St. Chantal

St. Chantal is a Kalentian saint whose feast day is celebrated on the 6th day of Mar. She is the patron saint of pathfinders and guides, wild places, and unmarried women. Often called St. Chantal of the Fens, she is typically depicted in Church art as a fair tousle-haired young woman holding a stem of wild rice in one hand, sometimes surrounded by ducks or blackbirds.

Background

Chantal was born the daughter of simple peasants dwelling amidst the vast fens known as the Weepmere, lying in the heartland of Ruv several leagues northeast of the imperial capital of Summa Ruva. She grew up a typical child of the fens, fishing and fowling and gathering wild rice and roots from the land's natural bounty; it was said that she was as perfectly at home in the mazy marshes as were the wild ducks and bog roe. Despite being poor and unlettered, Chantal was nonetheless acclaimed in the nearby village of Lacrus for her beautiful voice, and would often sing during the pagan community's religious processions and festivals.

However, her life was changed forever when St. Demetrius the Messenger came to Lacrus, preaching the verses of the One True God and telling the words and deeds of Kalen, the God's own son. Chantal was swiftly won over by the saint's wise humility and his message of peace and love, and she became a fast convert to the Kalentic faith. Following St. Demetrius' departure, Chantal not only kept the faith but spread the word of God and Kalen throughout the area, singing the holy versus and winning converts by the loveliness of her voice, which awoke in the hearts of her listeners a deep and passionate reverence for the songs of God and His son.

But it was during the persecutions of the Emperor Orontius that Chantal's faith would be most severely tested, when the churches of the young religion were pulled down, and those who resisted the demands of the empire to conform to the religion of state were cruelly put to the sword. The village of Lacrus having fully converted to Kalentism, it had become a beacon of holy flame to all those in the surrounding region, firing their faith and inflaming resistance to the oppressors. When Orontius sent soldiers to burn the village to the ground and kill or enslave all resisters, Chantal bravely led them through the fens which she knew so well, conveying them to safety in the heart of the bog. Here they built a new community where they continued for some time to reside in peace, though forever being a thorn in the side of the Empire for their perceived transgressions against the authority of the state. Moreover, Chantal continued to gain new converts with her piety and her valiant spirit, and guided scores of new Kalentics safely through the fens.

Emperor Orontius, angry with this defiance which also showed the world his weakness, could not allow this state of affairs to stand. Nevertheless, he was powerless to stop them so long as the little community remained fast within the sanctity of the wild fens. His opportunity for revenge came only when a young man of Lacrus, called Folvis the Spearfisher, came to him promising the emperor a way to root out the intransigent Kalentics and destroy them forever. This Folvis had been promised the hand of Chantal when she was still but a girl, but her father had allowed her to break the informal engagement upon the family's conversion to their new faith. Deprived of the bride he had coveted since his youth, caring little for the word of God and Kalen, yet as well versed in the ways of the fens as Chantal herself, Folvis devised a plan whereby the soldiers of the empire set fire to the fringes of the fen during a period of unusual drought that had thinned the watery channels and dried the normally lush reeds to so much kindling. Then, in the conflagration that followed, the soldiers lay in wait along the best used paths, waiting to intercept the Kalentians in their panicked flight from the marshes.

The evil scheme would have met with success, for the flames spread swiftly through the stricken fen, fire and smoke overtaking the community in the dead of the cold night. But even in darkness Chantal's spirit could not be quelled, and she conducted her people through the heart of the bog, avoiding the best-traveled ways but guiding the faithful safely through with the sound of her voice. The soldiers could hear it all around them, redounding through the head-high grasses in eerie echoes that set them trembling in terror, but to the faithful Chantal's voice was clear as a bell. In so leading the pious Kalentics in small groups through the fen, back and forth through the darkness and the mazy ways, Chantal herself was overcome and never again emerged from the bog. But all who had been saved remembered her and revered her memory, through all the long ages.

Legacy

Through her brave death in service to God and His faithful, Chantal became a beloved martyr who was soon canonized by the Church as a saint. Though the Weepmere itself no longer exists, having been drowned in the Deluge of the Great Dark, she became associated with fens and marshland throughout Ruvera, and many people who have become lost in such places claim to have been guided to safety while following the sound of a woman's voice, unspeakably kind and pure. Chantal is particularly well loved in Merouen, where the town of Sainte Chantal near the Tidebog is named for her.