Category:Church of Hala

The symbol of Hala with 13 snakes devouring each others' tails.

The Church of Hala worships Hala. It is a mystical faith loosely based on modern, real-world paganism and witchcraft practices.

Centers

The Church of Hala does not actively recruit and thus is not the major religion in any domain. However, it has hospices for the needy and sick sprinkled throughout the Core.

Beliefs

Creation Myth

The Church's sacred text, the Tales of Ages, tells of According to Halan tradition, it was a collective of nine deities that brought the world into creation from Chaos' mists. However, the other gods then stood back and left mortal kind to make their own decisions. Hala alone of the Nine Gods saw how mortals lacked insight to make the right decisions, so she came back to alleviate the world's burdens. To a cadre of 13 men and 13 women, she instructed the secrets of the Weave.^[1]^[2]

The Weave

The Church of Hala describes magic in a different way, a sort of universal weave. It is not clear if witchcraft or the Weave is something separate from magic powers elsewhere in the multiverse.

Members

Clerics of Hala are called witches, both male and female. However, in Van Richten's Guide to Witches, a Hospice of Healing Hands in Valachan maintains a group within the mundane functions of the hospice that separates the sexes into "witches" and "warlocks."

A witch is usually a magic user with hereditary or innate power.

Persecution

The Weave is also known as witchcraft and provokes widespread, superstitious fear. Witchcraft’s wretched reputation is largely due to hags, the most infamous practitioners. Although witchcraft is not inherently evil, it is thought to be rife with occult dangers. Exposure to witchcraft is thought to create calibans, and according to folklore, witches who lose control of their magic may be permanently transformed into monstrous hags. Hala’s witches often face hostility when beyond the doors of their hospices. Any witch of Hala unwise enough to encounter the inquisitors of Tepest, for example, should count herself lucky to escape with her life.