Ivrieinen
Ivrieinen, the Lady Who Finds Good Partners and Shuts the Doors of Infatuation, is the god of Marriage Arrangement and Matchmakers, serving in the Celestial Bureaucracy's Bureau of Heaven under the Daimyo of Matrimony, The Resplendent Bestowing of Prosperity.
Where the Division of Serenity and its gods are concerned with matters of love and passion, Ivrieinen holds marriages as a matter of community and of formula: good matches as promoting cohesion within a community, arranged according to carefully-considered criteria, while poor ones are those leading to social discord or determined halphazardly based on irrelevancies felt 'in the moment' such as love, attraction, and the personal wants of those to be wed. In this, she gets along well with her Daimyo and the Division's contractual focus, but has made many enemies within the Cerulean Lute of Harmony.
The approaches of matchmakers across Creation are varied and divergent: some see matrimony as sealing alliances between families, some as contract for mutual economic advantage, some as means to preserve or improve bloodlines, some to settle argument and ensure peace. Ivrieinen cares little for the specifics, but concerns herself greatly with the process: with the methodical examination of candidates, their bodies or their circumstances or their backgrounds.
Ivrieinen is also a member of the Ennead, the pantheon of Patron gods to the Haslanti. The marriage rituals practiced amongst the Haslanti lie wholly within her influence, with matchmaker-soothsayers stupdying matches and then casting bones and prayer so their god might indicate final approval... only when this is granted can two Haslan be wed, and in place of any dowry both bride and groom must shower the matchmaker with gifts and Ivrieinen with prayer. Those who seek to elope, or who stay together out of wedlock, have much to fear in the Haslanti League, for Ivrieinen's eye is attentive and she will not hesitate to use her full power to destroy such heresies. The only ones who have more to fear are those who seek to end a match which has been made, for their suffering shall be both long and terrible, a lesson for all to see. These days, fear of the god's wrath is such that she needs only rarely demonstrate, as communities will police their own members who seek divorce or separation, commonly setting them out tied together into blizzards or on ice flows so they might die properly matched.
And yet, the Haslanti view their Patron as a kindly, motherly spirit, who holds their best interests at heart in a personal way (for has she not blessed the very marriage unions they are part of, and the ones which birthed them?), and who travels amongst them looking out for them. While communities firmly resist disollution of the marriages she has blessed, they also see the duty of husband and wife to honour their matrimony for the ideal union that it is: the spouse who strikes their partner in anger will quickly find their whole village descending to remind them that their match must be respected, a message often delivered with club and boot.
In appearance, Ivrieinen takes the form of an old woman with a grandmotherly air, wrapped tight in heavy blue shawls, nose twitching constantly. She carries a quill and small notebook on her person, a panoply aped by many mortal matchmakers, in which she scribbles constantly as she assesses those around her to find proper pairings.
Ivrieinen is often consulted by her fellow divinities when it comes to their own matches, but oddly she herself has yet to take a spouse. Recently, some talk that she seeks to correct this state of affairs, a spouse of beauty appropriate for a god of her station who might grace her arm and mellow the anger of her detractors in the Division of Serenity. But a proper match cannot be decided by oneself, and so the matchmakers of Creation scour the land to find the perfect spouse for their patron god, knowing that the blessings Ivrieinen will heap upon them if they succeed will render them peerless and perfected.
Source: Heavily altered and adapted from CoTD:North
