Haela Brightaxe

Haela Brightaxe was a dwarven demigoddess of battle and luck, one in spirit with good-aligned dwarves who loved to fight and who lived to cleanse Toril of evil monsters. As a goddess of luck, she took great risks in the battles she fought.

"Because it was there, and because I have always wanted to cut my way out of something's stomach."

- A Haelan cleric upon being asked why she attacked an ancient dragon.

Description
Haela often appeared in a spectacular, albeit harmless, burst of sudden blue-white flames as a tall, heavily muscled female dwarf. Sometimes she was armored in fine dwarven scale mail or plate mail and at others she was clad only in her silver hair, a long, flowing mane and beard.

Personality
Among the dwarves and their gods, Haela was well-known for her gregariousness and always upbeat attitude. The charming demigod delivered gallows humor quips with a wide smile and laughed readily and infectiously in her booming voice. She had a love of no-holds-barred brawls, but wasn't unthinking, proving herself rather resourceful.

Relationships
Most of her companions in the Morndinsamman respected Haela's lively manner. Haela made sure she never acted against the wishes of the other accepted members of the dwarven pantheon, though she accepted only Moradin as her superior. Of her brothers and sisters, she preferred the company of Marthammor Duin and Clangeddin Silverbeard, who respectively shared her interest in the surface and her love for battle. Haela was so focused on the dwarves that she had little time for gods outside her own pantheon. Abbathor, who was always interested in luck, sent ever more dangerous threats to Haela ever since she spurned his interest.

Followers
Haela's clerics were called kaxanar, which could be translated as "bloodmaidens". Most of her clergy were females, but the few men who served her didn't seem to have a problem with the feminine title. Haelan clerics fought monsters whenever they could find them, either to destroy the evil beast, or just for the thrill of battle.

Rituals
Kaxanar prayed for spells in the morning. During these prayers, they traced the elaborate scars on their forearms that had been ritually carved there upon initiation into the order. Most scars showed geometric patterns, but a few iconoclasts used their initiation to carve profanities or lewdness into their skin.

On the day of Greengrass, the Haelans celebrated a ritual called the Time of Spawning. In this ritual, they chanted and shattered captured enemy weapons to prepare for the next onslaught of monsters from occupied dwarven holds.

Axe Held High was a high holy day for the followers of Haela. On this day, kaxanar and those allied with them gathered on the surface and claimed to see an image of Haela's greatsword outlined at the center of the sun.

The Commemoration of the Fallen was celebrated with the Feast of the Moon, when the kaxanar remembered all dwarves and non-dwarves who fell in defense of Moradin's children.

Temples
Main article: Category:Temples to Haela Brightaxe

Kaxanar cared little for the rules of dwarven society and built their temples wherever conflict was to be found. Temples were regularly built in the cellars of human ruins, abandoned dwarf holds, or even empty gnome warrens. Most temples also served as armories, and all were trapped with at least one very violent bombastic trap so that no temple could fall into enemy hands. Kaxanar were frequently also barbarians, since their rage engendered joyous destruction.

Death
Haela, along with Gorm Gulthyn, died in battle with the duergar deities Laduguer and Deep Duerra in 1383 DR.

The Second Sundering
In the wake of the Second Sundering, signs indicating the return of Haela, as well as her duergar enemies, had begun to surface.

Ca. 1486 DR, a party of adventurers witnessed a female voice, with no discernable source, utter a Dwarvish battle cry, while the eyes of a statue dedicated to Haela Brightaxe flashed on their own. This event was seemingly a result of the adventurers showing their respect to the late dwarven goddess within the halls of Firehammer Hold, a temple dedicated to the Lady of the Fray and, at that point, recently conquered by a group of duergar, lead by a durzagon known as Nalifarn.