Maltara, God of Disease
Maltara, God of Disease
Other Titles: Brother Bloat, the Lord of the Flies, Pestilent King
Alignment: LE
Weapon: Callused Fists
Major Domains: Disease, Recovery, Constitution
Minor Domains:Weeding out the weak, Anatomy, Carrion
Totem Animal/Warform: Great Lizard/Monitor Lizards (The Warform is composed of Stone, Wind, Lightning and gems)
Holy Symbol: A bloated, pustule covered tongue with a rusted nail piercing it.
Favored Appearances: Maltara tends to walk the world rarely, and when he does it is an ill tiding among many of the peoples of Kasan. Were he travels, disease and death follow, and many do not survive his presence. Those who do describe a particularly horrifying form. His hair is falling out in great patches on his head, leaving the rest of it a patchwork of short dark hair and scabs. His wide, flat face is covered in rashes and blisters, his bloodshot eyes bulge from his head, his teeth are rotten and his breath fetid. The skin on his arms and legs split, oozing a viscus type of ichor that slides down and drips from his fingers and lingers in his footprints. coughs punctuate his sentences and breaths, spreading his captured diseases. His body, no matter the outward signs that it should be on deaths door, is fit and strong. His callused fists are hard as bone and the arms are muscular enough to do significant damage with them. His legs easily gobble up the land in long, powerful strides and grant him surprising agility for a person in his condition.
both forms have the same basic appearance, though he walks the world as a human in his female form and as a halfling in his male. In both forms his preferred garment is that of the robe of his priesthood, a brilliant green and bone. When trying to pass undetected, he walks with the hood up and quietly, though his coughing breaks through. When embodying a plague to walk the lands, he walks with the cowl down, his brilliant yellow eyes betraying his diseased Nature.
Personality: Despite all his appearances and the suppositions many have about him, Maltara is a jovial being. He enjoys talking the finer points of the merits of civilization, the best methods of recovery from illness, and how best to stave off an early grave. Pleasant and charming though he is, he is relentless in his pursuit of a better and stronger world, as he sees it. He desires to infect the world with all the plagues that he can create and foster, so that only the strong survive to worship him. He is ruthless to those he feels are weak, however, and feels no pity or mercy when they die or fail, doing his best to expedite it whenever possible. He does this, as one would expect, through a series of diseases, set up in an order that tests every possible angle of weakness and vulnerability. Those who approach him and survive this ordeal become his most chosen servants. Those who do not are discarded, dying a miserable and terrible death.
Teachings: The body is the door to the soul, and the soul must be strong in order to prevail in this terrible world. You cannot expect the world to be kind to you, so you must be unkind to it back. Maltara is both the god of diseases and the god of recovery from disease, so it is in his ultimate control over who lives and dies from his disease. Most times, however, he will leave it up to your body to determine your fate, and if you were young, old, or infirm, it is extremely likely that you will perish. This is done to make the world a stronger place, one where disease is all pervasive but everyone is strong enough to fight it off.
Abode: Maltara lives in the Deep Fens, on the border with the Accursed territory of the Iron Marches. His army of hearty soldiers and strong, disease ridden veterans are the front line in the battles against the Accursed. Maltara takes a very specific pride knowing that, many times, it is simply him and his hand picked warriors standing between the Accursed and the complete annihilation of the Paltonarchs.
Clergy: The Clerics of Maltara tend to the ill and dying, watching over them when their families will or cannot. Though their god may not assist the diseased, he has no problem with his clerics taking his recovery aspect of his portfolio to heart. What does not kill one, only makes them stronger. Many of his clerics are immune to the plagues that wash over the land, having been exposed to them many times over, though they also tend to breath out the very corruption they seek to save in others. As carriers and healers, they function ans the perfect vessel of paradox as their master. Most Churches of Maltara are located well outside of the towns and cities they serve, keeping their deathly services far from the population at large.
Knightly Orders: The Contagion Legion is a strong and powerful warrior cult centered on the Malataran principle of hearty constitution and infection. The order seeks out orphans and trains them riggorusly in the ways of a strong body, and then when they are strong and fit enough, they expose them to the myriad of contagions that they harbor. Those we are weak either die or are exiled, and In their weakened condition, many of even those who survive to be exiled perish. Those strong enough are welcomed into the legion and are sent on missions vital to the god of Blight.
Clerical Attire/colors: The Clerics of Maltara prefer to wear the colors of their god, a simple and vile green color that evokes illness and bile. These clothes are often trimmed in a bone and cream color around the wrists and cowl, along with parallel stripes running down the center of the chest. Additionally, at the highest of ranks, they will pierce their tongue with a shortened nail to show their dedication to the god. Many die, but those who live are the most vaunted of priests.
Followers: Most of Maltaras followers are priests, able to hold disease at bay or even be completely immune to it. There are a few barbarian tribes and warrior cultures who worship disease, but they are few and far between.
