St. Melora

**Saint Melora the Huntress**, also known as **St. Melora Wildfriend** is a Filian Saint and the patron saint of rangers, hunters, druids, animals and seafarers. She bears a striking resemblance to the ancient nature goddess Melora who is still worshipped by the Kalnozemes. Saint Melora is depicted as a beautiful elvish woman with auburn hair, variously clad in hunting leathers and in a clear white dress with a green cloak. In iconography, she is almost universally depicted with a seashell, in reference to the legend of her final voyage to Monsammelore. She is often accompanied by various animals, specifically a white deer, or with various small fey creatures. Depictions of Saint Melora often hold a bow.

Saint Melora's main shrine is on the monastic island of Monsammelore in Southern Hespial. Those living a religious life in accordance with her teachings often seek unity with nature through seclusion, and are rarely found in large population centres (although parish churches are commonly devoted to Saint Melora in wooded areas). The church has consecrated a number of forests to the saint, decreeing that none shall touch these sacred woods. The order of the Friends of the Wild of Saint Melora is an order of rangers and druids dedicated to their protection.

## Hagiography

Saint Melora was an elf born in the Heartwood to a noble family. A prodiguous huntress, she sought to protect her family in her youth from predators, but as her skills grew, she longed for a challenge. In a dream, she received a vision of a white deer, commanding her to hunt the creature. Leaving her home and her beloved behind, she set out in search of the animal, and hunted it across the length and breadth of the continent. In the deep of the woods, she came upon the creature, which led her across the boundary into the Immortal Realms and revealed itself to be a messenger of God in the form of white-haired eladrin or angel. He commanded her to take up her bow in defence of God's creation, and to live in harmony with nature. Then he took in his hand a seashell and put it to Melora's ear, asking her to remember its sound, for where it was would she find her love and her final rest.

Melora returned to the Material Realm and roamed its land, protecting the balance of nature. At one point, she negotiated the peaceable relationship between a human town and a direwolf who was terrorising the townsfolk, rendering the direwolf docile and asking the townsfolk to feed it. There are many more "Flowers of Saint Melora", tales of her intercession between the children of God and nature. Finally, as she was growing old, she heard the sound the angel had given her again, and was drawn to the sea on the southern side of the continent, tracking it down to a rocky island off the coast of Hespial. There, on what is now Monsammelore, she settled down, until the end of her days, living in close unity with nature and through it with the Immortal Realms and God. Some say she sailed off into the south for days on end, always returning to Monsammelore praising God with a smile on her face. She died on the mountain, where monks came to live as hermits, establishing a monastic community and building a church in her honour over her gravesite. The tree that grew over her grave forms the centre of this magnificent church, its arms reaching up to its domed glass ceiling, forever remembering a woman who was one with God through nature.