Does anyone have any info on Mayaheinne's 1st appearance other than the year, 583? I couldn've sworn I read that she appeared on the battlements of a castle in Furyondy during a battle
I don't know the answer to that, but am curious if anyone has ever done anything interesting with her. Her portfolio is so close to Heironeous that she seems really redundant, god-wise.
From what we know of Carl Sargent's own role-playing choices (I presume he created her, unless Zeb Cook mentioned her first in Wars), he had something of an obsession with playing female paladin-type characters, and Mayaheine seems in line with that. As though he created a god appropriate for his own characters to serve, but not really thick into the setting in other ways. (Which is unusual for Sargent's inventions in general, which usually deepen and enrich the existing material.)
Maybe one approach might be to decide that the elevation of a mortal to demigod of a particular alignment permits the elevation of an oppositionally-aligned demigod, and then the question would be which CE tending toward NE demigod is her opposite, and thus, perhaps, her greatest foe. Kyuss? though he predates her by millennia . . .
...Maybe one approach might be to decide that the elevation of a mortal to demigod of a particular alignment permits the elevation of an oppositionally-aligned demigod, and then the question would be which CE tending toward NE demigod is her opposite, and thus, perhaps, her greatest foe. . . .
I guess I didn't mention him in that Cuthbert's opposition to and intervention against Iuz is so well established that an additional demigod foe seemed superfluous.
I posted some thoughts in this thread on possible homeworlds for Mayaheine, but I've become convinced that the best way to use her is to tie her to whatever climactic world-threatening villain your party faces. Mayaheine is from Oerth, but not quite the same Oerth that the players know. On her world evil triumphed, although she managed to defend and save many, and she's been sent to a parallel world—the world the PCs know—to help prepare the heroes of this Oerth for the battle her world lost.
Or I suppose it could have gone the opposite way. On Mayaheine's Oerth, evil was defeated, and she's been sent to make sure the same thing happens on the player characters' world. Except everything's going wrong there that once went right, and her holy scriptures are of little help, and the player characters are going to have to figure out a new way on their own against much greater odds.
In general I think Carl Sargent just thought the existing goddesses of Oerth didn't properly support the concept of a female paladin. He could have used Stern Alia instead, but she was too obscure at the time and didn't appear in From the Ashes. He apparently decided that rather than retcon her as having been around all along, it might be more interesting to introduce her as a newcomer that demonstrates the dire magnitude of the darkness descending on the Flanaess and the need for celestial intervention to help avert the apocalypse. In that way, she's similar to Philidor (and has a common connection to Pelor). There's meant to be a feeling in the From the Ashes era that between the demon princes Lolth, Graz'zt, and Pazrael on the one hand, the rise of Iuz on the other, the pact between House Naelax and the Forces of Hell on the third hand, and the conquests of the Tharizdun-worshiping Scarlet Brotherhood on the fourth hand, Oerth is living in apocalypse mode, and the Apocalypse should be a time of miracles and wonders as well as darkness and horror. It wouldn't make sense for the gods of good to do nothing as the forces of evil tear it apart, so the appearance of new messengers of good to act as patrons for heroes represent them doing something.
The trick is to make them seem miraculous without making them seem more vital than the player characters. Free will mandates that they can only act as mentors and patrons for heroes, not act directly on their own. It's possible that as things grow very dire, they might be destroyed in order to demonstrate just how dire things have become.
Thank you, rasgon! Very high praise. I really should try and finish part 3 some day.
I made Mayaheine appear in the form of a mortal being in a state of something like possession by her, although a willing form. The best way I could explain what I was thinking was she was Mayaheine and Mayaheine was her.
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