Faustina

Dicey Dangers, Core Rule

Game by Joel Hills

Faustina, Deity of Luck

Faustina is the last phoenix alive and the Deity of Luck. She is warm to the touch and her feathers ignite when she chooses. She blesses adventurers who take risks and curses those whose souls she finds wanting. She is described by those who have survived her as generous, radiant, and terrifying in ways they cannot quite explain afterward.

What they are sensing is the rage. It has been there since before she could fly. Centuries have not softened it; if anything, the length of time has made it more precise. She does not lose control. She does not need to. The anger is always available, always exact, and she knows exactly where to point it.

She was the only phoenix alive before she was old enough to know what that meant. She has had a long time to understand it since.

Domain	Attribute	Element
Luck	Luck	Fire

Power	Type	Effect
Luck Blessing	Attribute Blessing	+1 success on Luck tests
Fire Blessing	Element Blessing	+1 success on Fire attacks / resists
Second Chance	Divine Power	Reroll any one die. The new result must be kept, even if it is worse

History

Expelled from the rest of the world

Centuries ago, a race of gigantic birds with the ability of producing fire through their feathers lived in the volcanic zone known as the Devil's Cauldron. The area was hot enough to kill any other life form instantly. Phoenixes thrived there, but their nature was destructive: they left paths of ash wherever they flew, and the Devil's Cauldron was surrounded by forest and snow. Pavlossus expelled them from the wider world and confined them to the volcano until they could control their fire. They never learned. They were never going to learn. It was simply what they were.

A snowstorm at the Devil's Cauldron

Among the phoenixes was a family that had lived in the Devil's Cauldron longer than any other. Hernia and Gungnir, a couple who had been together for centuries without producing a hatchling. Hernia had watched other mothers teach their young to fly for as long as she could remember. Her nest had always been empty.

When snow fell on the Devil's Cauldron (impossible, inexplicable snow), the volcanoes began to calm. Gungnir went to investigate and found phoenix corpses throughout the area. A phoenix covered in flames dies the moment those flames are extinguished. The hail became a snowstorm. One by one, the fires went out.

Hernia's nest was in the deepest part of the volcano. She could not leave. And in the crisis, something shifted: she was finally able to lay an egg. She stayed with it while the storm strengthened and the world outside her nest went quiet.

A miracle

The snowstorm was the work of Pavlossus. Hernia knew this without being told. She stayed with her egg while her partner did not come home and the fire in her own feathers began to fade. She was dying, and she knew that too.

When her heart stopped, the hatchling was strong enough to break the shell. Hernia named her daughter Faustina with her last breath, and used what remained of her fire to light the newborn's feathers for the first time.

A phoenix's fire is strongest when it is a hatchling. Faustina flew out of the volcano and spread her wings at the summit, and the snowstorm stopped. Pavlossus was standing there: a buffalo, an enormous ox, the largest thing she had ever seen. She attacked him. She was newly hatched and she attacked the being who had just ended her entire species, and her fire burned through his fur in a way that nothing had managed before.

He retreated. She had made him retreat. She was alone on a cold mountain with the ashes of everyone she would ever have known, and she had made him retreat.

People witnessed this. They gave her a name for it (the patroness of those who take risks), and their faith made her a deity. She accepted the role. She understood it. She had taken the only risk available to her the morning she was born, and it had defined everything.

What she carries

The rage has never left. She does not discuss it and does not perform it. It lives in her the way fire lives in her feathers, always present, never wasted, ready when she needs it. Every fight with Pavlossus since that first morning has been the same fight. She does not aim to kill him, and he does not aim to kill her. They both know what the other represents. She is the consequence of his error. He is the reason she is alone. Neither of them can afford to remove the other entirely.

She has watched Raiden since the day a feather reached him at the base of that frozen volcano. She watched what it did to him: how it turned a centuries-long search for death into a centuries-long attempt at penance. She has not intervened in his life since. She gave him what she gave him. What he does with it is his own.

Appearance

Faustina is a humanoid bird with glowing orange wings. She wears a white dress adorned with gold patterns and ornaments whose shine, when she flies, creates the impression of a shooting star crossing the sky. Her size is imposing; she is larger than most beings she encounters, and her presence carries warmth that people feel before they see her. Those who get close enough describe it as standing near a fire that cannot burn you.

Her feathers are individually alive and connected to her. Each one that falls from her body retains that connection.

Abilities

Faustina can combust her wings and cover herself in flames that cannot be extinguished by conventional means. A power of equivalent scale is required to shut off a phoenix's fire. She can also breathe flames, though once they enter common ground the magical quality fades.

Her feathers are the most significant expression of her power. Each feather that reaches an adventurer reads their soul and responds to what it finds. If it continues to burn after they take it, they have earned her protection. If it turns to ash, they have not, and a series of unfortunate events will follow until they find a way to break the curse.

She watches every recipient. She adjusts nothing. She gave them a fair chance. What they do with the result is their own.