Cohost writing prompt: @Making-Up-Adventurers — Cleric who's in the market for a new deity
There's no temple to the Dun Bitch in Stormand.
Not many anywhere, really; temples, as permanent structures both physical and social, represent an investment, and an intent to capitalise on it. The Dun Bitch is a slinking, itinerant, in-the-moment sort of god; glad to save you from starvation, pretty uninterested in your larger prosperity.
Her clerics do, however, have a preferred drinking-hole, a nameless backstreet tavern with a faded fresco of a stylised yellow dog on the outer wall, the kind of slow and dingy place without visible means of staying afloat.
It rarely sees any kind of excitement that would make anyone fling open the door, let alone hard enough to bounce it, juddering, off the wall.
A young man bowls in, wild-eyed, dressed in simple but well-made clothes, newly ripped in places; where they might have borne insignia. He flings himself onto a stool at the counter, alongside a couple of the characteristically nondescript and roadworn number of the Dun Bitch's following.
"A drink," he says to the barkeep, who eyes him, and serves up a mug of the cheap stuff, which he clutches and doesn't drink, turning instead to his fellow patrons. "You're of faith," he says, not a question.
"And you," one them says mildly, tilting his own tankard.
"I am." I comes out as if it scorches his throat. "I — was. The god and I, I think we — I think our ways have parted." He finally takes an over-large swallow of bad beer, and coughs wretchedly. "What," he splutters, putting the mug down on the counter, "what does the Dun Bitch believe in?"
The Bitch's clerics glance at each other.
"Enough to eat," one says.
"Not being kicked," the other says.
"Biting people who kick you."
He waits. Nothing more is forthcomng; one eventually shrugs.
"Is that—" he says uncertainly. "Is that all? Is that enough?"
"I dunno what quarrel you have with your god, friend—" says the first cleric.
("Hypocrisy," the other one mutters. "It's always about hypocrisy, one way or another.")
"—But the Dun Bitch...look, you'd know if the Dun Bitch suited you." He gives the wild-eyed young man a ginger pat on the arm. "Have a couple of pints of something that doesn't taste like pissed-in bathwater and we'll take you round to the Honey-Eaters, they love crisis-of-faith recruits."
"The sex cult?"
"The extremely principled and organised sex cult," says the Dun Bitch's cleric, matter-of-fact. "Have you ever tried getting a temple full of people to do something, lad? Those orgies don't happen by themselves, I'm telling you."