Appearance

To the living, Haldora takes on the visage of a walking nightmare. A large and naked obese woman, whose putrid grey skin hangs off her bones in bulging folds. Her exposed breasts ooze acidic poison that smolders and burns the ground she shambles over. Maggots and carrion slither where hair should be. Her forked tongue darts quickly forth from dry cracked lips, tasting for the spirits of the living.

She is often seen with a large white vulture at her shoulder. It is said that vultures in the land of the living act as her eyes and ears, picking at the flesh of the dead to collect the fresh spirits to bring their mother.

Tenets

Five things a follower of Haldora should do:

1. Cause dishonourable death to all spirits by any means; through poison, assassinations, manipulations, and the like.

2. Cause others to become lost, physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

3. Take tokens from those you have defeated and bury them to tie them to the land, and anchoring their spirits to the Deadlands.

4. Use fear and horror to test the weak, the young, and the misshapen. The weak are to be given to Haldora through sacrifice.

5. Thin the veil between life and death. Engage in mysticism, find lost things, and encourage other to speak with ghosts and spirits.

Five things a follower of Haldora should not do:

1. Show fear yourself. Embrace it and turn it into a weapon against others.

2. Grant anyone an honourable death for any reason, outside your own defence.

3. Kill or harm those society deems outcasts, simply based on their appearance.

4. Tolerate the beautiful. Instead employ your skills to destroy, scar or maim.

5. Turn away those innocents that society has shunned.

History

Haldora, the Mother of Nightmares, was not always a hideous creature of fear and disgust. She was destined to be the mother to a new race of savage gods, long before she claimed the Deadlands as her home. Haldora was created from a golden acorn but stolen by her son, Sverin, in an attempt to relieve his eternal boredom. He grew tired of her quickly and convinced her to enter the now empty halls of Valhalla, where the spirits of valiant warriors waited for the end of times. Seeing the spirits of the dead in need, Haldora embraced them. Unbeknownst to her, Sverin had tricked Valdr, the God of Valour, telling him that Haldora had broken into his home and was consuming the essence of the dead he had sworn to protect. Valdr, in a fit of rage, dragged Haldora, kicking and screaming, to the edge of the Bifrost bridge. Haldora tried to explain her actions to Valdr but his ears were deaf to her pleas. He cast her down into the nothingness of the void between realms and, in doing so, sealed her fate for eternity.

When Haldora awoke next she was in a dismal world of greyness and misery. She was banished to the Deadlands, a place where lost spirits roam the vast, unending wastelands. Her body became twisted and distorted. Her heart swelled with rage and hatred. She claimed this land as her home, vowing revenge on those that had ruined what should have been a life of love and tenderness. Still, even beneath the disgusting horrifying creature she had become, there remained the need to nurture. Haldora embraced this parental instinct, taking in creatures unaccepted by society. The horrible twisted monstrosities, the outcasts and the misshapen, all call her mother and seek her putrid embrace.

Celestial Heaven: City of the Echoes

Unlike the other Celestial powers, Haldora has no need for an army of servants that rescue faithful Spirits from the Black Tide. Instead, lost Spirits of all kinds, including those who worshipped her in life, are drawn from its black waters and into her Realm by the pale Ghostlight of the Wayward Lamp. Situated at the border where her domain bleeds over into the Deadlands, this rusted and pitted iron edifice both guides and empowers the truly lost and forsaken, granting them the strength to draw themselves from the Black Tide and onto her shores.

The pale lantern’s light protects her lost children as they painfully trudge through the muck of the Deadlands toward the fortified wall that encircles her Celestial Heaven. Unlike the city beyond, the wall itself is of solid construction and bustles with activity. Fearsome celestial Naga command armies of lesser Spirits atop its battlements, who constantly scan the horizon for any threats. While Haldora herself is more than a match for most Spirits that could threaten her lost children, some of the powerful Manes and the much feared Ajaunti ancestor clans are even a threat to one such as The Hag. If given half a chance, they would swarm her Heaven and crack it open like an egg so that they might feast upon the countless vulnerable Spirits within. Virtually all of her martially inclined followers are sent to man the walls here upon their deaths.

There is but one passage through this wall. Easily twenty metres in height and five metres in length, the Obliterator’s Gate is two rectangular slabs of rusted iron easily three feet thick. Intricate spellwork not found anywhere else in the Realm is carved into its surface, and its dark glyphs promise utter annihilation to anyone that would attempt to force ingress through them. The children of Haldora, however, have nothing to fear. When a suitable number of these lost Spirits have arrived before the gate, its guardians will command it to be opened, and the Spirits will make their way into the lost city proper.

The City of the Echoes is a pale imitation of a once great civilization. Its towering spires and perfectly ordered streets imply that a certain kind of genius was once at work here but no longer. The city’s days of glory are long behind it. Everything that looks as if it was built by mortal hands is on the verge of collapse, yet, it does not crumble. Although the wood supports and stone foundations of its many structures are worm-eaten and crumbling to dust, they ultimately refuse to yield. Those Spirits captured by the Wayward Lamp are thus forced to try and make a life here, although it is not much of one. There is little kindness or gentleness to be found in the city anywhere outside the Orphanage, and most of the city’s residents live in squalor while they compete for what little resources remain within its walls.

Realms Within the City of the Echoes

• The Orphanage

This otherwise unremarkable three-story building is the personal demesne of Haldora herself. Surrounded by a magically warded wrought iron fence, the Orphanage is perhaps the one place in all of Haldora’s Realm that could be described with positive attributes.

The interior is utterly enormous in scale, for Haldora’s magic has multiplied the space inside its walls a thousand-fold. Millions of relatively well-appointed and clean rooms house Haldora’s countless misfit monster children. The Hag attends to them all individually, showering them with love and treating them all with fairness. They want for nothing. Food, companionship, entertainment, all this and more are provided for without any muss or fuss.

While she rarely deigns to do so, on the rare occasions that one or more of her spoiled children have gone too far and need to be disciplined, she summons them to her throne room. A half-rotted mushroom cap serves as a cushion atop what a very charitable observer might call a throne if someone had a knife to their throat. Slime, bone, and stinking peat moss have been forced together into a rough chair-like shape. The rest of her throne room could hardly be called regal either. Ancient treasures worth a king’s ransom sit buried beneath piles of filth, and the light cast emanates from softly glowing vulture skulls that hang from the ceiling.

• Nifelheim

In the farthest reaches of her Heaven lies a land so grim and depressing that only those to whom she granted her favour in life are actually truly capable of appreciating it. Called Nifelheim, this pocket realm was stolen from one of the now-dead Einish goddesses and is the destination for all who died dishonourably or worshipped Haldora in life. It is a land blanketed by an endless grey fog that stifles nearly all the senses. There is no light, no warmth, no food, and no companionship. All this is, are the fog and the ground beneath your feet.

It is a realm designed for a singular purpose, the inducement of pure, unadulterated suffering. Calling it torture would not be correct, for that would imply a level of attention given that is simply not present here. If the Orphanage is Haldora’s matronly instincts made manifest, then Nifelheim is her neglect. The suffering of those who would otherwise be closest to her in deed and thought is harvested to feed those she truly cares for, her lost and forsaken Orphans.