Deity Drop 10: Hshurha
It’s time for another one of the Elemental Lords, and this time we’re dealing with the evil elemental lord of air, Hshurha!
As I’ve mentioned before, the “evil” elemental lords are the way they are in part because of the emotional connections mortals give elemental forces, so it’s not entirely her fault that she is the way she is, but that is cold comfort for her victims.
The Duchess of All Winds represents the fickle aspects of air, how the weather can change in mere moments, and how powerful winds can be invisible but deadly killers, whipping up sand into sandstorms, knocking the unfortunate from high places and more.
Thus, Hshurha is a wild and capricious being with a deep-seated disdain for all solid, visible, and flightless beings which borders on the irrational hatred mortals might express towards insects.
It’s easy to see, then, why such a petty creature as her would agree to the plot that sealed away her counterpart Ranginori inside the Untouchable Opal alongside the other goodly elemental lords, and how she claimed a vast territory in her home plane and proclaimed herself the ruler of it’s entirety even if her actual control was but a speck in that vast infinite sky.
And it’s also easy to see how livid she would be that her territory and followers dwindled with the freeing of her rival and the restoration of the metal and wood planes. While her schemes are not as far-reaching as Ayrzul or Ymeri, she is a vicious and jealous tyrant nevertheless, and a cunning and inscruitable manipulator.
By some estimations Hshurha doesn’t have an appearance per se, (and she’d be quite offended by the insinuation), but she does have a form, which is commonly agreed to be that of an airy feminine humanoid with horns whose body transitions to clouds and wind below the waist. However, as she is naturally invisible, this form is only ever rarely glimpsed when her windy body passes through visible gasses like smoke or fog.
Her personal realm is the Verglas Precessional, an airy castle centered over a black darkness with a gravity all it’s own, with most of it’s walls and floors invisible to the naked eye, and even large gaps in the floor here and there. The palace is notoriously and deliberately hard for gravity-bound mortals to navigate, and shifts at her whim, and many a mortal has fallen into the darkness below to her cruel delight.
The vast majority of her worshippers are various forms of air elementals, particularly the naturally-invisible phades, all of whom revere her as a mother goddess. What rare cults of hers on the material plane tend to revere her as the personification of mighty winds as dangerous and primeval forces, as well as for her association with espionage and manipulation.
The Duchess of All Winds has at least a professional respect and rivalry with the other elemental lords, though none more strongly than Ranginori. Supposedly she has formed accords with deities like Set or Norgober, but any alliances she has are temporary at best, even with the jaathoom genies that rule much of the plane.
Naturally, her various servants are almost entirely made up of various forms of air elementals, particularly those that are vindictive and hateful of mortals, such as phades. However, with Ranginori’s return, her hold on such minions is becoming more and more tenuous, and some, like the elder elemental Shanaria, have broken away completely.
Hshurha holds sway over the Air, Destruction, Evil, and Weather domains with the Fear, Storms, and Wind domains, reflecting her fickle and destructive nature and mastery over all things wind.
Her Second Edition domains are meanwhile air, cold, destruction, and dust, so adding a bit of other atmospheric phenomena, but otherwise mostly the same conceptually. Meanwhile, her clerics gain access to spells of powerful gusts of wind, summoning elementals, and transforming oneself into a gaseous state.
Sadly, Hshurha was never given the attention to get her own obedience abilities, but we can assume they would be all about emulating her wherever possible.
As far as I know, Hshurha has not been mentioned in Starfinder, though Ranginori has, so it can be assumed that she’s still kicking around, and likely has cults on any world that has strong weather or dangerous winds.
That will do for today, but we’ve got one more entry this week, tapping back into the elven pantheon!