Diancastra

Diancastra was the giant demigoddess of wit and pleasure, a minor trickster deity of the Ordning. A goddess of many faces, Diancastra won her place among the giant pantheon through her daring, craftiness, and carousing ways.

Description
Diancastra had several forms, from a tall giantess of big-boned visage to a  tall, slender elf maiden. However, she could always be recognized through two physical features: her green-flecked amber eyes and a sea-green streak of skin along her left shoulder-blade.

Personality
The mythic tales of Diancastra's youth revealed several aspects of the wily giantess's character. She was brave to the point of foolishness, impudent and even arrogant, although she did make preparations and carefully disguised herself. She would taunt proud but stupid foes to enrage them and drive them into traps, namely those of illusion. She also enjoyed worldly pleasures and physical gratification, drinking to excess for example, and these enjoyments generally had the additional benefit of furthering her own success.

Powers
Diancastra had a diverse array of magical abilities at her disposal. She could cast charm person (including on giants) through her gaze up to a few hundred feet away six times a day, which was particularly effective against males. Any sentient that looked directly in her eyes would be affected as if by the rainbow pattern spell, allowing her to telepathically implant a suggestion. She herself was immune to fear and confusion.

In terms of physical abilities, Diancastra could freely breathe underwater, water walk, and could cast water spells at the level of an incredibly powerful wizard. Her skin was enchanted as if under the constant effects of the stoneskin spell, which if dispelled would renew itself in ten minutes.

Possessions
Diancastra possessed an enchanted necklace that was capable of generating black pearls with an assortment of magical properties. A number of new pearls could be made each week, with effects lasting somewhere between 20-40 days. She also owned a serpentine owl and a broom of flying.

Divine Realm
Much like the giant deity Skoraeus Stonebones, Diancastra had no realm of her own in the Great Wheel cosmology and instead simply wandered.

Activities
Diancastra was always drawn to such opportunities as learning more of magical illusion and obscure legend lore, and obtaining bardic magical items, all the better if such opportunities were provided by reasonably handsome males.

Relationships
Diancastra's father was Annam and her mother a mortal giant (often assumed to be of cloud or storm giant lineage), making her a half-goddess much like her elder sister Hiatea. It was said that Annam granted her demigoddess status only because the one way he might return to the world would be for his despair to be lifted, specifically by further demonstrations of her spunk and wit, yet being as willful as she was, she continued to keep him waiting.

Diancastra was disposed to lavishing her favors on males who rewarded her with skills, knowledge, and magic. The mark on Diancastra's shoulder came from Deep Sashelas, the Seldarine god who gave her the gift of water-breathing; when she arose from his watery bower, he stretched out an exhausted hand to touch her as she left. She was also on good terms with the Norse goddess Freya, who had a similar disposition regarding males.

As he did to other gods, Mask was known to take on Diancastra's identity at times, stealing offerings made for her.

Worshipers
Some giants, as opposed to revering a son of Annam, felt a stronger connection to his daughters, including the reckless trickster that was Diancastra. Even so, her cult was very small and without priests or shamans.

Diancastra's more amorous side led to her taking on a minor if burgeoning role as a fertility goddess among non-evil giants, some of whom invoked her so that their couplings would be blessed with children. Yet these blessings were said to come with a potential cost, as there was a chance the resulting spawn would be born as one of "Diancastra's brood". Such a resulting child would be rude, strange, willful, naughty, or fey in some way, though this was perhaps mere superstition.

Temples
As with many gods of travelers and wandering, a sprawling, richly decorated, and well-staffed temple of Diancastra stood within The Lady's Ward of the city Sigil in the Outlands.

Notable Worshipers
Avner, a young thief from Hartsvale, was a follower of Diancastra.

History
As a young giantess, Diancastra sought to claim her divine inheritance from Annam, but unlike her sister Hiatea did so through feats of wit and wile rather than heroism and battle.

Diancastra stole her pearl necklace from the paranoid kuo-toa goddess Blibdoolpoolp by disguising herself as a kuo-toa and carefully watching the changing of the guards at her palace, sneaking inside before using illusions and magical aids to swiftly steal her target. She taunted a nameless demigod servant of Surtr to lead him through a merry dance of illusions while her owl stole his spellbooks, which she would later trade for illusionist spellbooks from a powerful human illusionist, adding something extra to the deal.

On she would go in search of ways to prove herself to Annam with her cleverness and guile. She would solve the riddles of sphinxes and make solemn sages laugh through her loquaciousness and skill in puns. At one point she deciphered an infamous and lethal "crossword maze" filled with ciphers by a lich-king who had long since passed and, in his boredom, filled the inner recesses of the dungeon with magic, elementals to fight, and much else. Along the way she would win a famous drinking contest at the Seelie Court of the sylvan gods, winning her further admiration and tutelage in bardic skills.

Eventually Diancastra presented herself before Annam and requested divine ascension. Hiatea earning her father's acceptance resulted in him permitting himself to have female offspring at all (rather than changing them to males whenever possible) and it was her sister's ascension that Diancastra cited as precedent for her own. In response, Annam presented her a final challenge, knowing she had no magical abilities or items that could help her: circle the earth in an hour or less. The young giant then headed to Stronmaus's library and pulled out a page from an atlas of worlds before drawing a circle around a picture of the planet. So did Diancastra ascend to godhood.

Appearances

 * Novels
 * The Ogre's Pact • The Titan of Twilight
 * The Ogre's Pact • The Titan of Twilight