With the blessing of Baristaava, the roaster’s beans exude a flavor celebrated by both coffee novices and aficionados alike. Even years after learning the delicate art of preparing the seeds of the Quoquo tree, bean roasters struggle to earn her favor. She may be honored by roasting beans in small batches in a solid gold pan. In truth, she will only give her blessing if the roaster burns their own flesh on the hot pan before filling it with beans.
Trophy: The Sisters
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Bakers leave a drop of oil in every corner of their kitchen to ensure Sister Sufgonyot imbues their fried dough with bouquets of sumptuous flavor. Some bakers do this daily, but all bakers do it when they have a major undertaking like a wedding or coronation cake, even though it is common knowledge Sufgonyot prefers fried treats. In fact, in ancient times she was the patron of oil expeller pressers, not bakers. The tradition started as a memorial to the first army to lay siege to Old Fort Duhrin, who fell when the defenders poured boiling oil down on them.
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With most statues of Ota, the clockmaker’s saint, she stands with one finger raised, perhaps to punctuate the time or point to the sun. Horologists honor Ota by putting a small gear over the finger, like a ring. They’ll keep this gear polished to a shine, fearing that an unhappy Sister will spoil their mechanisms. According to the myth, she emerged from the desert in the Ruhlota Wastes, gifting the nomads there the very first gear and spring mechanism. The truth is the nomads invented the clock mechanism themselves, to determine the pattern of Ota’s visits when she would capture and feast on someone’s soul. This process kept her young while aging the victim.
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Sisters Patricia and Erika, literal and religious sisters, patrons of oppressed and insurgents, venerated wherever people struggle against organized tyrrany and suffer unjustified hardships. Their main place of cult is a relatively unknown Chapel of the Lakes found at the edges of Ambaret. For reasons seemingly forgotten people offer teeth in Patricia and Erikas honor. Their secret however makes it pretty clear: toothless from countless organized street fights, these brawny sisters were common occurrence in towns around the region, brawling for money, beating men and women to a pulp. Money, they claimed, was being raised for good cause but very few dared to ask what cause exactly that would be.
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The Sister of Agony is the patron saint of those who try to heal, whether they’re successful or not. Those who follow her find beauty in her glistening, bloodsoaked visage and pay tribute to her by taking the impossibly sharp knife found at her shrines and cutting themselves with it, leaving their fresh blood for her in case she needs more. The Sister of Agony teaches her adherents there is no healing without pain … and she ensures there is plenty of suffering for all.
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As one other note, I played The Flocculent Cathedral with Jim during GauntletCon, and he referred to a Concordance in the Cathedral itself which listed all of the Sisters and the crimes they committed which resulted in their presence (for lack of a better word) in the Cathedral. I hope that can get worked in somehow when working on the section about the Sisters. 
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From a land far off, a traveler hunches in Milnen’s Tap in Fort Durin. For a drink they’ll tell you of a far off sister of the stars who watches over the darkness in all of us. Before you go they hand you a copper crescent and mutter “Nia drink this kindness in and have satisfaction.”
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The Humming Woods know only one Queen, but they’ve seen Sisters come and go. Sister Anpeth of Sweet Words. Sister Dunyajk of Easy Birth. Sister Ellyellun the Paper Thin. Most of these names have been forgotten. Only the Sun-Striped Clade, beloved devotees of Sister Mephera, walk the woods now, wreathed in soporific smoke and traveling in bumbling paths, incense tracing strange patterns in the air in their wake. Members of the Clade may be identified to outsiders by their blackened hands, scarred and dense from holding the burning braziers without protection. Mephera offers all the protection they truly need.
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-Sister Livinia
-Patron saint of travelers and traders
-Hundreds of small shrines to Livinia line the roads of the realm. Though they vary in design and depiction, every one is based around a small but functional lantern. It is a grave indiscretion to pass an unlit lantern without topping the oil reservoir and relighting the wick.
-It has become a game, spotting the roadside shrines. Each has a name, though different to many. -Each has a story, be it legend or familiar. Points of safety. Beacons in the night. These roads are the safest in all the kingdoms. The blessing of Livinia for certain. Pragmatically, the very presence of light along with the simple act of vigilant observation helps prevent beasts and highwaymen catching Levinia’s travelers unaware. The blessings of The Sisters take many forms.
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No one speaks the name Yadyck anymore, the sister of the forest loam. Her followers rich mulch is sprinkled across their fecund fields, but none will share in their silent harvest.
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Sister Vestra is the patron of fishermen, sailors and all whose livelihood is bound to the ocean. Many sing to her for protection from storms or to call the fish to their nets. Some coastal settlements honor her during the festival of Greentide with elaborate offerings bound in woven effigies. Few folks question why some ships are spared while others seem to run aground upon the very shores of those who worship her. After all, they say, the sea must have it’s due.
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To venerate Saint Sinestra is illegal in most cities, as her daughters are famous for being pickpockets and cat burglers. Some cities try a different approach, giving orphanages extra coin for each girl they take in, to avoid any falling to the streets and into her church. Still, her followers hardly struggle for recruitment, though they never take adults - and no adults are ever seen among their number. In the church, there’s a rumor that you “ascend” when you reach majority, which mostly seems to mean having a dream, gathering your most prized takes, and giving everyone the slip to walk into the woods alone.
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Agnitti, the Patron Saint of Lost Children, is mainly worshipped by the close-knit communities near Kalduhr. In these homes and villages near the dark woods, they celebrate the Feast Day of Agnitti by wrapping ribbons around the trunks of old trees that will lead the lost home. Lost children who’ve returned home will often talk of ribbon trails that led deeper into the forest, and the dim lights of distant torches following the paths.
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Sister Caite, patron of wet-nurses and milk-siblings, is honored by new mothers collecting their milk and offering it to a neighbours child. While today she is called upon to help mothers and babies in need, less is known about how she kidnapped the children of struggling mothers to raise as her own.
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Saint Aceroe, commonly called Sister Stinkhorn, is the patron saint of mushrooms, dung sweepers, and pawnbrokers. It is said, in life, she was a dyer of fabric, known for fabrics whose colors were so vibrant they evoked ecstasy in any who gazed upon them. The final, lost color Aceroe created was so powerful a local constable murdered her to possess the fabric.
On Sister Stinkhorn’s feast day, devout followers eat a small bit of psychoactive mushroom and try to recreate the lost color of Aceroe.
Darker legends have it that Aceroe discovered a shade of amber that could take over minds and that her earliest followers were a cult of zombies created by a monk wearing robes of that very color.
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We all know the low things that follow death: the maggots and the carrion beetles and the vultures. If observed, it’s apparent that they have complicated rituals and procedures for dissecting a corpse, unknown to us. These rituals venerate a sister, with a name unknowable to people, whose existence is known only because some farmers following lost livestock have seen a bald woman watching them, clothed in a drab grey robe that crawls over her form like maggots over a 3-day-old corpse.
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Sister Valencia, also known as the Lady of Repose, is the patron saint of philosophy, scholars, and thoughtful contemplation. Though wise and knowledgeable, she was not given to answering questions; however, she was known to spend her days listening to supplicants presenting their theories to her and then asking a single question that would enlighten the supplicant and cause them to tear their treatises in twain and start anew. In more modern times, it is a rite for all serious scholars to burn a copy of their most recent work before starting a new one. Scholars whisper in hushed tones about who among them she will find unworthy and condemn to backbreaking menial labour rather than the career in the arts they each see as their due.
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It is great cause of sorrow in the formerly prosperous market town of Avayyal that their beloved Teccla was adopted by the Guild of Torturers as the sisterly object of their veneration. Throughout Kalduhr very few shrines dedicated to her have not been desecrated by, most people assume, resentful members of the populace, possibly from among those unfortunate enough to have been subject to the attentions of the Guild. But there are some who whisper that it is, in fact, the Torturers who deface the effigies of their patron, as one of the secret rites performed during their rare conclaves.
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Sister Amser. The patron saint of wayfarers, Sister Amser is said to meet the lonely and weary in their times of greatest need, sharing with them her fire and food and a little mulled wine. Devotees of the wandering sister take great care in their preparations for the road so that they might not out of foolishness deprive another of Amser’s comfort. Amser’s faithful are known by their black, waxen cloaks, funearal attire that wards both the elements and the loss of beloved companions, so that no more will be lost to the forest–as was the saint’s sister so many years ago.
Sister Anamartia is the patron saint of redemption and penance. Her ardent followers are marked by their burgundy robes, and the black masks that prove they bear no witness to sins past or present, pursuing their tenet to guide sinners to an ever more righteous path. In chapels devoted to her, it is common practice for the congregation to wash their hands in blood, an act meant to symbolically hide their sins. Usually sheep’s blood is used, but her priests are known to bleed any animal that is available to perform the right. Due to her popularity with criminals and other unsavory folks, she has been known as the Mother of Sinners going back to the very first texts. Scholars are uncertain if there is any connection between mentions of Sister Anamartia as the Mother of Sinners and another more shrouded figure known as the Mother of Sin.
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