Vinerva, our second devlog God, revolves around providing solutions to the problems and crises humanity faces. Famines can be fed, unrest can be pacified, shadow can be driven back, and great strength obtained by any who would accept her gifts. To do so is disastrous, to those foolish enough to trust this dark god, as once you have accepted her Gift, she may use it against you, driving you into fits of violent madness, choking your cities with toxic spores or driving you into all-consuming addictions.
Vinerva, a sapient plant-based life-form the size of a planet, formed of a multitude of 'hearts of the forest', has motivates and a life-cycle which is incompatible with human existence. She grows where not cut back, or where welcomed in, spreading across the world. Her agents go ahead, to lay the groundwork for her tempting gifts to be accepted by the unwise or desperate. A starving man will eat poison, after long enough, and while world panic and individual awareness will reduce the number she can infect, some will still have reason to turn to her gifts. This creates a dynamic in which she can easily give her gifts in the early phase of the game, but begins to weaken towards the mid-game, at which point she begins to unlock the devastating punishments, where her gifts can be used against humanity.
As she reaches her complete form she will cast off these disguises, and call upon the spirits of the wilderness to aid her. Angered at the encroachment of humanity into their spaces, they fight as an uncontrollable swarm of armies, devastating already-weakened human nations. While this occurs, she can further disable humanity's defences by growing lashing vines across locations, harming heroes attempting any quests there, who might be attempting to rally humanity's last defenders against the oncoming monstrosities nature has sent against them.
Vinerva operates by manipulating rulers primarily, and touches on their local-action AI. She can exploit their needs and fears to cause them to take actions which will, in the long run, be devastating. Despite this focus on rulers, she has two abilities (as currently implemented) focusing on heroes, which offer them safety from shadow or strength to defeat their enemies. Both of these take the form of groves which can be left in the middle of human societies, to catch any hero who might be tempted, rather than targetting any directly. In return for these gifts, the heroes will lose their minds and their bodies, as they lose sanity each time they accept her gift of salvation (possibly causing heroes to turn against one another in violent frenzies), or suffer addiction and debilitating physical effects as they employ dangerous dragonflowers in an attempt to gain the strength required to fight your most powerful agents.
While her first pass design is finished, she has a huge range of potential growth, with new abilities potentially be adding between now and Early Access, and then more as the game develops. She embodies that most painful of evils, betrayal, and reinforces the grim notion that in the world of Shadows humanity has no saviours coming, and any promise of help is to be avoided at all costs.
