Baaldra

Sovereign of Hall and Hearth.

Lore pending

This page carries Baaldra’s strictures and little else. The wider lore of her faith — her shrines, her festivals, her clergy, her place among the Sovereigns — has not been written yet. What is here is complete and canon; it is simply not the whole page.

Baaldra is venerated at the cooking-fire, not the altar. Where other Sovereigns are served with rites, Baaldra is served with a meal: her traditions across every people teach the healing herb, the cauldron, the kitchen, and the ward set on the door. Her followers learn Traditional Medicine and the Healing Arts; among the dwarves they keep the secrets of brewing; among humans and gnomes they cook, and the food carries the love that went into it. Her spells run from Salving Rest to Home Ward — rest, healing, warding, and the making-safe of a place where people gather.

Traditions that teach her: the Dwarven Forgepriest, the Gnomish Iconologist, and the Antiquarian — each asking more of its followers than the last.

Her worship day is Sar, the week’s end, when the day’s work is done, the household gathers at the hearth, and the dead who once sat at it are remembered.

Strictures

Baaldra’s three traditions ask different measures of their followers, and each builds upon the one before it. Find your own tradition below; it tells you what it adds to those above it.

Dwarven Forgepriest

• A follower of Baaldra must always display a holy symbol of Baaldra somewhere on her person when in public.
• A follower of Baaldra must tend a hearth each day, cooking for at least one person other than herself. Where she has no companion, she must set aside a portion for the next traveler to come. Tending the hearth requires one hour (6 turns). On Sar, Baaldra’s holy day, she must spend at least two hours (12 turns) preparing a feast.
• A follower of Baaldra must never refuse food or shelter to one who asks it in need, so long as she has any to give.
• A follower of Baaldra must never do violence to a guest at her hearth-meal, nor beneath a roof where she herself is a guest, save to defend a life.

Gnomish Iconologist

An iconologist of Baaldra keeps everything asked of a Dwarven Forgepriest above, and further:

• A follower of Baaldra must obey the eldest keeper of her hall in all matters of the tradition.
• A follower of Baaldra must grant guest-right to any who ask it of her, in need or not, and to any she takes beneath her roof. For three days she must provide her guest food, shelter, and care as she would her own household; she must do him no harm, nor by her inaction allow harm to come to him, unless he first breaks the guest-right himself.

Antiquarian

An antiquarian of Baaldra keeps everything asked of a Gnomish Iconologist above, and further:

• A follower of Baaldra’s guest-right has no end. What the lesser traditions grant for three days, she grants for as long as her guest keeps faith with it: she may not set him out, withhold her provision, nor raise her hand against him, though he stay a year and a day — unless he breaks it himself.

Breaking the guest-right

The guest-right binds the guest as well as the host, and a guest who breaks it releases his host from every obligation owed him. A guest breaks the guest-right if he does violence to his host, to her household, or to another guest beneath the same roof; if he steals from the hall; or if he betrays the hall or its people to their enemies. A guest who has broken it may be cast out, denied, and — if he has earned it — answered in kind.

Guest-right is not owed to one who takes it by force or enters unbidden and unseen: it is granted, or it is asked for and received. A thief in the night is a thief, not a guest.