"Pronounced (May-truh)"
Lawful Good
Life
Portfolio: Child Rearing, Family, Home
Temples: There are few temples to Matre, but there are many shrines, placed above the hearth in a family’s home. These are simple horns filled with foods and mementos.
Matre is the youngest daughter of Karn, and has ten seats as the goddess of hearth and home. She serves as the patron of the hearth, home, and the family. She serves as the patron of homemakers, mothers and fathers, as well as chefs, innkeepers, and anyone else who makes care for others their focus or their profession. Matre especially cares for people who care for children. Unlike Karn, who simply acts around birth, Matre acts around care.
Within the pantheon of the gods, Matre is the one who takes the crops grown and harvested by the souls of the dead and makes them into great feasts for the gods and their servants. Some believe that she melds the secrets of empowering departed souls into angels into her cooking.
Matre’s most common partnership is with Sildrin, the goddess of the harvest. One acts for the community, the other acts for the home, together they develop something sustainable and beautiful. Devotees of Matre are the ones who prepare the harvests of Sildrin into the great feasts of harvest festivals.
A focus of Matre is also of protecting supplies. She and her followers construct barns and granaries to preserve crops and animals. And smoke houses to preserve meat. Cats are sacred to Matre, thanks to their role in hunting pests that might steal the preserved and stored foods.
A cornucopia and similar symbols of plenty and feasts are sacred symbols of Matre, and her followers attempt to live up to that provision of bounty. Or they pray to her in lean times, hoping that she might spare some of the bounty of the gods’ feasts.