Church of Whirling Fury....Cleric??


Savage Tide Adventure Path

The Exchange

I have a player who read the Player's Guide and decided that his PC should be a cleric of the Church of Whirling Fury......I didn't have all the specs memorized on the Church and allowed him to.
Where does he get his powers from? If I read this right the Church isn't actually revering a god. Should I make him a disciple of a different god by proxy? How can I fix this without just saying "pick a real church" to the guy, we already played our first 2 sessions. I would hate to retrofit him.
Any help is appreciated.
FH


I don't have my books in the room with me but I'm pretty sure the eladrin paragon 'Gwynharwf' (or whatever) that the church worships is detailed in The Book of Exalted Deeds. :)

It's my understanding that as a paragon of good Gwynharwf acts as a middle-person between god and mortal, granting spells to followers without actually being a deity or overstepping her mark. Um.. just treat it as a 'normal' deity really.

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You basically have 2 choices.

The eladrins paragons (of which Gwynharwyf is one—she's the "whirling fury" of the church) generally don't encourage mortals to worship them as gods, but instead act as patrons of those who worship allied deities like Corellon Larethian and Ehlonna. So your cleric can worship one of them and be a part of the Church.

Alternately, since the Church of the Whirling Fury was set up to serve as an affiliation to support those who seek to rid the Material Plane of demonic influences, you could have a cleric simply devote himself to this cause rather than to a specific deity. These characters view Gwynharwyf as their patron and guide, but do not worship her per se; rather, they see her as an ideal to live up to. Their actual spells are granted by higher powers.

Actually, there's a third choice. Although the Book of Exalted Deeds says that eladrin paragons like Gwynharwyf can't grant spells, you can overrule this in your campaign and make it so that they can. In whch case, PC members of the Church of the Whirling Fury are clerics of Gwynharwyf.


In the Forgotten Realms the paragons all serve deities and dwell in that powers divine realm.


Gwynharwyf, a paragon eladrin, is the consort to Queen Morwel, the ruler of the Court of Stars in Arborea. The Court is the home to all the eladrin, and Morwel has always been its monarch; no eladrin has any memory of anyone else ruling, and none are certain of her age. Given that time doesn't pass in the Court, it's possible that she's several thousand years old, but no one dares ask her to reveal her age. Gwynharwyf is the patron of good-aligned barbarians, frequently leading barbarian hordes in the eternal struggle against evil.

According to the Book of Exalted Deeds, the celestial paragons typically don't accumulate worshipers. They actively discourage cults raised in their name, and have no ability to grant divine spells to mortals. They can petition other deities to grant spells to their followers, but prefer not to be proxies if they can help it.

They do, however, patronize organizations dedicated to them, or simply host a powerful individual (or champion) in the mortal planes. Most of these organizations have worshipers of existing deities, as long as their aims coincide. While they cherish the orders that serve them, they are careful to remind them that they are not deities. Doing otherwise would be succumbing to the sin of pride.

The Church of the Whirling Fury might have followers who worship Pelor, Heironeous, Kord, St. Cuthbert, Trithereon, Mayaheine, Rudd, Zuoken, Azor'alq, or Kelanen. In Sasserine, they prefer to keep their affiliation private, with the belief that a public showing would incite those with evil intent to move openly. Thus, most members who are clerics or favored souls would follow other faiths present in the city, and be publicly affiliated with them.

(If you're using affiliations from DMG2 and the Player's Guide, and especially if you're using the religious affiliations in Complete Champion, you might want to ignore the -10 penalty that having a second affiliation would bring, since the Church would encourage members to have a cover-story.)


Well, I've messed around with the pantheon in my campaign, and among other changes I've made Gwynharwyf a god. Her favoured weapon is the falchion, her alignment NG, and her domains are Animal, Celerity, Good, War and Wrath. Of course, this means I'm probably going to have to do a complete rewrite of Enemy of my Enemy when that comes out, to account for her changed status when the PCs go and ask for her help, but I'm blissfully ignoring that issue at this stage...


Actually in my game I made it affiliated with the Church of Farhlagin(sp?). The Striders created the church after thier fights with the cagewrights (either the ongoing stuff before, or strictley a new thing after the events of the Shackled city). Very popular with the refugees of the "day the demodond's raind from the sky". Of course I was inspired by the fact that the leader of my group for the SC was a dirvish and did seem to love to kill outsiders.

The Exchange

Thanks guys, this is what I sent to the player, cobbled together from all your posts, to help the player in question. Let me know what you guys think.

"Firstly, the Leader of your church is Gwynharwyf, an eladrin paragon (a humanoid from another plane of existance), who seeks to to support those who seek to rid the Material Plane of demonic influences. She is not actually a god, but you have 2 choices:

1. worship an aligned god by proxy (Pelor, Heironeous, Kord, St. Cuthbert, Corellon Larethian and Ehlonna are all acceptable, and you would gain domains dependent on your God).

2. you could have the cleric simply devote himself to this cause rather than to a specific deity. If so I need to decide which domains you have access to. (Animal, Chaos, Good, Plant, Protection, Travel and War seems to match the ideals of the church)

Some info on the Church:

Gwynharwyf, a paragon eladrin, is the consort to Queen Morwel, the ruler of the Court of Stars in Arborea. The Court is the home to all the eladrin, and Morwel has always been its monarch; no eladrin has any memory of anyone else ruling, and none are certain of her age. Given that time doesn't pass in the Court, it's possible that she's several thousand years old, but no one dares ask her to reveal her age. Gwynharwyf is the patron of good-aligned barbarians, frequently leading barbarian hordes in the eternal struggle against evil.

In Sasserine, they prefer to keep their affiliation private, with the belief that a public showing would incite those with evil intent to move openly. Thus, most members who are clerics or favored souls would follow other faiths present in the city, and be publicly affiliated with them.

The celestial paragons, like Gwynharwyf, typically don't accumulate worshipers. They actively discourage cults raised in their name, and have no ability to grant divine spells to mortals. They can petition other deities to grant spells to their followers, but prefer not to be proxies if they can help it.

They do, however, patronize organizations dedicated to them, or simply host a powerful individual (or champion) in the mortal planes. Most of these organizations have worshipers of existing deities, as long as their aims coincide. While they cherish the orders that serve them, they are careful to remind them that they are not deities. Doing otherwise would be succumbing to the sin of pride."

Thanks again, guys.
FH

The Exchange

Fake Healer wrote:

Thanks guys, this is what I sent to the player, cobbled together from all your posts, to help the player in question. Let me know what you guys think.

"Firstly, the Leader of your church is Gwynharwyf, an eladrin paragon (a humanoid from another plane of existance), who seeks to to support those who seek to rid the Material Plane of demonic influences. She is not actually a god, but you have 2 choices:

Gwynharwyf, a paragon eladrin, is the consort to Queen Morwel, the ruler of the Court of Stars in Arborea.

Just to be clear: Gwynharwyf and Morwel are both she's?

Tom

The Exchange

Thomas Austin wrote:
Fake Healer wrote:

Thanks guys, this is what I sent to the player, cobbled together from all your posts, to help the player in question. Let me know what you guys think.

"Firstly, the Leader of your church is Gwynharwyf, an eladrin paragon (a humanoid from another plane of existance), who seeks to to support those who seek to rid the Material Plane of demonic influences. She is not actually a god, but you have 2 choices:

Gwynharwyf, a paragon eladrin, is the consort to Queen Morwel, the ruler of the Court of Stars in Arborea.

Just to be clear: Gwynharwyf and Morwel are both she's?

Tom

I made an assumption with Gwynharwyf but I think I remember the Leader of the Church being a female. Queen Morwel was posted by someone else on the thread who looked to be paraphrasing a Book of Exalted Deeds section, so I took it to be true.

FH

The Exchange

Fake Healer wrote:
Thomas Austin wrote:
Fake Healer wrote:

Thanks guys, this is what I sent to the player, cobbled together from all your posts, to help the player in question. Let me know what you guys think.

"Firstly, the Leader of your church is Gwynharwyf, an eladrin paragon (a humanoid from another plane of existance), who seeks to to support those who seek to rid the Material Plane of demonic influences. She is not actually a god, but you have 2 choices:

Gwynharwyf, a paragon eladrin, is the consort to Queen Morwel, the ruler of the Court of Stars in Arborea.

Just to be clear: Gwynharwyf and Morwel are both she's?

Tom

I made an assumption with Gwynharwyf but I think I remember the Leader of the Church being a female. Queen Morwel was posted by someone else on the thread who looked to be paraphrasing a Book of Exalted Deeds section, so I took it to be true.

FH

Interesting. I didn't know that eladrins rolled that way.


Interesting. I didn't know that eladrins rolled that way.

The interesting thing is that Morwel actually has two consorts - the other one is a male tulani eladrin named Faerinaal (he's the perceptive politician to Gwynharwyf's crusading warrior).

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This may be a dead issue, but I had similar problems concerning a cleric/barbarian of Gwynharwyf. The BoED does explain that the celestials do not grant spells, but rather petition higher powers to grant spells to clerics. Think of how Catholics (and others) pray to Saints or to Mary. They are merely asking them to intercede for them. Under these circumstances, I say let them worship any CG or NG deity or deities and pick any two of their domains. You might throw in LG gods too, but this is drifting from her chaotic nature. This would be similar to any cleric of the Azure Temple re the sea gods.

What I don't get is that the BoED then goes to say, in chapter 7, that there are typical domains associated with celestials and these will be described in their entries, but it never mentions them. I've read it several times and don't see it at all. It does mention some celestials assoiated with new or prestige domains in chapter 6. Am I blind or was there an errata?

Oh, and I did a double take when I read the consort thing too. Not that there's anything wrong with that, mind you, but this is the BoEd, not BoVD.

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waltero wrote:
Oh, and I did a double take when I read the consort thing too. Not that there's anything wrong with that, mind you, but this is the BoEd, not BoVD.

I think it's perfectly acceptable for the paragons of the sylvan races to be polyamorous. Think about it, as flighty as most sylvan creatures are protrayed would think anything different of the exemplars of Chaos and Goodness??? Queen Morwel having both a female and male consort would have nothing to do with the BOVD, as it's neither Vile nor Dark.

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