General Information/Religion/Nyvaella Idolotrists

From Westaven

Nyvaella Idolatrists

The Nyvaella Idolatrists are a spliter sect of the main Nyvealla worshipping body having come into existance some twenty years past. While the normal depiction of the Barren Lady's symbol is often very minimalistic, Nyvaella Idolatrists often carry a small idol carved from wood, ivory, or bone that depicts the torso of a very pregnant woman with swollen belly and large pendulous breasts. Since one of the tenaments of Nyvaella's faith states that no depiction of her is to display the goddess as pregnant, this sort of idolatry is frowned upon in some areas, as they feel it comes too close to depicting the goddess as pregnant.

Nyvaella Idolatrists have adopted the godessess' old symbol, the butterfly, to represent the change in thier goddess.

A popular, and often scandulous claim, rising from these Idolatrists is that Nyvaella was never a seperate goddess, but simply an often manifested aspect of Altuth, and that it is Altuth's rape by some unknowable god that caused the current and seperate goddess Nyvaella to spring into being when Altuth cast the Nyvaella aspect from her body in a fit of anguish over the rape. As such, Altuth no longer recalls her rape, and that burden falls squarely upon the shoulders of her cast out aspect Nyvaella.

Most believers of Nyvaella regard this claim as utter nonsense.

The Idolatrists are very much a mystery cult, their practices secret and the source of gossip whenever rumour of a cult of worshippers in the area arise. Most of the rumours are false, some are true. Idolatrists keep to themselves, meeting in secret and while being an Idolatrist will not get one thrown into a cell, some of the less careful worshippers can find themselves run afoul by blade or fist from any number of fanatical followers of the current incarnation of Nyvaella. Rumours of the practices of Idolatrists are rife, ranging from ecstaic orgies meant to renew thier maudelin goddess to her former glory, bathing in the blood of known rapists as a way to understand the current incarnation's suffering, to the torture of virgins and rapists, both seen as antithical situations to the past and present incarnations of the goddess.

Darker rumours whisper that the Idolatrists are the remains of a much older cult that arose during the goddesses' rape. When the goddess became known briefly as the Lady of Rape and Madness, some of the less stable followers of Nyvaella are rumoured to have formed a death cult around the new incarnation. Driven by their madness they committed countless atrocities in thier new Lady's name. These new Idolatrists are said to be simply a cloak pulled over the true cult and while they give the image of a simple public splinter group, the Idolatrists serve a much more sinsiter purpose to take the minds of men from the ways of a darker cult operating in the Lady's name. As the Nyvaellan's quibble over idols and particulars, the Cult of the Lady of Rape and Madness goes about it's much darker works. Abduction of women, children, and men. The whispers make the blood run cold, as tales of infants being cut from the womb of those with child to be sacrificed to the Lady, along with the brutal torture and rape of men, women and children.

These are the rumours tossed around. All may be true, none may be true. The Idolatrists may be exactly what they seem.