Qandisa (3.5e Deity)

Summary::Qandisa the Replendent is the god of hedonism, passion, obsession, and art. Born of love, he opposes Asase Ya the Bountiful.  His scions are members of his Carvakan Harem, those obsessed with six senses of experience.

Origin
As Hiranyagarbha, father of the gods, returned to the world he found it dominated by the beings known as dragons. They were cruel and merciless beings who had no compassion for the lesser creatures of the world. To oppose them he created Asase Ya, she of the kindly love, and Qandisa the Resplendent, he of passion and desire. These two creatures born of love, they would coax the young mortal races out of cowering and into the protection of the gods. The mortal beings were stunned by their beauty and they flocked to them, bringing them to the side of the divines.

Qandisa was created as the most beautiful and perfect of mortalkind, born from the initial mold for the mortal races and given divine spark. His role was much like an angel, and his powers involved love and passion between each other so that mortal races would grow many and strong, especially during the harsh times during the war against the dragons. During his matchmaking, he himself began to fall in love with mortalkind. After the war, Qandisa slipped out of heaven and mingled with the mortals in a show of love and care for them, but this union was forbidden, and the children they bore were monsters many, from corrupted giants and demigods, to strange creatures of chaos and fury. Qandisa loved all of them no matter how strange, but heaven felt differently. Many were slain or driven away, and Qandisa, in his grief, stole the secret of immortality and gave it to mortals, testing it first on his favored people the Lillum. When death came for them, they still moved even after they died. Thus, was vampirism born, and necromancy spread among the mortals. For this crime, he was exiled into the netherworld where he took his monstrous kin with him.

Regardless of his creation, he is considered having fallen to darkness. In spite of his imprisonment, he seems more concerned with caring for his many loves beyond all else, and is provoked only into opposing the logos belius only when they threaten his children, however terrible they be.

Description
Qandisa's true form is obscured, but through visions he has always appeared as a supernaturally beautiful man, or sometimes a woman. While gender is mostly irrelevant to the gods as a whole, most have adopted a fixed form while Qandisa is possibly hermaphroditic. Most define "him" as tall, thin, with long hair and dressed in whichever style is provocative to the viewer. Beyond the human appearance, he possesses a long slender "devil tail" which he keeps wrapped about his body as a belt. Rarely, he is portrayed with bat wings, alluding to his other form. When the gods fell into the netherworld it is said they took a second monstrous form; for Qandisa this form is said to be a monstrous demonic bat of titanic size, with a whip-like tail which causes a torrent of experiences, pleasures, and pain to undertake its victim all at once.

Qandisa is seen as kindly and inviting, though its said he is not above displaying his "affection", regardless how willing the subject is. He is also obsessed with art and experience as a whole, and loves nothing more than new experiences no matter now foul and depraved it may be. He is associated with vampires, but not undead in general, and sees vampirism as an opportunity to experience the world above and beyond the mortal's short lifespans and without the sensory or social issues most undead face.

Qandisa is typically associated with his favored creature, the bat. The bat was the creature he took the form of to slip out of heaven, quietly flying at night out of the view of the god of the sun.

Dogma
Qandisa speaks that life is to be experienced and enjoyed to the fullest, for what else purpose could is exist for? Passion is his dogma, be it physical passion or the passion for arts, for writing, for any activity. The greatest sin is apathy, and woe be unto the creature which experiences everything, for then there is nothing but oblivion to experience from that point on.

His scions are 6 in number, his Carvakan Harem of (presumably) women he has taken special favor to, and snatched away into his castle. Presumably, for their forms are so distorted it can never be sure what their original race or gender were. These six are dedicated so much to the experience to a single sense that their bodies have changed form; Gustaos of Taste, composed of countless squirming tongues; Tactius of Touch, who can feel the movements of everything within miles, each step quaking its body with pleasure and pain; Ophthalmos of Sight, covered with eyes inside and out and seeing all viewpoints at once; Audious of Sound, surrounded by a cacophony of "music" of every sort; Olfacos of Smell, its body able to determine scents to such a complex degree nothing can escape its search; and finally Conscientias of Thought, a mind eternally lost in a microcosm of its own design, a true solipsistic entity. These six may be in eternal torment, but they are unable to express it. Qandisa claims they are each in their own paradise instead, and followers of Qandisa sometimes aspire to be the next member of his Carvakan Harem.

Qandisa lives in Gran Castle, a place he made his home and the surrounding city, where he bore many monsters and the first of the vampires. The entire city went with him willingly into the netherworld, and he considers every one of them his people. It is a grand castle full of gothic architecture and fantastic art displays for all to see.

Clergy and Temples
The temples of Qandisa are not obvious, lest it bring the wrath of the logos belius. Instead his temples are hidden as art displays or in hidden places in the forest where members meet up for lavish and wild parties, lost in an orgy of sex, drugs, and violence, only to disperse as quickly as they form. When active, the displays are often colorful and loud.

His clergy, when dressed at all, prefer loud colors. Grey is boring, everything must clash and pop out. Only in normal life do they assume normal clothes, and often drab clothes, as if to contrast with their hidden party life.

Pantheon
Qandisa is a god of the Logos Malius pantheon, on planet Maya.