SERTORIUS PREVIEW: SARILLA AND THE HASRI

This is an image of the goddess, Sarilla, in the gardens of her great temple in Asharun. It was painted by Samantha Fanti. I should emphasize that this image is for promotional and creative purposes, to help us as we craft the setting for Sertorius. The final book will have interior black and white images and this is for our websites leading up to release. As with prior previews, I will use it to discuss some relevant parts of the setting. What follows is text taken from the rulebook (things are still in development so much of it could change).

SARILLA

Sarilla is the goddess of fertility and love. She is the former consort of Senga, the god of the ogres whose death over 1,000 years ago ushered in the age of magic. She may bear some responsibility for his death, and likely crafted the blade needed for the task from her own spine. But she is not an evil deity.

Sarilla’s true motives are not easily deciphered. To this day she still mourns Senga. Her reasons for killing him are unclear, they may have been born out of loyalty to him, perhaps a secret purpose only Senga knew, or they could have been selfish and an effort to steal his power for herself (perhaps she doesn’t even know why she did it).

Like all gods in Gamandria, Sarilla can take any form she desires, but her preferred form is that of a snake-woman with yellow scales and long dark hair. She dwells in a secret realm beneath the city of Asharun, near a set of columns called the Pillars of Life. Between these pillars the Asharuni make sacrifices to their goddess.

 

THE HASRI

The Hasri are a snake-like race who live in south western Gamandria. Created by Sarilla, they look like humans except for their pitch black eyes and smooth blue-tinted skin. Hasri are so-colored because their skin is made of layered scales, which they keep polished. These scales have additional colors arranged in many different patterns. The hue and shape of these colors are usually similar or the same within a given clan. Their hair is long and straight, often braided but not always…

…Hasri do lay eggs but are not cold blooded, and have one sex. To procreate they simply become fertile and lay eggs when it is time by going to the temple and making an offering of gold and flowers to Sarilla (they can perform the ritual on their own or have a priest do it for them). The siblings from the same clutch of eggs, or clutchlings, are a key social unit in virtually every Hasri culture. The bond between clutchlings is strong, they leave their parent late in life usually going with their siblings and work together to survive. The parent is still important and often serves as the head of an extended clan, which is comprised of all the parent’s clutches. These clans are easy to identify by the patterns and colors of their scales…

…The members of a Hasri’s own clutch are its closest living friends and allies. These are usually called “first siblings” or “first clutchchlings”, while members of different clutches from the same parent are called 2^nd, 3^rd, 4^th and 5^th “clutchlings” the further apart they are in sequence. The closer the number, the stronger the bond…

… Hasri are quite capable of love and of forming powerful emotional bonds with a single individual. But this is not associated with child rearing or reproduction. Hasri often consider their love more pure than the love known by most other races because it is unfettered by the needs or desires of the body and exists (for them) on a higher level.