Neiya

the Eternal Lover

**Neiya** is the conceptual goddess of love, heartbreak, and broken relations.

Caught up in the sorrow and grief that results from mortal and immortal actions, and stricken with the tragic tales of unrequited and lost love, the goddess watches from her realm of tears, meddling in mortal affairs to cause and prevent sadness in equal measure.

## History

In the beginning, before mortal life and thought, the goddess was but a thought swirling in the Lifeblood, influenced by the personalities of her future brothers and sisters.

## Personality

Neiya is a troubled goddess. She partakes of all the world's heartbreak, unrequited love and loss, and it has left an immeasurable mark on her very being. She wishes nothing but joy upon the mortals, her fellow kin, and even herself, yet she cannot help but accept that happiness is a rare glimmer in a river of hurt.

Easily likened to a permanent depression, she languidly does her part to impart a positive image on the world, but cannot see the positive for long. She is easily enraptured by the simple love of mortals, but is just as easily stricken with agony at seeing it end - as she knows it will. A seemingly perfect love is anathema to her, and she will no doubt attempt to meddle out of sheer divine envy. Even so, she is not openly malicious, nor does she inherently wish harm upon the world. It is simply the eternal cycle for love and loss to inspire equal amounts of pain.

Despite all this, her constant ambition is to see the world populated with a just and harmonious love, not unlike that found in a story-book, and she cries as she imparts blessings upon the world, feeling the agony of those who suffer.

## Domains, Portfolios, and Realm

### Domains

*DOMAIN OF LOVE.* The folly of mortals is eternal, envious and infectious. Most, if not all, are eventually overcome with a strong desire to be with that certain someone that surpasses the physical and superficial. A loyalty and passion borne out of trust, intimacy and perhaps even a fickle taste of fate. The gift of love for another is to share your life, to care for someone else, the ultimate sacrifice.

Yet for each moment of happiness such bonds create, a thousand moments shatter the illusion. Unrequited feelings, heartbreak, deceit, loss. The pain and misery caused by love is comparable to that of a weapon. It ends lives, steals happiness, and drains energy from it's victims. It is a cruel, addictive drug that no one man or woman can ever hope to escape. The lies, the failure to understand, and the one that got away. It all ends in misery. It is pain, raw emotion, longing, hatred, suspicion, and nostalgia for what once was.

*DOMAIN OF WAR*. To sit idle is to allow others to pull the rug out from under you. The only way to make sure that what you get what you are owed, to stem the suffering others would inflict upon you, is to take what you can. War is an unavoidable and necessary fact of mortal life, and an exercise of natural power both physical and mental. Those who improve the world do so by putting it under their boot, and those who fall inspire others to take up the cause.

Neiya views war as a tool to further the self, and a natural process used to get one's way. She inspires animosity, blesses mortals with advanced tactics and strategies to achieve victory, and crushes the opposition with brute force. War, like love, is unstoppable when waged correctly.

#### Love Portfolios

*PORTFOLIO OF DEVOTION.* The truest form of love is a burning loyalty to another; be it a cause, a person, or a concept. To sacrifice the importance of oneself to safeguard or further the agenda or wellbeing of another. It is the curse that forces mortals to be blind to the truth, to ignore warnings and throw themselves headlong into danger. It diminishes them and places another thing on a pedestal - something that captures their self-preservation and reason - for as long as they continue to feel such strong emotions it.

The beauty of it should never be forgotten, the choice to devote yourself to someone else - and in that manner it is ever bittersweet. Neiya will bless chivalrous courtship, the bond between master and servant, even religious ecstasy that grounds itself in genuine love.

On the other hand, devotion is all too often unhealthy, unwanted, and dangerous. With no mind to suffer the charades for longer than necessary, Neiya inflicts suspicion with a whisper, offers doubt with a breath, and breaks the strongest bond of trust with a clench of her jealous fist.

*PORTFOLIO OF SORROW.* Not all experiences are positive. The end result of a caring relationship is often the loss of a treasured partner. Many events in the world conspire to ever push ever greater sadness, grief and mental injury on mortals. Neiya finds sorrow to be the natural result in the cycle of affection that is love, trust and kinship. As such all matters that deal with loss, grief and depression fall under her expanding power - especially when it pertains to matters of love. Sorrow can however be found in many forms, and as a natural progression of the mortal emotional state, Neiya considers it an important part of their life and experience; a transformative and powerful emotional state that sets them on a new path of experiencing and building new relations.

As such not all experiences of sorrow are negative. It can be used to build experience, to recall and adjust for the future, or simply to honor what once was and draw upon powerful feelings for another to continue the vicious cycle of affection.

Neiya uses her power to inspire perspective in others through shared misery and grief, as well as lightening the burden of those in great emotional pain or distress. Sorrow is a tool and a natural part of mortal life, as such she administers and removes it with an equal hand.

*PORTFOLIO OF ENVY*. To want what others have, and feel desire based on your surroundings, is a powerful motivator. Different from jealousy in that it centers on being dissatisfied with your own lot in life rather than guarding what is already yours; envy as a concept of love is a fickle and ever-changing ideal - a need to improve and judge your own success based on how those around you live and thrive. It is, in essence, a type of egotistical love of the self, at the expense of the success of others.

Neiya uses Envy to inspire desire for other people's happiness in an individual, whether that be coveting their items, their skills or social position, or their partner.

#### War Portfolios

*PORTFOLIO OF TERROR.* Fear and dread are ingrained in all but the most delusional of mortals. It inspires respect, guides self-preservation, and warns of danger. But it can be manipulated. Like all things, it can be wielded as a weapon; directed as a tool to assault your opponent on another front. At it's most extreme, fear is irrational and crippling. It inspires surrender, or panic. It becomes something more; terror.
As such, for Neiya it is a natural aspect of war - beating the enemy on a level beyond the martial: crushing their morale.
With this portfolio, Neiya influences fear, terror and dread as both a tool to be wielded and as an emotion to be controlled. She can inspire and remove panic, give someone else the means to manipulate it, or advance the understanding of how to spread or counteract it.

*PORTFOLIO OF WRATH.* The centrepiece of war, and any other conflict, is the capability to act. At the core of all frustration, force, and will to hurt, is the same kernel of emotion - Wrath. To win, one must be willing to act with no regard for the safety of others, to take for yourself without mercy. Fury, anger, irritation. They all stem from a desire to imprint on the world your own will.

Neiya inspires Wrath in others to allow them to channel their wrath and make their mark on the world, whether that be by berserker rage, growing brute force, or destructive capability.

*PORTFOLIO OF CUNNING.* War and conflict cannot be won by brute force alone. A rampaging predator will succumb to its wound, a fighter will get tricked, and an army will get outmaneuvered. Cunning draws on the mental aspects of war and other conflict, as opponents try to outwit each other and destroy the other without direct conflict. It represents trickery, wit, and the ability to find the upper hand in a struggle.

Neiya uses it to endow mortals with critical and opportunistic thinking, letting them seize the advantage as it appears. By the same vein she can occlude obvious solutions, and leave a mortal dumbstruck on how to proceed in their most dire need.

### Realm

*REALM OF THE THOUSAND RIVERS OF TEARS*. The realm of Neiya is a morose image of unnatural beauty. An endless plain with sparse vegetation dominated by a single, recurring river.

It is said among mortals that peering into the waters will reveal all the sorrows that result from their actions - and enrapture them to let the stream carry them away.

The Thousand Rivers of Tears is a very cold realm, and the waters are painful in their chill.

## Forms

### Base Form

Neiya was brought into the world appearing as a pale young woman with hair the color of platinum and icy blue eyes eternally raw from the pain of sorrow, her cheeks eternally stained with markings to signify her pain. On her head rests a crown of finest silver embossed with crystals that pulse and blink with icy light.

That is where the ties to mortal appearance ends. From her head sprouts six black horns, and likewise from her shoulders sprout ridges of black bone; an endless tangle of horns that grow, twist and squirm. Beyond the shackle clasped around her throat, she does not cover her form.

The air around her is cold and unpleasant, and she inspires sorrow and grief with her ever distrustful gaze.

### Domain Forms

In her own realm the goddess of love is portrayed as a gigantic representation of her base form; Neiya normally appears twice the size of whatever she deigns to meet. Draped in regal finery drawn straight from the culture of her onlooker, the black protrusions on her shoulders twist and grow into long vines that move and operate independently of the goddess - like bony tentacles that ensnare and pull victims closer.

## Relations

### Cadien

Neiya and Cadien shared a touching and peaceful moment, bonding over the emotional trauma suffered by a group of humans.

## Creations

### Artifacts

Sorrowsting

Lover's Gift