Arawai

The Sovereign of Life and Love — Lady of Growth, Giver of Abundance
Sibling of Balinor and the Devourer (Shurkaan); mother of the Fury (Szorawai)
Portfolio: Fertility, crops, abundance, plants, the wilderness, birth
Favoured Weapon: Morningstar
Symbol: Sheaf of wheat tied with green ribbon; or the Octagram in bronze and green

"You want to know Arawai? Look at the wheat in Sypheros. Look at a woman who has just given birth. Look at anything that survived something it shouldn't have. That is her domain. Not just the green and growing — the fact that it keeps coming back." — Harla Osse, midwife and Vassal lay-sister, Vathirond

Most Vassals think of Arawai as the deity of fertility, crops, abundance, and plant life in general. While accurate as far as it goes, this is a limited understanding of her place in the pantheon. More properly, she holds dominion over the natural world as viewed through the lens of civilisation — not merely the cultivated field, but the wilderness itself as mortals experience it. A follower of the Host lost in the forest, wandering unknown valleys, or stranded in deep wilderness is most likely to call on Arawai for guidance, because her domain extends far beyond the boundaries of any farm.

She is the patron of fertility and of the benevolent aspects of nature, bringing good harvest and gentle rain. She is the Sovereign invoked at planting and at birth, the one whose presence is felt in the root pushing through soil after a hard winter and the child's first breath after a difficult labour. Even people who are not devout Vassals know her name — the fact of a bountiful harvest is evidence of Arawai's benevolence, and who doesn't eat bread or potatoes? The vast majority of people offer her at least some thanks.

She stands at one corner of the great triad of nature alongside her brother Balinor and her darker sibling the Devourer (once called Shurkaan). Together, the three represent the fullness of the natural world: Arawai governs its bounty, Balinor governs the hunt and the boundary between civilisation and wild, and the Devourer governs its devastating power — storm, flood, famine, and the forces that can never be tamed.

Portfolio and Domains

Agriculture and Sustenance. Arawai governs farming, herding, and all forms of food production. Her faith emphasises careful cultivation, respect for seasonal cycles, and stewardship of land and livestock rather than forced or exploitative yield. She is the Sovereign that the farmer thanks for the harvest and the herbalist invokes before gathering medicines from the wild. Harvest offerings — grains burned or buried — are among the most common major rites of the Host.

The Wilderness and Guidance. This is frequently overlooked in more urban Vassal communities, but Arawai is also the patron of those lost or travelling in the wild. Woodcutters, herbalists, and anyone navigating untamed terrain may call on her. Her priests are expected to know natural lore as well as scripture — most were farmers, woodcutters, or herbalists before becoming priests. Her quests include rescuing those lost in the wilderness, ending famine, and protecting forests and farmland from ravagers.

Birth, Love, and Community. Arawai governs the bonds that sustain life — familial, communal, and romantic. Within the Three Faces of Love mystery cult, she is called the Love that Brings Life, celebrated by midwives, mothers, herbalists, and healers. She stands alongside Boldrei (the Love that Binds) and the Fury in her aspect as Szorawai (the Love that Burns). Arawai's doctrine does not romanticise love; it frames it as labour, mutual care, and endurance.

Childbirth is closely associated with Arawai. Expecting Vassals wear bracelets of woven wheat for the duration of their pregnancy. Once the child is born and healthy enough to go into public, a priest joins the parents in conveying the infant to an altar, where a wheat offering is burned and the priest uses the ashes to draw the Octagram on the child's chest. Prayers at this moment are dedicated first to the nine as a pantheon and then to each deity individually, asking them to guide the new community member throughout their life.

Iconography and Symbols

Arawai is most commonly depicted as a serene woman bearing grain or fruit, crowned with wheat, flowers, or vines, often surrounded by fields, livestock, or children. She is rarely shown in isolation — her imagery typically situates her within the land or community she tends. An alternate symbol renders her as a bronze dragon.

Sacrificial offerings to Arawai consist of grains and other consumable plants and produce. Vassals petition her for good harvests and healthy births, as well as guidance when travelling in the wild.

Worship and Practice

Arawai's worship is largely informal. Formal temples exist in agrarian regions, but most devotion is expressed through daily ritual — planting prayers, harvest offerings, and the small observances that mark a working life. A skilled herbalist or midwife may serve a rural community as a lay-representative of Arawai without formal ordination, and this is entirely accepted within the loose structure of Vassal faith. A midwife might symbolically speak for both Arawai and Boldrei, and her community would consider this natural rather than presumptuous.

Shrines to Arawai are built of wood rather than stone, roofed with leafy branches atop a latticed framework and adorned with stalks of grain or growing vines. They arise wherever people feel her presence — at granaries, mills, communal ovens, or at the edges of fields. Her rites also occur in the open wild, with no structure at all. The rites of Arawai and Boldrei typically take place outdoors, under open sky.

Weddings are ideally scheduled on minor holidays tied to Arawai or Boldrei, according to the Sovereign Book of Seasons. Marriage is an especially sacred sacrament to Vassals, as it is how Boldrei ties the community together — but Arawai presides alongside her as the love that brings new life into that community.

A farmer's planting prayer, transcribed in the Vassal Almanac of the Reaches:

"Arawai, the seed is in the ground. I've done what I can. The rest is yours and the rain's. Don't let me down — I've got mouths to feed and a debt at the grain exchange that won't pay itself."

Arawai and the Dark Six

Arawai's relationship with the Dark Six is more tangled than simple opposition.

The Devourer is her brother. Where Arawai governs nature's bounty and benevolence, the Devourer is the lord of its destructive power. The two are inseparable in the understanding of the natural world, and even devout Vassals who would never pray to the Devourer as a deity beseech him at need. Arawai showed mortals how to harness the wind for sail and mill; the Devourer sends winds that snap masts and shatter buildings. The Pyrinean Creed frames the Devourer as despising the first people and their civilisation, seeing them only as prey — a struggle that continues to this day.

The Fury is Arawai's daughter, at least in the most widely circulated Pyrinean myth. This origin is generally understood as metaphor: when a storm destroys a long-awaited harvest, the anguish born from that destruction is the Fury — the Devourer is her father because devastation is the seed from which she grows. The Fury was once called Szorawai before she lost herself to her domain.

Arawai's doctrine acknowledges that unchecked growth can itself become monstrous. Crops choke soil. Nurturing love turns possessive. The faith teaches that even abundance must be tempered, and that neglect — not malice — is often the greater sin.

Sects and Cults

The Three Faces of the Wild honours Arawai, Balinor, and Shargon (the Devourer). Found primarily in rural communities, it draws farmers, hunters, and wanderers who hold that the wild cannot be fully tamed and must be respected on its own terms. Members sometimes engage in ritual destruction — burning a portion of a field — as an offering to the Devourer, keeping him from striking where he is not invited. They practise free-range grazing and low-impact farming, and have clashed with House Vadalis and House Cannith enclaves over these principles.

The Three Faces of Love honours Arawai, Boldrei, and the Fury in her pre-Schism name, Szorawai. This is a more urban cult, recruiting mediators, midwives, innkeepers, bartenders, poets, and others who work with the bonds between people. The cult excels at matchmaking, conflict mediation, and quiet social intervention.

Arawai in the Modern Age

In the aftermath of the Last War, Arawai's worship has expanded significantly among refugees rebuilding shattered communities, farmers reclaiming land scarred by arcane warfare, and healers tending to populations that have known years of hunger and displacement. She is widely invoked as the Sovereign of slow recovery — not miraculous restoration, but the patient, deliberate work of coaxing life from damaged ground.

"People speak of the Mourning as if the land simply stopped. It didn't stop. It changed. The question Arawai asks is whether we changed with it, or whether we are still planting in dead soil and expecting a harvest." — Brother Omath Teln, Vassal lay-priest, Refugee Settlements, Cyran Border

Common Sayings and Invocations

"By Arawai's grace."

"The fields will answer."

"What we tend, survives."

"The harvest doesn't come for those who only pray."