I'll do a pass for spelling errors and the like tomorrow. For now have this, the product of.... Inspiration... [i]*shivers*[/i] [hider=Sala][center][h2][b][color=f5f4d7]SALA[/color][/b][/h2][/center] [center][i]The Loving Tyrant[/i][/center] [center][h3][b][color=f5f4d7]ASPECT: SALT[/color][/b][/h3][/center] What comes to mind at the mention of salt and its goddess? A kindly woman bringing seasoning for food? Perhaps a healer or guardian cleansing a place in fact or spirit? Or maybe a callous crone bringing rust and decay to the armaments of warriors and the tools of masons? Whatever is imagined, it is incomplete. Sala is all these things, and more. She is the embodiment of all salts, those greedy crystals that hunger for water and can be found almost anywhere one might think to look. She is a being of vast variety, for all mortals associate her with the barest fraction of her dominion. Recognized or not, within her dominion Sala is a tyrant who commands her element in its totality. She alone determines how salt moves through the world, in the sea, the life that rises out of it, and in the markets where that life peddles the good. Able to manifest vast quantities of her aspect as easily as breathing, Sala is ever managing the intricacies of how living things use salts in their bodies, how those salts flow and disperse through the ocean, deposit on land, and how they move and ossify in the deep earth below. [center][h3][b][color=f5f4d7]PERSONA[/color][/b][/h3][/center] It is good to be loved, but much better to be needed. Sala is, above anything else, possessive and covetous of the attentions and love of the Monarch, her peers, and indeed all the life upon the world. Immensely concerned by her own perceived weakness and faced with deities who command the very aspects of Heat and Cold, Sala imagines, without much difficulty, a world where she is supplanted. A world that does not need her. To the Goddess of Salt, nothing could be so deeply unacceptable as that. An eternity spent as an afterthought, alone but for the passing notice of greater beings, would be no better than everlasting torture. As such Sala contrives to make herself vital, irreplaceable, and desired. From flooding the ocean with salt to ensuring that life itself cannot easily exist without her, Sala seeks to have her name on every tongue and her presence in every mind. Still, even Sala would agree that an eternity spent on nothing but grasping at the attentions of others would just as surely be one not worth living. Once others have come to need her, or even love her, Sala is among the more generous and communicative deities in the Monarchs pantheon and her willingness to come to the aid of mortals is known. Rather, it is infamous. There is no doubt that Sala will answer a prayer sent, so long as enough share it, as her vulnerability to flattery is well established. Unfortunately, the few prayers shared by enough mortals to attract Sala’s attention tend to be directed against other mortals. As such Sala is a known destroyer of civilizations and lives. For all she desires others attentions and affections, Sala has never been afraid to shed blood. As she might say, those who survive will love her all the more. Those who are dead, will be dead. It is easy to forget that salt and its goddess are ever greedy for water, and what is blood but that with a few additions? Certainly, even in war Sala is no reluctant participant. She is, when satisfied that her name is being carried on the briny ocean breeze and spoken in the cities of mortals, more than willing to engage in battles as little more than a pass time. It would be wrong to say that she [i]especially[/i] appreciates violence, however. Sala merely enjoys the extremes that the world has to offer, and wherever things are pushed to their limits she can be found watching or nudging things in whatever way she might find interesting. Expeditions, savaged and nearly broken, have found themselves arriving at their goal by tracking streams turned salty. Sailors at the very edge of death have found themselves blessed to drink salt water, though perhaps for longer than they’d have asked for. Sala is a keen observer of adversity and strife, but any that find themselves under her attention should be wary. The Goddess of Salt is generous with her gifts, but they cannot be taken back. Her generosity is only vast provided it is never spurned. Those who reject hers, even for practical reasons related to a scarcity of salt water to drink on land, may well find themselves unable to ask for or reject her gifts ever again. Sala has, occasionally, permitted outright refusals of her gifts, but to accept and have a change of heart? That is perilous for mortals and divine alike. [center][h3][b][color=f5f4d7]PREFERRED MORTAL FORMS[/color][/b][/h3][/center] Sala often appears as a vividly coloured mortal with hair, skin, or feathers being bright pink, blue, yellow, or even a flawless white or pitch black. Just as salts are immensely diverse in color and appearance so too is the deity of their aspect. When in mortal form the Goddess leaves evidence of her presence in the form of thin dustings of salts deposited wherever her feet land [center][h3][b][color=f5f4d7]TRUE FORM[/color][/b][/h3][/center] In her true form Sala is a crystal figure surrounded by a vast cloud of innumerable colors and sorts of salts condensing onto and evaporating from her body. In this form every movement she makes shatters her body and sheds huge chunks of salt, but in a moment these losses are replaced by fresh crystals donated from the cloud around her. While Sala takes pride in her true form, the unfortunate proclivity of mortals to burn to death when in a permanent cloud of gaseous salt has made her assumption of this form a rarity. Given the way Sala’s true form tends to poison everything around her while simultaneously burning it, few of her peers encourage her to change that habit.[/hider]