Glautru
The Seer; The Fortunate Flame. N demipower of prophecy, fate, life, death, fire weirds (He/Him)
Pantheon: Illumian
Symbol: A brazier holding a raging flame
Realm: Elemental Fire / Fiery Maze of Contemplation
Known Proxies: Vethryxaur (black dragon proxy [she/her] / N)
Glautru takes the form of an austere elderly sage wrapped in deep purple robes, their hems perpetually singed and smoking, as if he’s spent centuries too close to the coals. His bald head gleams in the flickering firelight that always surrounds him, and glowing mystical symbols circle him, as they do with all illumians. His white goatee is trimmed with meticulous care, in contrast to the wild, restless fire which makes up his lower body. A roaring column of living flame suspends Glautru a handspan above the ground, and he glides effortlessly, leaving a trail of sparks. In one hand he bears a vast iron-bound tome, covered with sigils and blackened by soot. They say that to look upon its pages is to see one’s full destiny at once… and that’s something no mind yet has survived. Even when Glautru veils his divine radiance, the air around him swims with drifting embers that briefly swirl into runes, and then vanish. Worshippers say that when he studies a illumian’s aura, the sigils that perpetually circle the supplicant’s head bend, elongate and flare in response, spelling out a private sentence that only the Seer can read.
Glautru teaches that fate is not a simple chain of events, but more like a web pattern: intricate, beautiful, and fragile, and that every meddling fool with a raise dead spell is like a greasy thumb smearing the careful design. Life and death, to his faithful, are two sides of the same page—both must be honoured, and neither defied. The greatest blasphemy is to drag a soul back across the threshold once it has gone when it was “meant” to go. In this respect, Glautru shares much with Pharasma, although the illumian is far more generous with his prophecy than the Lady of Graves.
His dogma runs thus, in the careful, spare style of the illumians: Celebrate life fiercely, tend the wounded, and shield those who are too weak to stand—but when death comes at its appointed hour, step aside and let the flame gutter out. Chance and prophecy are both “embers of the same fire” in his creed. Glautru’s priests see omens in smoke, and read futures in raked coals. They seek out these signs not to escape their destiny, but to meet it with open eyes and prepared hearts.
Before he took on the divine spark, Glautru was an illumian priest devoted to the secrets of Boccob. The holy books say he was a quiet scholar who spent more time in scriptoria and sick-wards than on battlefields. In the centuries after the ascension of Tarmuid and Aulasha, Glautru’s relentless study of runes, names, and the silent arithmetic of lives brought him to a revelation about how fate threads through illumian sigils. It was that careful insight that became the ladder for his own apotheosis.
Ascended to demipower, he set aside the notion of worshipping his former patron—not out of spite, but out of a cool recognition that their relationship had changed. Now Glautru walks as the Seer of his people’s destinies, occasionally visiting Boccob as an equal at counsel, but never again as a supplicant.
Glautru’s Clergy
Priests of Glautru might spend hours daily in meditative flame-gazing, staring into coals or candles until visions rise from the heat shimmer. Many double as healers within illumian enclaves, where a careful word or timely spell can nudge a life toward its “proper” end rather than an early snuffing. The omens most prized are those seen in firelight—pyromancers will interpret secret meanings from the way sparks leap, the colour shift of embers, the flicker of a candle at a particular word. Dreams of burning books, fading sigils, or mazes of glass corridors are also recorded carefully in temple ledgers for later interpretation.
Prayers to Glautru are strange things to overhear: elliptical, couched in the future tense, and laced with references to private dreams and images only the supplicant and their god understand. Worshippers speak as though the blessing has already been woven into a later moment, saying “Glautru will” more often than “Glautru, please,” as if they are merely acknowledging a fate they have already glimpsed.
Traditionally, illumian funerals are the Seer’s prerogative: a cleric recites the deceased’s lineage and life as a lesson, then consigns the body to purifying flames. A cremation is spoken of as “returning the letters to the first fire,” a poetic way of saying that the soul’s sigils dissolve back into the greater language of fate.
Lately, however, Glautru’s priests have been losing that role to the gentler clergy of Aulasha, the illumian goddess of grief. Chant goes her rites offer more comfort to the living even if they are, in Glautru’s view, a touch too sentimental. This has bred a quiet, smouldering rivalry: Glautru’s temples accuse the grief-priests of “softening” the message of fate, while the latter mutter that the Seer’s clergy care more for patterns than for people.
The clergy are known for rebuking undead instead of turning them, using the power of Glautru’s holy symbol to cause the undead to cower in fear and awe. Glautru sees such creatures as grotesque violations of the proper cycle, that must be driven back or bound until their souls can be set on their rightful path again. In battle and in daily work they favour magics that inflict pain and purge corruption, arguing that sometimes suffering is the only road a destiny can take to reach the lesson it was meant to learn.
Finally, we need to talk about the fire weirds. They’re less clergy of Glautru than they are strange missionaries, for their penchant for prophecy and flames align neatly with his own. Thing is, the weirds have existed since records began, whereas Glautru himself is a relative newcomer to divinity. Some graybeards say that the weirds themselves willed him into existence, or at least assisted in his ascent to divinity—after all, few mortals become powers quite so easily. Whether that’s true, or if it is, what the weirds are up to, is dark. And it makes a body wonder, what if the weirds of other elements are trying to create their own powers too?
Glautru’s Proxies
Glautru’s formal herald is the great wyrm Vethryxaur (black dragon proxy [she/her] / N), a creature of ancient cunning that swims through fire as easily as through smoke-dark clouds. In some tales she coils about the central brazier of Glautru’s realm like a living shadow, her scales catching and reflecting runes of red light, her voice a low crackling rumble that delivers the Seer’s edicts in calm, inexorable tones. As a proxy, this black dragon is less a ravager and more a judge: Vethryxaur’s can see the “burning line” of a life’s trajectory, and she has little patience for berks who think themselves above their appointed ends. She speaks in riddles, never quite answering what is asked, but speaking of what will matter three steps hence. It’s a habit infuriating to impatient mortals, and beloved by Glautru.
Beyond his draconic herald, the Seer favours fire elementals as his common planar servants. Among them are rumours of a specialized clan—the Illuminated Philosophers of the Eternal Flame. These elementals apparently act as wandering archivists of omens, drifting from shrine to shrine to record the prophecies of mortal priests into ever-lit flames. Chant goes they are able to recall information from studying the flickering pattern of the flame. It’s a skill beyond mortal ken, for sure. Glautru’s affinity for fire elementals has led some to speculate whether he is actually an aspect of Kossuth himself. Whatever the truth there, neither cutter has deigned to answer.
Edicts: Celebrate both life and death; Tend to the wounded and the sick; Protect illumians who are too weak to stand for themselves
Anathema: Raise the dead, for those who died have died when they were supposed to, and breaking this pattern is a sin
Canonical Source: Races of Destiny [3e] p51–90 describes the illumians, 75 for Glautru; more info on illumians here.
Source: Jon Winter-Holt