Cailleach

Name	Cailleach
Race	Monster
Type	Elemental
Faction	Independent
Premiere	Desideratum: Blood Bonds
Relative(s)	None Applicable

Around the world in the coldest of climes, there exist countless creatures- monsters that find the frozen wastelands and mountaintops hospitable. One such monster is the cailleach. In Gaelic mythology the Cailleach is a divine hag, a creator deity, a weather deity, and an ancestor deity. The word literally means “old woman, hag”, and is found with this meaning in modern Irish and Scottish Gaelic and has been applied to numerous mythological figures in Ireland, Scotland and the Isle of Man. In this folklore they are associated with the winter and wilderness. In reality, cailleachs are akin to witches. They are generally haggard and have white or gray hair, long pointy noses and terrible dispositions.

They worship their goddess, Beira, an entity from the Outer Darkness, and revel in casting spells to affect weather. They cannot abide heat, and will always be found in icy, cold places or deep underground in frozen caves. Adept at ice and shadow magicks, they find ways to freeze their foes. The men are generally seen as irrelevant, though occasionally, one will be spared. However, women are typically captured. The cailleachs perform strange rites onto these victims, turning the woman into a cailleach as well. A small coven of these creatures once roamed Mount Hood, but were destroyed by Absinthe Van Gothen on her search for Jacques Lombar.