Sehanine

Sehanine, the Moonweaver, is a Prime Deity, the god of moonlight, autumn, illusion, and misdirection. She is particularly associated with Exandria's primary moon Catha, which is believed to be of her creation. Her worship is especially widespread among halfling, elven, and Water Ashari cultures.

She speaks through a celestial agent during Campaign 2 when Jester Lavorre and Artagan, also known as the "god" The Traveler, attempt to claim that the Traveler is one of her aspects.

Description
Sehanine has a wide range of depictions and is known to take many forms. She is most often depicted as a young girl with light blue skin and white hair. Her form has been described as wispy with limbs that are "merely wavy silk strands of silver moonlight". Her other forms tend to be blue-skinned as well.

She is described by some to be cunning and graceful. The archfey Artagan describes her as esoteric and mysterious. Though he considered all gods of the pantheon to be strange, he considered Sehanine to be especially so. She is also said to encourage deceit and creativity in her followers.

Her epithet is variously spelled as "the Moonweaver" or "Moon Weaver". Her alignment is chaotic good.

The Founding
Sehanine is one of the gods of the pantheon who came to Exandria at the beginning of the Founding. The gods, then collectively known as the Protean Gods, arrived as formless and nameless young divinities. As they tamed the elemental chaos of Exandria, shaped the world, and created its peoples, these gods were given shape and names as their creations worshiped them. Though they were previously formless, it is believed each god had unique motivations and thoughts that were codified through this worship. Most believe that Sehanine created Catha, Exandria's primary moon.

The Primordials, whose presence on Exandria was unknown to the Protean Gods, fought against the shaping of the world and destroyed many of the gods' creations. This led to the Schism in which part of the pantheon sought to defend their creations, becoming known as the Prime Deities, and the rest sided with the Primordials and wished to abandon Exandria to start anew elsewhere, becoming known as the Betrayer Gods. Sehanine was among the Prime Deities, who were ultimately victorious.

Age of Arcanum
At the end of the Age of Arcanum, the Betrayer Gods were released back into Exandria, starting a second war between the gods known as The Calamity. This war was fought over the next centuries.

During the war, Sehanine blessed Alyxian as he prayed in Xhorhas, becoming the first of three gods to do so, and a portion of her followers in the Cyrios Mountains came under attack by Torog, leading to the creation of the Pallid Grove. Later, she and Moradin built the King's Cage as a trap for Torog, then she and Pelor drew him above ground, defeated him, and banished him to a portion of the Far Realm.

The Prime Deities eventually banished all the Betrayer Gods to their planes. They decided to leave the Material Plane themselves and constructed the Divine Gate to prevent all gods from returning to Exandria.

Post-Divergence
In the Post-Divergence, Sehanine is often found wandering between and the Feywild. She has celestial agents, including an unnamed planetar and Perigee, a deva.

In 836 PD, Jester Lavorre and Artagan, an archfey who posed as the "god" The Traveler, held a gathering of followers of the Traveler, called Traveler Con. In an attempt to convince people to begin worshiping Sehanine instead of the Traveler, Artagan disguised himself as an avatar of Sehanine and claimed that the Traveler was an aspect of hers. Sehanine sent a planetar to expose this as a lie, denounce the Traveler, and bring Artagan back to the Feywild to be further judged for blasphemy. Jester attempted to intercede, prompting Artagan to push her away to prevent her from being taken as well. Sehanine spoke through the planetar to ask Artagan if he learned his lesson, released him, then announced that she would be happy to accept new followers among those gathered.

Relationship to the moons
Sehanine is believed to have created Catha to "bless the just with cunning and caution" and to cloak those who need "stealth and subtlety". Its light is believed to favor the good-hearted. The full moon is widely accepted to be her symbol and is identified by some to represent her cunning and grace. Her connection to Catha is partially the reason the moon appears in the sky of both the Feywild and the Shadowfell.

She is also lesser associated with Ruidus, Exandria's secondary moon, as exemplified through her relationship with the Moontide Crown.

Worship
Sehanine is worshiped as the god of moonlight, night, autumn, illusions, and misdirection and is considered by many to be the goddess of love who keeps lovers' trysts with her shadows. She is also identified with trickery and deception, though for protective purposes. Sehanine is also suggested to be a patron of change.

Although she has no official holy day, her worship is greatest when Catha is full and at its largest during the decade. During this festival, many arrogant elves allow themselves to be mischievous while many younger ones use costumes and illusions to play tricks on others. Wyvern-riding skyswimmers of Lyrengorn, an elvish city in Tal'Dorei, praise her during the annual arrival of the Moonweaver's Ribbons on the winter solstice. She is the primary deity of Lyrengorn, and the high priestesses of the moon claims this yearly ceremony cleanses the land of Lyrengorn and increases the elves' lifespan. In Wildemount, some elves of Bysaes Tyl in the Dwendalian Empire, where her worship is outlawed, hold secret festivals dedicated to her in the Pearlbow Wilderness during full moons.

Symbols and artifacts
Catha's full moon is widely accepted as her symbol, and she is also commonly represented by a crescent moon turned upward and strung like a bow.

During the Calamity, the joint efforts of two worshipers of Sehanine and Melora forged a longsword Vestige of Divergence, the Star Razor. It is described as carrying "the blessing of the fiercest full moon and starlit night" or as "bright with the light of the bold full moon and the enigmatic starlit night". She is also one of three gods associated with another Vestige, Jewel of Three Prayers. She is also associated with the Moontide Crown, a fey artifact that allows a wearer to draw power from both moons.

A tarot card tradition in Exandria uses what's known as a Moonweaver deck, in which each card is designed by the owner of the deck plus one card representing the moon. An example of such a deck was Mollymauk Tealeaf's tarot deck.

Worshipers
Worship of Sehanine is popular among halfling and elven cultures. Many of the Water Ashari of Vesrah also worship the Moonweaver because of her control over the tides. She is also prayed to by "those who work in darkness and trickery", and clerics of the Moon domain are granted with "inspired dreams" and knowledge of "hidden paths".

She is widely worshiped in Lyrengorn and in the Verdant Expanse, where a small Syngornian sect of the Moonweaver derives a moral imperative from the predictability of the lunar cycle to safeguard balance and calm order in the world. She has a smaller but nontrivial following on the Bladeshimmer Shoreline, the Rifenmist Peninsula, and in the Stormcrest Mountains. Her worship is prohibited in the Dwendalian Empire. Despite this, Bysaes Tyl hold secret festivals to her during full moons, and there are shrines to Sehanine hidden in plain sight in the city.

Known worshipers

 * Mollymauk Tealeaf
 * Lucius Lorelei
 * Nalys Ildareth
 * Alyxian

Appearances and mentions

 * Campaign 1
 * Campaign 2
 * Campaign 3
 * Campaign 2
 * Campaign 3
 * Campaign 3
 * Campaign 3
 * Campaign 3
 * Campaign 3
 * Campaign 3
 * Campaign 3
 * Campaign 3
 * Campaign 3