Aesir

Goddess of Winds, Storms, Beauty, and New Love

Aesir, also known as the Windrider, is beautiful even by the standards of the gods. She is the goddess of the winds, storms, beauty, and love. A beautiful young woman with long silver hair and deep blue eyes, surrounded by a flock of loyal hunting birds — she is the essence of new and fiercely passionate love.

Aesir is a fickle goddess who can rapidly change from a kind and giving deity to angry and spiteful. To those that properly appease her, she brings rain to their crops and gentle breezes to cool their brow. However, injure her favored hunting birds and her anger can destroy cities. In anger she wields a large staff of lightning with the head of a great hawk and each of the four winds howling around it surface.

All clerics of Aesir are forbidden to enter underground dwellings; except in the direct duties of their goddess. They wear several layers of nearly sheer cloths, silk being the most popular choice, with a dark under tunic. Most carry a staff topped with bird feathers so they may always foresee their goddesses vision. Headdresses with plumes of feathers or the mask of a hunting bird are common among the clerics.

Her sanctuaries are always places above the surrounding land, with grassy hillocks a favorite. The presence of oak or willow trees very common to represent both the strength and giving nature of Aesir. Larger temples, or those shrines dedicated to her love, will have a reflecting pool in a hidden garden. This allows two lovers to meet in secret and gave upon each other without seeing each other directly. Many visitors to the gardens wear bird masks to hide their features.

Temples dedicated to Aesir are typically constructed in a square with seven pillars on each side holding up a square steeple roof. Each of the pillars will be the same size and decorated with her hunting birds. The four corner pillars will be twice the size of the others and decorated with sigils of the four winds. The alter will be in the center of the temple. Even those temples or shrines constructed as other buildings will have as many windows as possible along all of the walls. There will always be an aviary somewhere within the temple, typically near the clerics quarters.

Statues of Aesir are all of a woman of great beauty wearing either a short embroidered tunic or waving cloak. In her right hand will typically be a shod staff while her left is outstretched with a hawk perched on top. So statues remove the hawk in the belief that Aesir will send her own hawk to perch upon the statue.

Her symbols include many of the larger hunting birds often on a dark indigo or black backgrounds. Amulets, holy symbols, beads, and other smaller representations will often be in the shape of a diving hawk, a lightning bolt, or a four-pointed star. No matter the shape all will be colored indigo either in the clay or painted on after.

People that ask for the intervention of Aesir are often young lovers kept apart by forces beyond their control. She is also quite commonly worshipped together with Lynthail by farmers — and together with Karash by fishers, sailors, and others who ply the waters.

This high festival is held at each of the four changing of the winds; summer, fall, winter, and spring. During this festival the cleric will use sand, feathers, and large colorful banners to foretell the coming season. A strong wind is a sign the goddess favors the area, while no wind foretells of great disaster.

The most sacred dance done only in the heart of a powerful storm by her highest clerics. This is also the only ritual where Aesir will accept a sacrifice that was once a living creature. If the sacrifice is particularly pleasing, prey animals being the most common, the local area will be spared the full fury of the storm.

There is a story about a village that killed one of her clerics after the crops failed from lack of rain. The storms that battered that area destroyed everything and drove the people away from their lands. Since that time nothing will grow there because the rain will never fall again. This act caused Lynthail to respond by destroying several of Aesir's temples with great earthquakes and the earth's fireblood.