Goddess of Blood, the Forgotten, Moths, and Vampires. Creator of the Shadowfell. Patron of the Shadar-kai. Icon.
THEH-cluh, Rhymes with “Mega.”
Thecla, also know and the Lady of Blood, is a Goddess of the pained and the forgotten. A deity in her own right, but one more so revered than worshipped. Thecla was born a mortal, long after the immurement of the Demiurges, and was a holy woman. She was born a commoner, and betrayed by her family, who sold her to a cult of hedonistic nobles for but a month’s taxes. The nobles abused her in everyway imaginable, as they did with all their subjects. Eventually, they tired of her, and during a debauched dinner party, slit her throat in front of the guests and tossed her from the balcony down a cliffside. Miraculously, she survived, owing her salvation to Totec, the God of Life. She soon after devoted her life to Totec and performed righteous acts in his name. Still, she sought vengeance against her abusers.
One day, she received a vision from Samson, or who she thought was Samson, the God of Justice, who offered her a shard of the divine flame of Brigantia, claiming that Totec had blessed the act and asked Brigantia to spare a portion of the flame for the deed as a cleansing ritual. Samson was to deliver it in order to deem the act as one of holy justice. The flame turned her into the first of the vampires, a keenly powerful soul as it were, the flame made her physically powerful to match. She single-handedly tore through the cabal of nobles, doing to them what they had once done to her, and making them know it was her before she did. She left their villa in ruins, with nobles impaled on spikes and scepters, hanging in the dining halls and dungeons and from the sides of buildings by their necks, hands, and legs, slitting their throats and tossing them from the balcony, and more. She was successful in her vengeance, and freed the other slaves in the act, but it came at a cost.
As if a karmic retribution for her sins, the false flame burned her from within. It did not kill her, Prometheus was much more into suffering rather than death, but it did leave her disfigured, numb, and blinded, afflictions she lives with even now as a Goddess. The visions of Samson and Brigantia and Totec faded, replaced by spiritual darkness in her blindness. In reality, they were visions cast by the false flame of Prometheus. Totec reappeared to her, but only to deal out punishment, as his chosen, he couldn’t kill her, but he would imprison her for all eternity. Blinded and starved of the sensation of touch, the void that would be her prison would be as empty as her being.
Thecla occupied her mind by attempting to recreate the Feywild and the material realm and, in the process, created the Shadowfell. An amalgamation as well as a corruption of both planes, the Shadowfell gives off an eerie, uncanny tone of strange near-familiarity. Thecla has since become the Goddess of the Forgotten, as the Shadowfell is home to dead empires, demolished cities, and forgotten cultures alike. Those who die without anyone to remember them or a home to call theirs after death may wind up walking the Shadowfell forever. She is chief deity to the Shadar-kai, whose cultures have long been forgotten since they ended up in the Shadowfell.
Thecla’s blood would become the holy font from which all vampires would be bore. Unable to feel, Thecla was unaware of the moths drinking from her flesh. With little else to eat in the Shadowfell, the moths drank of her blood and when they bit others, the bitten would develop afflictions similar to Thecla: an inability to feel warmth due to the flame taking Thecla’s with it, a sensitivity to sunlight, as it emits energy born of the true flame, the enemy of the false flame, and razer teeth and thirst for blood, meant to mark the afflicted and make them outcasts. Still, Thecla views her status as a holy one, unable to believe that Totec had abandoned her, and instead gave her the power to force justice upon her abusers, even though they both knew it would mean she would need to be punished. She was willing to receive whatever punishment she would, and is content with her place in the Shadowfell amongst the forgotten. Thus, not all vampires are evil. Many are, as the main result of Vampirism is shunning that leads to madness and a thirst for retribution, but there remain several who worship Thecla as a savior and protector of the weak, as a holy Goddess of good who implores her subjects to use their power to carry out good deeds. Churches dedicated to Thecla are often seen as heretical and are subject to persecution, leading followers to operate in secret.