Great Lady Under Earth
The Great Lady Under Earth was a goddess of ancient Kaherne, daughter of Shamash, king of the sun, and Suen, queen of the moons. She began as a goddess of harvest, a life-giving deity much revered. For reasons now forgotten, however, she fell from grace and descended into Ashra, the underworld, where she became queen of the dead, caretaker of all dead souls. The death-priests and necromancers of Kaherne paid her homage with blood sacrifice, incense, and complex rituals where they tried to communicate with the beyond.
In the dismal halls of the underworld, the Lady's heart grew heavy; she had loved the light, but was doomed to darkness and gloom for all time. Sorrow turned to bitterness, until, bit by bit, all that had once been bright inside her crumbled into ash. It is said that she took three husbands, including Shál, Lord of the Winds, in a vain attempt to again know love and laughter. But they all abandoned her to return to the earth's surface, until she surrendered to her dark grief. She might have been the one who brought The Death on Kaherne, and the one who called Toldoth to the world. Some sources claim that she and Toldoth warred over lordship of the earth, with Toldoth defeating her and taking her as its wife, ruling supreme over the underworld. In truth, it might be a more equal relationship; the destruction and death wrought by Toldoth's designs certainly serve to convey more souls to Ashra's bleak shores. Even so, the goddess is by all accounts as just as she is cruel, and upholds her duty as custodian of the dead unfailingly.
Since the end of Kaherne, so very long ago, cults of The Lady have been few and far between. She was revered for a time in the Great Realm of the Goblin Kings, where no mention ever was made of Toldoth, but since then her memory has gradually faded into obscurity among all but the Ogre Mages and the many undead and necromancers of the world. Still, she's known to scholars and priests, and her name seem to retain much of its old power. For she is the queen of the dead, and all living things will eventually pass through the shadows of her kingdom.
She has, of course, a real name; Ereškigal, but few living beings dare speak it. On occasion, she is referred to obliquely, by invoking the old name for her underworld, Irkale. But even in the days when men still lived in Kaherne, most chose not to risk naming her for fear of incurring her wrath; she was instead referred to simply as "The Lady", or "Great Lady Under Earth"; the true meaning of her name. In the most ancient sources there is a goddess named Allatu, which might be her before her fall.
The vast desert east of dead Kaherne is, even today, referred to as the Garden of Ereshkigal by the tribes of the area. They claim that it was once a lush, beautiful and pleasant land, that the young goddess loved so much that she ripped it from the very foundations of the earth and brought it with her in her descent to Ashra, where all its beauty soon faded to dust.
It is thought that her domains are death, undeath and earth. Her symbols are an obsidian dagger, crystals, clay tablets with her true name in cuneiform, bowls of bloody water, canophic jars filled with mud, and mummified children. She is Lawful Neutral.
