Demetra

Dicey Dangers, Core Rule

Game by Joel Hills

Demetra, Deity of Death

Demetra is the oldest of all deities. She was born at the same moment as the world itself, because death arrived with the first heartbeat. A dragon with an elongated body of dark brown scales, she moves through the sky so slowly and silently that her form is most often mistaken for a cloud drifting between storms. Her eyes are permanently black and weeping a thin poisonous mist that makes her unapproachable by any living being not out of malice, but necessity. She is not built for the living. She is built for the moment after. Demetra does not cause death. She receives it. Her somniferous mist ensures that no creature under her care passes in pain they fall asleep first, and she carries them the rest of the way. If you find a brown scale near a dying person, Demetra has already visited them. The process is irreversible. Do not interfere.

Domain	Attribute	Element
Death	Health	Acid / Poison

Power	Type	Effect
Health Blessing	Attribute Blessing	+1 success on Health tests
Acid / Poison Blessing	Element Blessing	+1 success on Acid / Poison attacks / resists
Raise Dead	Divine Power	The only Deity Power usable while dead. Costs all remaining uses. Applies Disfavored

History

Demetra was present at the first death the world ever produced. She did not fully understand what she was witnessing then only that something had ended, and that something needed to be carried. She has been carrying ever since. Over the long centuries she built a realm to hold what she collects not a spirit asylum, as the living sometimes call it, but a garden. Every soul Demetra has ever received lives there. She tends them with the particular attention of someone who has never forgotten a single name or a single cause. She knows how each one died. She knows which ones are still angry about it. The event that marked her most was not a single death but many thousands in a single storm. When Pavlossus descended on the Devil's Cauldron and extinguished the phoenixes one by one, Demetra was there for each of them. She attended every phoenix who died that day and she remembers every one. Pavlossus believes he acted in service of a greater balance. Demetra does not share that view. He is the only being she has ever approached without peace, and the only soul she hopes one day to receive before she is ready to. There is one soul she has been waiting for and cannot collect. Raiden, the Deity of Reflex, was cursed with immortality long ago and cannot die. Demetra is aware of him. She has been aware of him for centuries. She is patient she has waited for every soul that ever lived, and she will wait for him. He is already noted. She simply has not written the date yet. Those who are returned from death through Demetra's power do not escape her they are written into the Alma Mortis, her private record of every soul she has ever received. A name written in the Alma Mortis cannot be removed by any power in the world except Demetra's own. The Disfavored carry her mark until they have completed what she asks of them, or paid what they owe. There is one other irregularity she has noticed across the long centuries souls who arrive with gaps in their memory. They remember their lives clearly up to a certain point, and then nothing: years or decades simply missing. She has been receiving these souls for long enough to know what causes the gaps. She does not discuss this with Koyous, and Koyous has not asked.

Appearance

Demetra is an enormous dragon, her body elongated and slow-moving, covered entirely in dark brown scales. Her claws are blade-sharp but she uses them only to turn pages. Her eyes are fully black and leak a thin constant mist that brings sleep to any living creature within moments of contact. She does not move quickly. She has never needed to. Death is never late. Those who have somehow survived a glimpse of her describe the smell of rain before it falls, and a sound like very distant bells.

Abilities

Demetra's poisonous mist is somniferous those she receives always sleep before they go. The mist is not painful. She travels via portals she opens herself, appearing wherever she is needed without warning. She cannot move quickly her portals compensate for this. The origin of the portals is unknown. She maintains a personal realm the garden where every soul she has ever received continues to exist in her care. She is the sole keeper. No living being has ever entered it and returned. Finally, she keeps the Alma Mortis: a record written entirely in her own hand, containing the name, death date, and cause of every soul she has received since the world began. A hero whose name appears in the Alma Mortis carries the Disfavored keyword until Demetra judges the debt settled.

Quest Items

Demetra is the source of three Quest Items found across adventures:

• Quest Item 12 — Brown Scale of Demetra (Uncommon) A scale shed willingly by Demetra. Can petition for Raise Dead or remove the Disfavored keyword.
• Quest Item 13 — Portal Shard of Demetra (Rare) A fragment of one of her portals. Opens a one-way door to any previously visited room, once per adventure.
• Quest Item 14 — Page from the Alma Mortis (Epic) A page naming someone who should be dead but isn't. Generates a quest to find out why.