Nyva

Alignment: True Neutral 

Symbols: Crescent moons, a silver staff 

Sacred Animal: Rabbits 

Nyva is the Leydonian Goddess of the Moon, Night, Magic, and Healing. She is the wife of Arlios and the mother of Odesus, Ilvara, Vielia, Agnia, Nenthys, and Caris. She is the estranged twin sister of Cyrela. 

Nyva is the eldest of the two twins born from the void of creation. When she was brought forth into an empty world, she ruled the ever dark sky and her sister, Cyrela, ruled the earth below. 

Cyrela, bored of the emptiness around her, began crafting animals of whittled wood with clay hearts. She filled the earth and seas around her, amusing Nyva at first when the birds came to call greetings from her sister. 

The eternal darkness did not make for a bountiful land, though. Still, Cyrela pressed onward. She wanted to create the image of herself and her sister, with the capability to think and speak. Nyva warned her against it; in a world so young, these creations could easily turn their backs on the one who crafted them. 

First came the humans, too imperfect to satisfy Cyrela. Shortly after came the elves, a near perfect mortal mirror of her own divinity. She gave them life with her breath, and a piece of her own magic so they might prosper. 

Still, with only the light from the moon, her mortal creations grew restless. They wanted more from the world they were forced into than darkness and barren lands dependent on magic to nourish them. A fraction of these first mortals plotted to overthrow the twin goddesses, to sacrifice them so that the void of creation might bring forth light and prosperity. 

Ignorant of the brewing plots of deicide, Nyva sets aside her difference of opinion about the creation of mortals to help her sister. She tries to make a light bright enough to brighten the sky, but only a faint silvery light will spill from her hands. They work toward a common goal, but it still isn’t enough. 

While on her sister’s land, Nyva meets an elf named Arlios, one of the mages plotting to kill Nyva and Cyrela. Taken with his charm and ignorant of his plans, she begins teaching him how to wield his power. In the process, he falls in love with the goddess. 

The mortals begin growing more and more restless when the mages decide to act. Arlios, desperate to spare Nyva, flees to warn her of the coming treachery. The mages had suspected his betrayal and followed after him, leaving only ash and bone behind. Nyva, having heard his cries to her, appears to find his remains. 

Her rage was something no mortal had ever seen, and likely no mortal ever will again. She tore the mages present apart before ripping the magic from every mortal Cyrela had created. The world itself trembled, meteors falling from the sky and pelting the ground. All the while she merely gripped Arlios’s bones and cursed the void itself.

The resulting field of craters is known today by Oclesians as Nyva’s Wrath. With her hands covered in ash, she tore her own life force in two and forced it into Arlios’s soul, dragging him back from the beyond. As he took his first breath, the sky brightened; the sun rose over the destruction, the very first morning this new world had ever seen. 

Nyva spared the rest of the mortals at Arlios’s behest, turning her back on her sister and retreating back into her own domain. Arlios followed; night and day, moon and sun, two parts of one whole. 

To this day, Nyva gifts very select mortals with magic. She is largely worshiped in Leydon and Oclesia, where she is regarded as the Matron Goddess who saved humanity by creating the sun.