Yersinia

Goddess of Medicine, Disease, Decay, and the Body

Love and Fortune and bitter Tears Have grown and died upon the Branching Years.

Motto: No Man Lives where No God Dwells

Mother of Plagues, the Shadow Over Life, Grand Princess of Disease, the Maker of Medicines, Bringer of Abundance and Woe, the Lady with Two Faces, the Planter of the Tree of Life, the Flesh-Forger, Master of Mortal Ills, the Lady of Pains

Yersinia is no goddess. She is to mortals the Grand Princess of the Court of Autumn, but Autumn recognizes no such title; the Lady of the Rotting Bough merits not even a mention by name when the lords and ladies of the Gilded Season are gathered. And yet neither Pasaulė, High Princess of the Harvest Season, nor the Queen of Autumn have any power over plague, and so it is Yersinia who is worshipped as Plaguebringer, Mother of Medicine, the Maker of Mortal Ills. No other creature has ever been feared by so many for so long, for there are no mortals which can escape her curses, nor any which live who have not suffered at her hands. 

For Yersinia, disease is the whip by which mortals are enlightened — or less poetically, the stick which beats to death the mortals that step out of line, until the ones that remain are as well-trained slaves who do not even think of freedom. It is a testament to the efficacy of the whip that most mortals have integrated her own anathemas utterly and completely into their lives.

Yersinia is somehow both the maker of medicines and the plagues they cure. She Ascended during the very late First World, and some say that she was instrumental in ending it. Usually Yersinia is credited with direct power over the mortal body, though how she obtained it is up to debate. Some say that the gods worked together to create the first mortal, but Yersinia deceived the others and slipped in hidden curses that she alone could access, granting her power over the new creation. Others say that Yersinia alone made the first mortal body from scratch and as such was able to build the weaknesses in as a sort of failsafe, should her creation ever turn against her. Still others say that the body is imperfect and was never meant to be perfect, and Yersinia simply has uncommon knowledge of both its ills and its cures.

Clerics

Clerics of Yersinia are all capable doctors. This is such a truism that even though it is not particularly true, legions of the sickly and the crippled continue to flood her shrines and temples, harassing the priesthood for miracle cures that are not forthcoming. While Yersinian clerics are usually more knowledgeable about the rituals that one might use to appease the wrath of their god, Yersinia is at the end of the day one of the Fae, and predictable is the last word anyone would use to describe her.