Template:Breadcrumb The Three

Overview

The Three (Commontongue), also Mná Caointe (Feytongue \mɪˈnɑ ˈkwintɑ\ for keening women), also The Stygian Queens (Elftongue \ˈstɪʤiən\ for hateful and dark) are named for the fact that there are exactly three individuals sharing this Strange God throne. Like most Strange Gods, lore about The Three is rare and incomplete. The lore comes primarily from scholars who have studied the Bleak Gods and their Orisons.

The Three are the rulers of The Court of Three, and Gods of the Hags.

History

The Three were among the original ten Fey Gods that arose during the Shattered Age, long before The Midnight Road. In fact, it is believed that The Three were part of a coven of Elf witches that were the first to discover Arcadia, with credible citations dating as far back as NIR 200. It was The Three that taught others of Arcadia and facilitated the The Midnight Road of the Elves in the early Dark Age.

Most Fey with memories that stretch to the Shattered Age maintain that there originally four members of this coven, and that they were called The Four. The Three vehemently deny this, claiming they were always three in number. Raising this topic with them is a sure way to earn their enmity.

The Three founded Arcadia, after a fashion, and taught many Elves in Pelithos of the Paths to Power in Strange. The first and most successful pupil of The Three was the Elven sorcerer Lolth, who migrated to Arcadia in the middle Shattered Age, circa NIR 220.

There are few major cataclysms throughout history where The Three were not implicated, as observers or perpetrators few can say.

Description

The Three have two forms. The first are as three individual women: Cailleach (Feytongue \ˈkɑˌlijʊk\ for old woman) the Crone, Draoi (Feytongue \dri\ for wise) the Matron, and Mairnéalach (Feytongue \mɑrˈniəˌlʊk\ for young woman) the Maiden. Cailleach appears as an impossibly tall and thin woman with shriveled skin and a missing eye, often depicted with a sinister replacement. Draoi appears as a squat woman with an enormous girth and a basket covering her head. Mairnéalach appears as a woman of middle height and incredibly wiry and muscular frame with a wide smiling mouth full of sharp teeth.

The second form is that of a massive ogress with heads fused together. It is dressed in tattered cloth covered in moss.

Personality

All three of the Stygian Queens are dangerously polite, every etiquette a high stakes game for survival.

Cailleach is the keeper of books. Cold, deliberate, and endlessly patient, she keeps track of all payments, whether by blood, betrayal, or bargain. She is obsessed with counting backward, keeping a ledger of the costs of the past. She is known for tending moss-covered withered bodies of her victims. She is the cold accountant, mercilessly collecting on debts and exacting costs.

Draoi is gentle but suffocating, speaking in the warm tones of a lullaby, but offering disapproving kindness that is heavy as chains. She is obsessed with balance, one coin, one kiss, one cry is her motto. An unpaid favor is the greatest offense against her. She is known for drowning and cooking her victims in cauldrons of milk. She is the compassionate one, following the spirit of the deal instead of the letter of the deal.

Mairnéalach is restless and cruely curious. She plays games with fate like a child pulling wings from butterflies. She wants to know how things will end and delights in testing her predictions. She is obsessed with promises and their relationship to the future. She tempts people into promises they cannot keep and then counts down to their doom. She is known for biting off pieces of her victim, counting as she does. She delights in loopholes, technicalities, and unexpected costs.

These personalities fuse into the Ogress, the three heads bickering and agreeing in turn.

Strange Philosophy

If it costs nothing, it means nothing.

The Three teach that meaning is found in numerological significance, which they see symbolized perfectly in the exchange of things: debts and costs. Wars only matter because of how many lives are lost, history only matters because of how many names are forgotten, lives only matter because of how many breaths are taken.

They maintain that:

Everything incurs a cost, whether acknowledged or not
Failing to account for costs is the greatest sin
Meaning comes from understanding the price and paying willingly

The Court is famous for its superstitions, such as counting grains of spilled salt. It is believed that an oath sworn thrice, one for each Queen, carries unavoidable consequences.

Orisons

Most Orisons of The Three are Hags of Arcadia, but The Three do also form pacts with Mortals, most often:

Witches and warlocks who specialize in curses and bargains
Officials who deal with the most impactful accounting, like judges, executioners, tax collectors
Numerologists and mathematicians

Notable Orisons

Sister Elthra of the Tally (c. 1810): A noble woman who attempted to count every death in her lands from a famine suddenly vanished upon her completion. She was seen intermittently for decades afterward at the sites of mass deaths, always standing in the background.