiet and reclusive, Sealticge pursued him, encouraging him to share his light with the world. Through their union - of light and beauty - the sun and the moon were born. It's said wherever she dances or makes music, Aelfric is never far to support her.

Luthic envies and fears her good relationship with Balogar (Luthic's first husband), so much so that Luthic accepted Gruumsh's offer of marriage in order to have children that would accomplish more than Sealticge's four daughters (the sun, the moon, plants and beasts). Gruumsh seeks to undermine Sealticge's efforts to bring beauty into the world in his role as the Ruiner. Zuggotmoy, the dark god of decay, also often puts herself at odds with Sealticge, although rarely directly - even Sealticge knows beauty must fade to have meaning at all. Yeenoghu's domain of the instinctive, the id, also conflicts with Sealticge's pursuit of higher beauty as the superego, as his impulsive rampages care little for her performance (though one notable myth involves her lulling the beast to sleep so Draefendi could approach him and attempt to undo her actions).