Avandra
Though a popular deity, Avandra’s faithful boast few temples. Rather, small shrines are the norm, often hastily constructed at city gates, ports and sky docks. As the goddess of luck, Avandra’s favor is often invoked, though such appeals are as much cultural as they are religious. Her worship is particularly common among halfling tribes near Yondon, but her wandering clergy have spread Lady Luck’s blessings far and wide.
The priesthood of Avandra serves Nerath as scouts, explorers and messengers. A fair number of Avandran faithful become adventurers, their wanderlust tempered by a desire to do genuine good in the communities they visit. The clergy as a whole lack any dominant political power, but the common folk adore Avandran priests, who are seen as bearers of good luck. As such, while they might not have an overt authority, the Nerathi government is wary of any interference with Avandra’s chosen.
No central authority unites the Avandran clergy. Instead, orders of priests cluster around the famous, the powerful and the pious among their number. Some orders only last until the last original member passes away, while others have legacies stretching back to Imperial times and before. Instruction and investiture are necessarily idiosyncratic, with each individual priest or order deciding what makes a candidate worthy of the priesthood.
Avandra’s faith is common among adventurers, divine and otherwise. Clerics are by far the most common divine class empowered by the goddess, though her faithful boast a fair number of paladins. Avandran avengers are rarer, and less welcomed by Nerathi authorities. Their more extreme views regarding personal freedoms have led them to (sometimes violently) oppose Nerathi law, particularly during the war in Ahkas. As such, they are less likely to be registered adventurers, an idea which strikes them as somewhat perverse to begin with. Rarest of all are Avandran invokers; Lady Luck dislikes the heavy-handed nature of invokers and eschews the direct involvement necessary to empower them. Occasionally, though, she sees fit to do so, as it is a more direct intervention while still maintaining her commitment to allowing mortals to take care of their own problems.
