THE MEMORY OF THE CITY
log in
Religion
Alestéa
The Lilitic Goddess of Cutting
Alestéa is presented as a Lilita with hair of fire and ashen skin, clad in a suit of armour modelled after an Oksinení exoskeleton. Her horns, unlike the modest curls sported by Lilitai, are terrific antlers meant for head-butting. On her forearms, on the outsides, are the ornamental blades for which she is named; this derives from the tradition of Atvôdslefa.

Levadí Alestéa (Splitting Alestéa) is a particular aspect of the goddess Alestéa, who is responsible for bringing down challenges and barriers, and those things that support them, through a direct frontal assault. Unlike Alestéa herself, who is more predictably harmful in intention, Levadí Alestéa is seen as the balance of fate on a knife's edge: whether or not something deserves to be broken down and destroyed.

The usual prayer to Levadía is a plea to Alestéa to focus her destructive desires for productivity. These are inherently dangerous prayers, as Alestéa's greatest desire is to have things to destroy, so only greater opportunities to cause chaos and mayhem ever seem to appease her—and she doesn't take kindly to equal trades, or to supplicants trying to remove barriers to productivity—her tendency is to perceive those products as her right. She remains the patron deity of the antisocial, the vengeful, and the severely distraught.

The genesis of the personality of Alestéa is recounted in Faltúbilis, Ítossífa. She first appeared, in her normal form, alongside Úravéa when the Mitrajethíasa prepared to assassinate Géa (Gleméa) and stage a coup, but evaporated under the scathing criticism of the Mitrajethíasa movement at the following tribunal. Levadí Alestéa manifests later, during the Globkhro War, providing the Lilitai with the vital motivation they need to become unified and face the challenge before them.

Some centuries after these events, during the first colony on Illera, one of the leading conservative figures responsible for the Mitrajethíasa, Kona Tuktanga, started a new cult of Alestéa with the intention of subverting Sarthía's mythology to support her worldview. In this system, not only were Levadía and Alestéa merged, but Alestéa became identified with the essence of fire. This made her the principal deity within Kona's framework, as being fire also necessitated being the prime mover—the source of all heat, energy, and life in the universe. To make room for this, Zeltetéa is either relegated to a deistic blind watchmaker who created a static universe, or neglected entirely, in which case the static physical universe is treated as eternal and of mundane origin. The result of this irregular syncretism is that individuals are tasked primarily with self-actualization in line with Kona's virtues, which are those of Levadía: to constantly strive to obtain control, to dispatch all that is weak or corrupt, and to be loyal to one's betters. For a certain strain of Lilitu unsatisfied with Sarthía's egalitarian designs, Kona's scheme offered a moral justification for a return to the feudalism and social hierarchies of Ksreskézo.

Alestéanism has Terran parallels in Aristotlean philosophy, Gnosticism, and nineteenth-century Germanic philosophers such as Nietzsche and Hegel. It is possible that some of these ideas were transmitted indirectly, through the same process that led to the Ksreskézai adopting the SI metre as a measure of distance, but not enough is known about the nature of Rotomemi culture to establish a definitive link. In all likelihood Alestéanism was an independent invention of Kona, who was well-connected on Ksreskézo and highly imaginative. The cult of Alestéa all but died with Kona during the Illeran plague, and surviving evidence for its existence was considered suspect until the discovery of Wanisin in 729 tgc.