Empyreal Lord, Cardinal Martyr

This red-winged angel is blindfolded and wrapped with bloody bandages. What shows of her flesh is scarred with celestial runes.

ECOLOGY

Environment any (Heaven)
Organization unique
Treasure standard (Cicatrix, other treasure)

Cardinal Martyr endlessly sacrifices herself in penitence for the sins of the multiverse, every battle against evil giving her body one more wound with which she might shed bloody tears for existence. When Cardinal Martyr emerged from the Heavens, she was a being of sublime beauty, but of a majesty so delicate that she couldn’t suffer the sight or even the thought of evil. Within an hour of her birth, she had put out her own eyes, refusing to even gaze upon a reality tainted by sin. Since the first self-inflicted wound marred her once-perfect body, she has struggled against evil in all its forms. Denying herself home or rest, Cardinal Martyr harrows the wildest reaches of the multiverse, driving back the expansions of foul realms and slaying those who would do wicked deeds.

Cardinal Martyr has no home among the planes, and forgoes any comforts—even those as basic as shelter or company—so long as there is evil afoot in the multiverse. Such makes her one of the most aloof empyreal lords, but also one of the most storied. Across the planes, legends tell of pitched battles, desperate last stands, and near massacres turned in the favor of the innocent by the sudden appearance of Cardinal Martyr herself, bloody-winged and avenging. While such miraculous rescues have more to do with happenstance then omniscience, they nonetheless inflame the passions of the righteous across countless worlds. Those who seek to encounter the empyreal lord of devotion, sacrifice, and scars must follow rumors of her passing, usually spoken by awed beings and crippled fiends along the fringes of reality’s darkest outlands.

Nearly as well known as the Cardinal Martyr herself are her morbid trappings—miles of stained bandages, scars etched and re-etched in the shapes of celestial runes, and a dagger that drips with her blood as often as that of her enemies. Of these, her dagger Cicatrix is the most infamous, a black blade like a thorn dropped from some gigantic iron rose, which the empyreal lord used to blind herself. Tales tell that she uses her blade not just to slay the wicked and share her blindness, but to carve the runes that crisscross her body upon others, infusing them with the compulsion to battle evil even if previously there was no such desire.

Cardinal Martyr’s Faith

Cardinal Martyr is the patron of devotion, sacrifice, and scars. Those who follow her number among the most zealous crusaders, the most unshakable priests, and the most incorruptible judges. They view their goddess as an exemplar and a leader who sacrifices for them in ways they can never match. Cardinal Martyr, and by extension her worshipers, is extremely strict when it comes to adhering to her tenets of living an austere and principled life wholly devoted to combating evil.

Those who diverge from Cardinal Martyr’s teachings are expelled from her orders, but encouraged to do good in the world under the service of gentler masters. Though Cardinal Martyr doesn’t expect all of her followers to perform the same self-mortification that she does, tattoos, scarification, and flagellation are common among her servants, especially her most devoted priests. Even those who don’t engage in ritual bloodletting typically wear long red ribbons, symbolic of the empyreal lord’s eternal wounds.

Cardinal Martyr’s holy symbol is a scarred golden breastplate. Her favored weapon is the dagger. Her clerics have access to the Destruction, Good, Healing, and Law domains, and to the Rage and Resurrection subdomains.