Cegilune

Cegilune was the patron goddess and supposed mother of the hags, as well as the goddess of similar fell folk and the moon. Still boiling with spite over an ancient crime, the dark lunar deity was driven by vindictiveness, clinging to her divinity only to exact bitter vengeance on those she believed betrayed her.

Description
Cegilune appeared as a filthy, hag with mottled, yellow-brown skin, iron-hard claws and a balding scalp from which patches of lank hair flaked off. However, her power to disguise herself meant she could take on a myriad of forms, her usual choice being that of a young human or elven female, a homely crone, or, very rarely, a scruffy goblinoid. She could be recognized when in disguise by the small iron pot she always carried with her.

Personality
Cegilune was a truly wretched being of malevolent will, deep hatred and sadistic desire. The suspicious and avaricious hag mistress was filled with resentment and planned to enact bitter revenge against a world that left her behind ages ago.

Powers
Cegilune's avatars had some of the dangerous qualities of ordinary hags; they had enough power behind their teeth and talons to rend flesh and could change themselves at will. They were immune to illusions, enchantments, poisons, and death magic, couldn't be harmed without greatly enchanted magical weapons and were barely harmed by acid- or cold-based attacks, although oddly they were vulnerable to petrification. They could create forcecages four times each day, kill instantly with their gaze twice a day, and unleash a banshee-like wail once every seven days.

As one might expect from a lunar goddess, Cegilune's power waxed and waned with the phases of the moon of the world she was on. In the case where a world had multiple moons, her power was tied to the one specifically associated with evil, and failing that the one with the shortest lunar cycle. At the start of the lunar cycle—namely the days before, during, and after a new moon—she was weaker, unable to use her death gaze, and had diminished magical resistance. At the end of the cycle, however—the days before, during, and after a full moon—both her spells and magical resistance were super-charged and on the specific night of the full moon itself she could cast a lunacy-inducing moonbeam spell.

Possessions
Cegilune had her own great iron cauldron within her lair that she often put souls and stolen magical treasures in to bring forth horrible evils. Her avatars carried their own small pots, each capable of producing four different magical effects once per day. Each could create 9–16 poisonous snakes, project a magical screen, throw up a web in diameter, and produce a vial of incredibly dangerous, strength-sapping poison that the avatar could coat her claws in, although it took a few minutes to kick in and wore off the talons after only a few claw swipes.

Her avatars also had small, beaded bags containing up to twenty hag eyes, the shriveled eyes of the hag's former victims magically treated to let her see through them at will from up to away. Like typical hag eyes, creating them was dangerous since their destruction would damage their creator, so they were carefully concealed around the perimeter of their activities. Similarly, Cegilune had a number of soul gems buried in secret places, each enchanted with powerful chain contingency spells, rendering her virtually indestructible under ordinary circumstances.

Divine Realm
Cegilune's realm was in the Gray Wastes of Hades, a dreary domain of endless misery. Ironically, the Wastes were without a moon or any other celestial bodies: it was simply a featureless gray expanse, a land of never-ending twilight offering neither the closure of dusk or the new hope of dawn. The wastes the embittered hag goddess called home drained the emotions and vibrancy from all that entered. The only known protection against the apathy being to hide and internalize one's emotions deep within the mind. Cegilune's lair was located in Pluton, the lowest layer of the Wastes, in a desolate pit known as Hag's End, halfway up a vast mountain of black, dead rock. From inside her filthy, bone-strewn cave crypt Cegilune stirred her vile brews under a small, glowing, hovering replica of the full moon.

Activities
In order to bring about her day of reckoning, Cegilune had to conserve and foster what was left of her reduced power. Her primary method of doing so was to collect soul larvae, a basic unit of power and currency in the lower planes, which she used for a variety of wicked purposes. She made use of their profane power to empower her hag servitors, expended them in dark rituals to create abominations to infest the Material Plane and traded them with liches and tanar'ri. The latter was because she required magical aid in order to sustain herself, as much as she resented having to do so.

Despite sending her night hags to collect larvae, Cegilune didn't trust her psychopathic underlings and enjoyed watching creatures die, so she frequently sent avatars to the Material Plane to personally capture evil souls for transformation into larvae. Cegilune also went to the Material Plane to visit a small number of stone circles and standing stones in order to conduct enigmatic magical rituals. She kept her activities at these sacred sites incredibly secret, placing hag's eyes around the area and having somewhere one to four night hags prowling the surroundings.

The rituals typically took place during the night of the full moon and were sometimes preceded by hunts where the avatar captured and rendered helpless a suitable sacrifice, such as a ranger, druid, fey creature, or swanmay. Swanmays were her favorite food, although a male human of formidable fighting prowess that she captured herself was also a delightful meal. She sometimes had a feast of flesh with a hag coven she was visiting to extract treasure or information from.

Relationships
Among the sylvan pantheon and sylvan beings in general, Cegilune was reviled, seen as a fearsome predator of faerie creatures that lurked in the darkness.

Though the great Lich-Lord Mellifleur once tried to take control of the larva trade from the night hags with an army of undead wizards, Cegilune's contingencies prevented even him from daring to attack her.

Cegilune had no real allies, only dealings with liches, demons, and some of the evil gods of giantkind. Supposedly she once coupled with Grolantor, contributing to his interbred stock of degenerate and runt giant breeds. She also had a herald in the form of a gigantic larva she called Ambrosial, a mindless, gargantuan maggot with a fat humanoid face buried under rolls of corpulence that she bred only for the purpose of expressing her wrath.

Worshipers
Though Cegilune was "worshiped" by hags, the homage shown to the hag mother was no form of loving adoration. In fact, most hags despised Cegilune, fearing she would demand the information and magical items that they rightfully stole, a fear they were correct to have. Though the hags enacted her dark will by bringing suffering to mortals, they were cruel entities that enjoyed tormenting others and were unlikely to acknowledge powers greater than themselves. The only reason Cegilune was able to prolong her own existence was through magic obtained via soul trade and enforcing worship of herself through power.

Cegilune had a particular relationship with the night hags with which she shared a plane and the potentially related annis hags. She ruled the night hags of Hades with an iron fist, forcing them to collect soul larvae for her while remaining indifferent to their wellbeing. Additionally, despite being egotists even by hag standards, the strength-admiring annises were the most likely to acknowledge those stronger then them, and tried to appeal to Cegilune for selfish gain since she could potentially be sympathetic towards their situation.

Rituals
Cegilune's places of worship were small, gruesome shrines kept by her devotees next to cauldrons and eating areas. Each night, her worshipers praised her virtues at length while cursing her enemies, escalating the profanity until the night of the full moon closest to the winter solstice, whereupon they would each perform sacrifices in an attempt to devote the greatest torturous agony to her name. She had clerics, who typically contacted night hags when using planar ally spells.

Hag covens with a worshiper of Cegilune as a member could also create a Brew of Cegilune's Blessing. By using a bloodstained idol of Cegilune mixed with bits of each coven mate's flesh, a noxious potion could be created that transformed the drinker into a fiend for a week, albeit at the cost of a permanent loss of vitality afterwards.

Rumors and Legends
Cegilune was thought to be related to the other sylvan deities in some way, and was allegedly Titania's sister, although given the existence of the Queen of Air and Darkness, this claim was somewhat suspect. There was definitely some relation between the two, with a widely held belief, even among gods, being that Titania and Cegilune were as light and darkness, and that to destroy one was to destroy the other.

Others claimed that Cegilune was simply a supremely powerful night hag with god-level powers, and it was also purported that she was the mother of the night hag race. Some theorized she had gifted them with the ability to create altraloths so that they could maintain their dominance over the Gray Wastes, although given her apathy towards them this tale was often discounted.

Moonrise
Given that hags were a race of narcissists with a penchant for deception, any claims regarding their history were self-aggrandizing interpretations at best and blatant lies at worst. Still, a myth held for the longest time by ogres and hill giants—which given Grolantor's supposed dalliances with Cegilune were at least notable—potentially gave some hints regarding the true nature of Cegilune and the hags.

When the world was dark and young, the fearful races prayed for protection from things that haunted the night, and in response came the existence of the moon and the queen to rule its light, Cegilune. Worship of the silver-haired beauty, said to be as fickle as the moon itself, quickly spread across the world to many races, and the moon goddess received much fear and love from her worshipers.

Cegilune adopted as her daughters those followers who constantly courted her favor, the most pious and physically pleasing priestesses whose attractive forms reminded Cegilune of her own. To them, Cegilune gifted powers to further her glory. She granted her prophets the power to walk on water to spread her word; her evangelists, called "songs", were granted beautiful voices to compel others to worship; and her protectors the strength to protect other followers from attack.

Moonset
However, the indulgent Cegilune made the mistake of growing complacent in her status, basking in worship while rarely expending the effort to assist her followers. Only when her supposed eternal beauty was marred by her first wrinkle did she realize this miscalculation, as besides her devout daughters, all her former worshipers had moved on. The deities of distant lands were able to appeal to those embittered by the moon goddess's vanity and neglect, who took pride in their divine patrons and the power that came with their new allegiances.

The moon goddess's good sense was eclipsed by a thirst for blood and vengeance when faced with abandonment and mockery, so she sent her remaining daughters, now aged and weakened by the waning of her worship, to enact a crusade. They slaughtered hundreds of her former worshipers, but this too was a massive mistake on Cegilune's part—she was in no position to conduct a war, with her her and her daughters outnumbered by new deities and their devotees, and she was already lacking a source of new divine power. Thus, her holy war lasted for a brief yet horrible time.

Cegilune's tantrum only served to cement the world's contempt towards her, as well as exhaust her stored divinity, devastating her beauty and leaving her a weakened crone. She retreated to the darkest, loneliest pit in existence, and her remaining daughters fled to the darker reaches of the world. Cegilune's bitterness and hatred were infused into her divine blessings, turning the prophets, songs, and protectors of Cegilune into the first sea, green, and annis hags. Thus did Cegilune begin to brew her wicked schemes, planning revenge for the indignation she suffered at the hands of the countless mortal races and the usurper deities that took her place as the goddess of the night.

Appearances

 * Video Games


 * Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor