Saint Xiaoyu is the patron saint of planners, those who demarcate roads and create spaces and places. The opening of any path along the land, whether a dirt path between squalid towns or a cobblestone road laid down in the city, must be dedicated in her name and honoured with sacrifice. It is said that those who die by vehicle collision or roadside accidents have been executed by Xiaoyu’s will.
Trophy: The Sisters
The small and elitist Guild of the Bookbinders owes its existence to St. Amelia. Their industrious patron and true guardian of knowledge is claimed to have come to Ambaret from a distant island. Amelia brought with her nothing except from a sturdy brass needle, and is said to have slept only four hours a night for all her life, working until all her fingers bled. Her books, as beautiful as long-lasting, contain ancient history, magic formulae and laws penned by the best scribes of the time. Apprentices complete their education by donating their First Vellum, an empty book, to the cause of St. Amelia. Only the Bookbinders are to know that the spine of the First Vellum has to contain a stripe of the apprentice’s skin before considered worthy by Amelia.
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St. Erisse is said to walk the places at the wayside, between, and atwixt. She watches over travelers, vagabonds, and forgotten wanderers. You pray to her when you cross a threshold, a boundary, or border. You burn fragrant incense when embarking on a voyage to gain her blessing, or let a drop of blood and swear an oath when you lose sight of the road. You ignore her voice in your mind when she softly whispers for you to join her; to join her in her court of unwinding halls, to wander eternally with the rest of the forever lost.
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St. Bier, parton of lost causes, draftees and bastards is not well respected. She came to holiness during the 100 days of rule by the Profane Pretender, when the bastard son of the dying king bullied his way to brief power with the acquiescense of religous radicals and the support of the town bands. Bier (whose name is unknown) was a young woman who the Pretender claimed as a holy muse. Struck with an assassin’s arrow, she lingered, carried on a bier of sticks by the Pretender’s ragged army, dying. In her last days her fevered touch cured wounds and eased the pain of the deluded commoners who flocked to the Pretender’s banner before his eventual defeat and quartering at the hands of the hierarchy and nobility.
An apostate saint, Bier is honored in woodland shrines of mud and sticks and on crude pewter medals around the necks of conscripts. She is said to intercede often, but her gifts are weak: easing suffering but never averting death. Her worship is secretly fervent among the guildhall bands - the rich burghers disguising it as that of less heretical saints - noting Bier only by arrow and branch designs on altars and ikons.
The four chosen sisters stand, apparently sculpted by water from the red sandstone walls of an arroyo deep in the Mahai’i Desert. Among the smooth curves protruding from the dry walls you can just make out the forms of four hooded women, their heads bowed together in prayer. When the walls wet with rain, their faces glow wetly red, and their tear tracks are the last to dry in any drought. No humans venerate them, but red marrow of fresh cracked bones is almost always present at their feet, left as offerings by the scavenger canids of the area. The arroyo itself is home to ancient foxes and coyotes, fed by the elk who wander down in search of water in dry months.
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