Loviatar

Loviatar is a god of agony, the mistress of physical and psychological suffering. Coldhearted and calculatingly cruel, Loviatar is an aggressive and domineering despot, and she deeply enjoys her divine remit. Pain isn't a means to an end for Loviatar, but an end unto itself. That quality endears her to the tyrant god Bane.

Loviatar takes the form of a slender woman, like a whip in her movement and aspect. She speaks to her followers during extended sessions of enduring or inflicting pain, intruding on their perceptions in the delirium of agony or ecstasy. When she dispatches an emissary, she usually sends a Chain Devil, an Incubus, or a Succubus.

To the followers of Loviatar, nothing is as transcendent as suffering. All pain is holy, from the crudest brutality to the emotional suffering of the heartbroken or the betrayed, and is proof of Loviatar's attention. Pain—the ability both to inflict it and to endure it—is a path to power. Loviatar's followers consider a cold, cruel demeanor ideal because that best emulates Loviatar herself, and for the same reason her faithful appreciate beauty, cultural refinement, and skill at manipulation.

Though temples to Loviatar are rare, her faithful are numerous. Loviatar is a preferred deity of those who inflict pain as a matter of course, including torturers and others who need to break the will of their victims. Her followers form cells of secret adherents led by someone who takes pleasure in administering pain and dominating others, supported and bolstered by submissive sycophants.

Worshipers of Loviatar rarely gather in numbers except in populous cities, and never openly. When small cadres of the faithful operate quietly, few citizens take notice or raise a fuss when they witness cult activity. Loviatar's cults sometimes kidnap and keep prisoners, which can draw the attention of the authorities.

The Chosen of Loviatar are paragons of inflicting and receiving pain. They delight in insinuating themselves into the fabric of society and then tearing through it like a barbed whip.