#ilmater

[anonbeadraws]

Illustration Commission of a Cleric of Ilmater for @vezenid. Won't you let her help you? 🩸

🩸Commission info🩸

[vivtanner]

I won't get rid of Ireena for you. 💔

Ionel's & Escher's blossoming friendship is a very brittle one.

[cleric-of-ilmater-and-sune]

Priests of the Faerunian Pantheon via "Faiths and Avatars"

Sorry I couldn't tag everyone. There's a 30 tag limit

[bhaalbite]

⛪ Barn owl inspired tav! Not obsessed with how the editing turned out on this one but oh well 🪽

[its-sixxers]

got a character sheet done for my tav at last!

if you can read draconic you can make a guess on what the ring is enchanted for :)

[ratscrap]

some ilmater worshippers

[unovafarm]

WIP Whenever for "Her Harper, His Sufferer" 🪉🩸

Thank you for the tags, @lucretiouswept, @cinder-rellish181, and @gortashsrighthand! ♥️♥️

I'm very happy to share another WIP from my Harper Geraldus/Nienna fic, "Her Harper, His Sufferer"! 🪉🩸 With this fic, it will be written and edited in its entirety before I share it on A03, where I'll then release the new chapter on a weekly basis. It means I won't have a full fic to share for a bit (the goal is to release this by the end of this year), but I'll have plenty of WIPs in the meantime!

Context: Geraldus has returned home after his night with Nienna at the Watcher naming ceremony. Panic ensues, as he is struggling to navigate his fear that she could be a doppelganger.

Content Notes: There are descriptions of strangulation and blood/bloodstains in this WIP.

Word Count: ~600 words

Enjoy, and I hope you love this glimpse into their budding relationship as much as I do! ♥️

Note: I do not use Gen AI in any of my writing whether in fanfiction or my posts, and I do not support Gen AI in any capacity.

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Geraldus descended the ladder in the back of Danthelon's Dancing Axe and stepped into the cellar where Entharl had converted the loft area into a bedroom for him, complete with a basic twin bed, a rug, a bedside table, and a drawer for his belongings. Since the confrontation with the doppelgangers seven months ago, Entharl (who never had children of his own) had become somewhat of a father figure to Geraldus, initially taking pity on him.

Over time, though, Entharl grew to develop a genuine paternal bond with Geraldus, diverting a portion of the shop's monthly profits towards making sure he was fed and housed, and that his equipment would always be in the best shape possible. Although Geraldus felt guilty about Entharl's help, he was grateful to have a safe place to rebuild his life and career as a Harper after the trauma he had survived.

Geraldus walked across the cellar floor towards the loft but paused halfway to look out upon the calm waters of the Sea of Swords, letting the cool salty air evaporate the sweat that continued to build across his face. He could still see a faint remnant of Chelvin's - no, the doppelganger's - dried blood on the floor in the corner, reminding him of a day that he both wanted to forget and to hold close to his heart for as long as possible.

On his first day as a Harper, he was stationed in Baldur's Gate to help High Harper Jaheira with tracking suspected Bhaalist cultists in the city, with orders to meet at Danthelon's Dancing Axe to receive his equipment. The first Harper he met there was Chelvin, an older halfling woman who immediately fulfilled that maternal role he deeply missed in his life after leaving the care of his mother in the Dalelands.

Chelvin quickly picked up on his visible nervousness and prepared some lavender tea for him, which he graciously drank while she offered him field advice and helped his nerves feel more steady. It was a happy memory that pained him to recall, as the memory would inevitably morph from nostalgic gratitude into the horror of seeing her strangled by the doppelganger as "she" smiled wickedly back at him.

It wasn't her bloodstains on the floor, but they would always remind him of how it felt to watch her die. The cellar held a lot of pain for him and likely always would, from being used as live bait to Jaheira almost kicking him out of the Harpers. And yet, the room also represented hope and new beginnings for him, because it was where he fell helplessly in love as he watched Nienna gently lay her hands across his abdomen to heal his battle wounds.

His Nienna. His eyes went wide with fear as his mind began to uncontrollably race. Jaheira confirmed several times that the Bhaalist threat was contained, but what if a doppelganger was taking revenge on him for killing the other doppelgangers that day? What if the real Nienna was in the sewers somewhere underneath the city, tortured and afraid, or even dead? Would Ilmater even allow her to get kidnapped? Would he allow a doppelganger to take her form?

He felt a visceral nausea that was tearing apart his insides. He needed to see her immediately. He had to make sure she was real. That she was Sister Nienna, not a doppelganger. He wouldn't even know how to discern if she was real or a doppelganger, but being away from her right now was causing pure panic to surge throughout his body. He needed his Nienna.

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Gently Uno-reverse tagging @lucretiouswept and @gortashsrighthand, and @cinder-rellish181, and no-pressure tags for @graysparrowao3, @scoldingdarjeeling, @meeshrox, @optimisticgrey, and @honest-moth-of-silver-grove ♥️ But please also comment if you'd like me to tag you in future WIPs for this work or if you would like to be removed from my tag list (no hard feelings if so!) ☺️♥️

[drowdreaming]

Doing some Ilmater research and I think it’s interesting that his morality wrt who is deserving of his personal saving seems to be dependent on the laws of the place an individual is being tortured, and that he will only extend that help to good-aligned beings. Which is conflicting of what he teaches his followers, as their dogma is to “help all who are hurt, no matter who they are.”

(Faiths and avatars, pg. 95, 2e)

WRT only helping good aligned creatures, you can play devils advocate for him here and read it as he is unable to posses neutral or evil aligned creatures? The wording of can chose could either be “he is only able to chose these creatures because that’s what his abilities allow” or it might have been a “talking to dm reading this book: he can chose these at your table because this is what he would chose” and obviously there is a big difference between those two statements. And I suppose it kind of makes sense, if you take it from a “well a god can only go out and do so much on his own, that’s what his followers are for- he is a good guy who wants to use his limited personal ability/time to save other good guys” standpoint.

But judging morality by local law regardless of a characters morality feels so weird for a god meant to be forgiving and built off self-sacrifice and protecting the needy and vulnerable. If the law says it’s okay for the guard to beat someone for writing newspaper articles critical of their corrupt leader, that beating is justified? He is supposed to kind of be DND Jesus I cannot wrap my head around that with an in-universe context. But I am possibly looking at this too hard/looking at this as an in universe issue when it’s really probably author bias.

Taking this out of game context and into the context of the writers intention. Now. This feels criminally Gary-gygax-esqe so I wanted to see if this was his doing but it doesn’t seem to be? Ilmater WAS first mentioned in 1e! But it was by Greenwood in a dragon magazine (#54) and that particular ability was not mentioned until faiths and avatars (afaik) which was quite awhile after Gygax’s time (written by Julia Martin and Eric Boyd.)The ability didn’t show up in future publishings of deity sourcebooks. Inch resting.