Lydia

Lydia
Lady Luck; Laughing Goddess; That Tease

Symbol: A golden yellow heart
Home Plane: Arborea
Alignment: Chaotic Good
Cleric Alignments: Neutral Good, Chaotic Good, Chaotic Neutral
Portfolio: Love, luck, hope, joy
Worshipers: Adventurers, bards, rogues, gamblers, foxkin and lutrin beastfolk, lovers both old and young
Domains: Chaos, Charm (Love, Lust), Luck, Song, Trickery
Favored Weapon: Longbow

Physical Description:
A shining, copper-scaled beauty, Lydia is dazzling in appearance as a dragoness. She takes on many other forms, preferring female shapes, but occasionally taking on male forms as well, all of them of great beauty, viewing her physical appearance like mortals view fashion. In all her forms, she likes to have her flesh adorned with various glowing tattoos, which make her body into a living work of art.

Description of Nature, Personality, and Dogma:
More than the fleeting fancy of pleasure, Lydia is a being wrapped up in the essence of true joy, and she wants more than anything to share this joy with others. Bubbly, bright, and energetic, Lydia is almost never sad or unhappy, and her presence tends to brighten the moods of others wherever she goes. Her personality leads many to believe she isn't terribly bright, but this is merely a matter of perception, as she is quite clever when she puts her mind to it. She is also an incorrigible flirt, and especially enjoys toying with danger and chance, even more especially when the stakes are quite high.

Luck and love are fickle and uncertain, each defying attempts to define or to predict them without cheating, but you can feel it when you have them, and you can feel when they slip away. Lydia's worshipers recognize that chance is an inherent part of life, and that they need to be bold, reaching out to grasp opportunities for those things that they want when they arise, whatever the risk. Love is the most prized treasure of all, and it is worth any risk, any gamble, and any challenge. True worshipers of Lydia do not stand in the way of love, and should instead help to facilitate it, even when (or perhaps especially when) such love is impossible or somehow forbidden in nature.

Clergy, Places of Worship, Important Rituals, and Servitor Races:
All the clergy of Lydia are physically attractive and also have a beauty and lightness of soul that transcends appearance, and she regularly chooses them from birth based on the potential she sees in them to become great and charismatic lovers. Her clergy experience their first awakening to her power the first time that they fall in love, usually during puberty. This can be as simple as a crush, or as deep as true and lasting love at first sight, but either way, Lydia's clerics suddenly find themselves empowered and almost divinely irresistible for a time after this first love comes upon them, which makes it almost certain that they will gain the object of their affection. If they do, even when the effect of divine attractiveness wears off for others, it never wears off for the ones that they love, or in turn for how the clerics of Lydia view their lovers. Most people trust the clergy of Lydia, and rely on them for advice and counseling in relationships. Additionally, they are often consulted as oracles for use in games of chance, though most of these predictions are as likely as any predictions about such games. Lydia's clergy are quickly identifiable not only for their physical and social attractiveness, but also for their tendency to wear gold-decorated clerical vestments that best show off their bodies, in which Lydia teaches them to have pride.

Shrines to Lydia are regularly found in casinos, gaming halls, and other places where gambling takes place. Most of these shrines are portable in nature, especially in areas where gambling is not strictly legal. Her temples are very frequently high-class bath houses or bordellos, with sacred prostitutes that are also divinely-invested clerics and very frequently relationship counselors besides. Unlike most houses of pleasure, where the workers simply take customers who spend their desire outside their homes, the ultimate goal of a sacred prostitute of Lydia is to kindle a greater desire for one's significant other in their clients, enhancing relationships rather than wearing them down.

Not long after the dead of winter gives way to the gradual warming of the earth, but before spring has quite set in, is Hopefast Day, Lydia's holy day. On Hopefast Day, lovers and good friends trade small gifts, especially sweets, and often give each other candy and cards in the shape of stylized hearts. This is a day intended to celebrate love in all its forms.

Powerful and especially beautiful lilend bards are Lydia's most common servitors, as are eladrin and other chaotic good extraplanars, especially those of pleasing form.

History and Relations:
Lydia is the youngest daughter of the gods, with only Amalgam being younger than her, and she is summarily doted upon to this day by her draconic deity siblings, regarded as their little princess. As such, she is somewhat spoiled, but does have a good heart, and generally expects that everyone will love her. Since she is beautiful and fun to be around, she is usually right. Most of the other gods are fond of Lydia, and even those gods that dislike her find they are unable to resist her charms or, worse yet, her ability to cause them to fall in love. As even the gods are vulnerable to love, so they are vulnerable to Lydia's personality. Of all the gods, only Umnos is immune to Lydia's affections and powers, and so she generally avoids the Great Machine whenever possible.

One of the three principle judges of mortal souls after death, Lydia is the one who looks for motives behind the actions of the mortals brought before them, while Talus looks only at what is just, and Hawl provides the simple facts, without providing judgement. After Nimbus has had a chance to act as a soul's advocate, Talus and Lydia are the ones with whom souls meet personally, so as to work out exactly what a soul accepts as judgement, with Hawl nearby to ensure that the soul is forced to face the full weight of the truth and cannot escape making a decision one way or another. Lydia's primary interest is in getting souls to the part of the afterlife where they will most fit in.

Favored Offerings and Justifications for Direct Intervention:
Common offerings to Lydia are unsigned slips of very thin gold leaf, on which are inscribed the hopes and wishes of her followers, especially those relating to romantic hopes, be it the gaining of new love or the rekindling of old love. She also accepts tiny golden hearts, on which are inscribed the names of lovers, or those that desire to become lovers.

Lydia is happy to be of service to mortals, since bringing lovers together in pleasant union is one of her greatest joys. She refuses to break up old lovers, or to help those who want to establish an unhealthy or harmful relationship of any kind, and is not inclined towards wrecking homes, even if a present relationship has gone sour or is abusive, but she is very much inclined towards helping lovers change so that they are better suited towards each other, in helping present relationships become more open to accepting additional lovers, and especially in helping young lovers to find their true soul mates.