Pheodora was a Euthanatos of the Pomegranate Deme sect.
Overview[]
A leading member of the Pomegranate Deme, Pheodora was a companion and friend (and possibly lover) of Haroun, known to history as Cygnus Moro (see The Fragile Path). As one of the few female members of the soon-to-be Tradition present at the Grand Convocation, she also lent a different perspective to the proceedings. She apparently brought Moro into the Convocation hoping that his soft voice and keen insight might help bring the disparate groups together under a single banner. She also spoke eloquently about the twin concepts of Fate and Karma; thorough her influence, the two were merged into the common concept of Tamas - Entropy - that has guided the Tradition's teaching ever since.
The fascination with Greek culture and scholarship that ran through Italian Renaissance was a godsend to people like Pheodora. The daughter of a scholar and a midwife, she hired her considerable talents with Greek and Latin out to her father's friends - a group that included several wizards. It is said she Awakened after a near-fatal case of plague; during her weeks of sickness and recovery, Pheodora claimed she descended to the Underworld, spoke with Persephone herself, and ascended with a new stalk of grain. When planted, this grain yielded a rich wheat harvest in less than a year. Like the wheat, Pheodora soon grew, from a talented girl to a skilled magician. Her studies served her well when the Convocation summons swept across the land. When things came together, Pheodora was at the forefront.
Pheodora's skill with medicine, languages and earthly magick made her many friends during the long years of the Convocation. Many Euthanatoi healers follow her example to this day. Her Arts focused equally on the forces of life and death, and she taught that without an understanding of both, each was meaningless. She met death herself when she was only 26, a victim of a local skirmish with the Turks. Accounts claim Pheodora was administering to wounded soldiers when a band of raiders overran her campground - a fate she had foreseen a week before. Even so, she'd gone off to help, knowing she was doomed. Her last journal entry, dated several days before the raid, says simply:
I fear the caverns to dark Hades waiting past the cut threads of my youth. The cold wind beckons from across the farmer's field. Does a Field of my own, an Elysium Field, await, or a Christian fire-field for pagans such as I, or a shade-field wrapped in spirits of the dancing dead?
The fields are hungry for souls. Threads wind upon the spool. Yet I cannot refuse the call. The scales have come up even. Why should I have cause to weep? I will return anew. No Field can hold my heart.
References[]
- MTAs: Euthanatos Tradition Book, p. 52