Once the greatest god and goddess of the magocracies, Bacchana was the deity of night, wealth, influence, fertility, and power—a human and female form of the elven Baccholon, with a completely transparent mask. Her priests gave her followers great license to lust and every form of excess, and the people of Caelmarath, Bemmea, Vael-Turog, and other magocracies embraced her teachings with all their hearts. When the mages of those lands first summoned servants from beyond the
Void, her church encouraged the endeavor and endorsed the wars that followed. The fight and its ever-increasing expenditure of magic, wealth, and prayer pleased her as nothing had before, but the atrocities of those wars tainted Bacchana as deeply as her homeland. With a deep lust for
destruction she looked to the realms beyond the stars where the Ancient Ones originated, and her
soul and body were broken.
The Goat of the Woods appears in two forms: as a hideous writhing, galloping crab covered with strange growths and tentacles, or (when seeking to not drive her followers directly into madness) as a hermaphrodite satyr with large curving horns and black skin clad in a wispy tunic of stars. Though referred to as “her,” this mad goddess is as much male as female and any form she takes blends the two genders.
The power hungry, the mad, and the fearful worship the Goat of the Woods. Anyone contemplating a risky or destructive venture looks to her for a blessing. The goblins and giants of the Wasted West turn to her in desperation and isolated communities of outcasts, outlaws, and the lost find her voice speaking to them in the night.
Lawful magic users the world over forbid worship of Bacchana. They struck her name from records, and burned her groves after the Mage Wars concluded. Wizards caught honoring her are exiled by their fellows, but are watched lest they mimic ancient obscenities. She is a major patron for witches and oracles, who sometimes call her by her ancient, forbidden names.