Chauntea: The Great Mother, the Grain Goddess, Earthmother (Greater Deity)

Symbol: Blooming rose on a sunburst wreath of golden grain Home Plane: House of Nature Alignment: Neutral Good

Portfolio: Agriculture, plants cultivated by humans, farmers, gardeners, summer

Worshipers: Peasants and indentured servants, druids, farmers, gardeners

Cleric Alignments: CG, LG, N, NG

Domains: Animal, Earth, Good, Plant, Protection, Renewal

Favored Weapon: A shock of grain (scythe)

Chauntea (chawn-tee-ah) is as old as Toril itself. Hers is the divine spark that gave life to the natural world, the vibrant, caring spirit infused with the planet at the moment of its creation. Originally a deity of wild places and animal life, Chauntea has grown with her world, changing and adapting to its many developments. The millennia have taught her patience -- to the point of being at times ponderous. Chauntea loves the inhabitants of her world, and she likes nothing more than instructing Toril's denizens on how the land itself might enrich their lives. Hers was the hand that guided the first mortal wanderers to give up the uncertainty of the gatherer for the stability of the field. Today, Chauntea is worshiped as the Great Mother of agriculture, the kind benefactor who ensures a strong harvest, healthy meals, and robust country living.

Chauntea rarely manifests herself in physical form, preferring to diffuse her essence throughout the living land of Toril. Religious icons depict her as a matronly, middle-aged woman with pale white hair and a welcoming smile. She wields a sturdy shock of grain as both walking staff and weapon, on the unusual occasions in which she finds herself in battle.

Worshiped by farmers, gardeners, agricultural slaves, and any who make their living off the land, Chauntea is seen by most Faerunians as an integral part of the natural cycle of life. Wealthy landowners and simple farmers alike come to the local cleric of the Earthmother for advice on bringing in the harvest or in setting next season's crops. When foul weather or disease leads to blighted fields, growers turn their gaze and prayers to Chauntea in hopes that her attentions will salvage the seasonal yield. Those who subvert the harvest for ill ends have much to fear from Chauntea's servants, who take their role as pastoral protectors very seriously.

Chauntea's clerics and druids pray for spells at sundown. The clergy holds few organized holidays, instead instructing the faithful to give thanks to Chauntea at every sunrise, and in every moment the natural beauty of the world fills them with joy. A long-standing tradition within the church holds that a newly wedded couple should spend their first night together in a freshly tilled field, which is said to ensure a fertile union. Fertility plays an important role in the Chauntean faith, and a hedonistic celebration during Greengrass encourages excessive drinking, eating, and uninhibited behavior. The clergy observe solemn High Prayers of the Harvest during a ritualized annual ceremony coinciding with the start of the harvest. Chauntea's clerics most often multiclass as rangers or druids.

HISTORY/RELATIONSHIPS: Chauntea is on of the oldest Faerunian deities. Shar and Selune predate her, having given her life when they created the world of Toril. In the ensuing millennia, Chauntea has forged passionate relationships with several deities, many of whom no longer exist in any meaningful form. So too has she battled (and even destroyed) deities who schemed to befoul Chauntea's world. Some of her worshipers claim that Chauntea is the progenitor of all the mortal races, that the creatures who populate the world first emerged from her womb in the days when the air was quiet and the earth was still. In those early centuries, Chauntea was known as Jannath the Earthmother, a wild deity who ran with animal packs and rejoiced in the unhindered growth of wilderness. Though the people of the Moonshae Isles continue to worship this aspect of the Great Mother, the deity herself has moved on, changing as the world changes.

In the last several hundred years, Chauntea has become enamored with the inhabitants of her world (particularly humans) to the point oat which she now focuses her attentions completely on helping them live off the land. She preaches a reverence for nature and urges the folk of civilized lands to repair what they have damaged, but she long ago ceded the wildlands to other deities. This development has led to a cooling of relations with Silvanus -- some of his more militant druidic worshipers believe that the Great Mother has betrayed herself and sold out the world to the all-too-rapid encroachment of civilization. Her ties to other deities, particularly Shiallia, Mielikki, Lurue, and Eldath, remain strong. She shares a fondness for Lathander that has at times become intimate, and the two deities currently spend a great deal of time together. Chauntea opposes Auril, Malar, Talos, and Umberlee, and she views the return of Bane as a dark omen. Talona, Lady of Poison, is the Great Mother's most hated foe, as her propensity to bring blight, poison and disease to the natural world fills Chauntea with great fury.

DOGMA: Growing and reaping are part of the eternal cycle of the most natural part of life. Destruction for its own sake and leveling without rebuilding are anathema. Let no day pass in which you have not helped a living thing flourish. Nurture, tend, and plant wherever possible. Protect trees and plants, and save their seeds so that what is destroyed can be replaced. See to the fertility of the earth but let the human womb see to its own. Eschew fire. Plant a seed or a small plant at least once a tenday.