Whore Queens
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The Whore Queens - also known by the more polite moniker of "The Queens of the Night" - are a group of four female archdevils and demigoddesses native to the Pathfinder version of Baator. Each of the Whore Queens is a female figure who entered the Hellish hierarchy believing that she would attain greater power and respect in Hell than in the other realms they had once dwelled in - all bar one, Mahathallah, were originally archangels who came to believe Heaven's strictures were too much for them to bear. Unfortunately for them, Asmodeus in the Pathfinder cosmology is a shameless misogynist, and as such each found their possibilities for political advancement sharply curtailed.
Thus, none of the Whore Queens is one of the "true" powers of Hell, having no planar layers to call their own. However, they have scraped together physical power enough to shame all but the mightiest of Infernal Dukes, and their cults easily approach those of the Archdukes in size and prominence. They don't really "get along," per se, but none of them find the others too distasteful to work with, and none of their goals are mutually exclusive. Also, only one of them puts out, but only one of them actually cares enough to feel grumpy at being called "Whore," so...
The Whore Queens were first detailed in "Princes of Darkness", the first of the three "Book of the Damned" splatbooks, and focused on the Devils. They were subsequently reprinted in the singular Book of the Damned hardcover.
Ardad Lili, the End of Innocence
Doloras, the Lady of Pain
Eiseth, the Erinyes Queen
Mahathallah, the Dowager of Illusions
Mahathallah, Dowager of Illusions | ||
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Monstrous One-Eyed Face Surrounded By Rnes | ||
Alignment | Lawful Evil | |
Divine Rank | Demigod | |
Pantheon | Golarion Archdevils (Whore Queens) | |
Portfolio | Death, Fate, Vanity | |
Domains | Death, Evil, Law, Trickery Subdomains: Deception, Devil, Thievery, Undead |
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Home Plane | Hell | |
Worshippers | Alchemists, Drug Users, Embittered Dreamers, Illusionists, Outcasts | |
Favoured Weapon | Net |
Of all the Whore Queens, Mahathallah was never an angel. Instead, she was a psychopomp usher - for those unfamiliar with Golarion, psychopomps are the angel-like servitors of Pharasma, Goddess of Birth and Death, who are charged with ensuring the smooth procession of the cycles of death by calming the souls of the deceased and protecting them from soul-eating monsters, whilst ushers are their equivalent of archangels. Known as the Maiden of Mists, Mahathallah guided the passing of whole worlds worth of spirits, and came to be worshipped as a demigoddess of the dead for her devotion and her skill at piercing the veiled paths of fate. But she was tormented, because there was one fate she couldn't see: her own. Ultimately, this drove her to beg a boon from her goddess; to be allowed to see her ultimate fate, the moment of her death. Pharasma tried to warn her off, but Mahathallah would not be swayed; she went to the mortal realm, awaited a portentous moment, and followed the last soul to die at that moment, allowing her to traverse the River of Souls, the one act that entitled any being to perceive its ultimate fate. For this, Pharasma had no choice; she showed Mahathallah her final moment.
The Maiden of Mists, an immortal who had served Pharasma for generations beyond counting, was unprepared for the reality of seeing her own death. She finally learned firsthand why mortals feared death, and could not bear the experience; she fled from Pharasma's court in terror and never stopped running, butchering anything that dared stand in her way, until finally Asmodeus calmed her. What lies he told her to convince her that he could change her destiny, none know, but the end result was that she came to serve the legions of hell with her prophetic abilities, no longer the Maiden of Mists, but now the Dowager of Illusions.
Mahathallah experiences a constant cycle of regeneration, changing from the form of a youthful yet cadaverous angel wearing a dusk-hued burial gown to that of a rotting crone's corpse with shattered wings clad in trailing tatters, and then reverts to her youthful guise to start aging once again. This cycle is erratic and unpredictable; she may change from youth to corpse over the course of a day, or over a minute, but she shifts constantly. Although typically cold and dispassionate, her state of mind seems to affect her appearance; youth masks her fear-kindled fury, whilst age comes when she embraces her nihilistic wisdom.
She is close to the other Queens of the Night; her most complex relationship is with Doloras - dispassionate and distant, but mutually beneficial - whilst she is has the least in common with the action- and emotion-driven Eiseth. She often counsels her fellows, and their cults are considered allies.
Ironically, the cult of Mahathallah is all but indifferent to Pharasma, and instead is most strongly hostile to the church of Desna. Her temples are hidden in caverns, graveyards, and even in mindscapes, and she is served predominantly by fallen psychopomps and by the undead. Conducting Mahathallah's Obedience requires a cultist to spend an hour in deep meditation, reflecting on the nature of the cosmos and their own exceptional place within it. This is preferably done whilst under the influence of a perception-altering drug. Mahathallah's faithful depict her as either a vaguely feminine figure cloaked in somber mists, or as a glaring eye surrounded by an assortment of occult sigils.