The Torch Mother

The Torch Mother is a relatively unknown goddess. Her acolytes consist of mystery cults scattered around the world. Their activities usually take place in cave, mines, or other underground spaces. Such places are adorned with mirrors and crimson tapestries. Rituals are conducted under the light of a single torch and feature polyrhythmic percussion. These rites include trance dancing until the dancer collapses, psychoactive plants, and droning string melodies intended to draw the audience into a hypnotic state to commune with the Torch Mother. Worshippers generally prefer their body be dumped in the sea. Her worship is criminalized in many jurisdictions due to her follower's anti-authoritarian tendencies.

The Torch Mother appears as a walking corpse of a beautiful woman with long black hair and a dark red dress. She carries a torch of bound oak leaves that burns ruby red and gives off no heat. Her skin is pallid and her lips are blue. Her back is dark with settled blood. Those who claim to have seen her state that her eyes only reflect her torch and shift color constantly.

The Torch Mother is associated with monsters, criminals, prostitution, and death. For this reason, many of her followers live outside the law and polite society.

The commonly accepted story is that the Torch Mother was a goddess of love, beauty, and fertility. She was worshipped in many cultures and held in high esteem by other gods. This changed with her pregnancy. At first many celebrated, for such a lovely goddess must produce an equally lovely child. Cyridia kept silent, noting the unnatural way her protruding belly shifted. The Torch Mother fled to a cave to give birth alone. From her womb came draconic fiends, writhing oozes, beasts that were amalgamations of other animals, unsettling humanoids, and an assortment of other monsters. Despite her attempts, the gods traced the monsters now terrorizing humanity to her. They demanded she put down those of her brood that had not yet left the cave where she nurtured them and that she tell them who fathered such a horrid lot. The Torch Mother refused both counts, asserting she wouldn't harm her own children and wouldn't let their wrath fall on her lover. In a rage, they drown her and struck her old name from the minds of mortals. Yet, they could not kill her, so they banished her to a realm of eternal gloom with a single torch to light her way.

She considers the girls warped by Project Second Sun to be her daughters and is manipulating Thallia to rescue the two girls held in the Drelvyndor Catacombs by the Golden Hand.