Dútéa is envisioned as a late slokdtaba, with reddish-black hair, wearing a silver ekhañka and silver henwestete stained with the pale green colour of Oksinení blood. Around her neck is a scarf made of similar fabric, just as stained. She covers her face with her hands, and is typically portrayed sitting in a pool, presumably of her own tears.
Dútéa's popular image developed just after the Oksetení extinction, when the Slokdtabasa went to bed one night and awoke the next morning to discover their masters dead, and the planet around them slowly dying. She reflects feelings of loss and pain, and prayers to her usually involve a request to help make pain more bearable, though she cannot prevent it or take it away. The new Lilitasa soon came to the realisation that nothing could bring back the Ksreskézaian Empire, and that attempting to fill its shoes was both impossible and disrespectful.
Dútéa herself is typically thought of as a sorrow reservoir. Any pain ever experienced ultimately ends up within her, and anyone who courts her too long risks falling into her craft and becoming chronically depressive: this is largely because her prayers consist of reading of the things which prompted her to become manifest to the Lilitai: the fall of the Ksreskézai. For a time, such readings make one's own pain seem humble and bearable, but reading too long makes one overly empathetic.
She is sometimes believed to be a volume of pain herself, created by the Lilitasa to cleanse themselves of sorrow.
Dútéa never shows her eyes, which are said to be voids like the nothingness between the stars which can swallow souls ("trúai'lú alefa swa luhaies atshai vis.") Sarthía wrote that when Dútéa first became manifest to the Lilitai, she sought to burden them with anguish and feed off the results, but their misery was already too great, and she herself became sad. The rites above were invented to placate her hunger, and to develop a mutualistic relationship.
Dútéa's popular image developed just after the Oksetení extinction, when the Slokdtabasa went to bed one night and awoke the next morning to discover their masters dead, and the planet around them slowly dying. She reflects feelings of loss and pain, and prayers to her usually involve a request to help make pain more bearable, though she cannot prevent it or take it away. The new Lilitasa soon came to the realisation that nothing could bring back the Ksreskézaian Empire, and that attempting to fill its shoes was both impossible and disrespectful.
Dútéa herself is typically thought of as a sorrow reservoir. Any pain ever experienced ultimately ends up within her, and anyone who courts her too long risks falling into her craft and becoming chronically depressive: this is largely because her prayers consist of reading of the things which prompted her to become manifest to the Lilitai: the fall of the Ksreskézai. For a time, such readings make one's own pain seem humble and bearable, but reading too long makes one overly empathetic.
She is sometimes believed to be a volume of pain herself, created by the Lilitasa to cleanse themselves of sorrow.
Dútéa never shows her eyes, which are said to be voids like the nothingness between the stars which can swallow souls ("trúai'lú alefa swa luhaies atshai vis.") Sarthía wrote that when Dútéa first became manifest to the Lilitai, she sought to burden them with anguish and feed off the results, but their misery was already too great, and she herself became sad. The rites above were invented to placate her hunger, and to develop a mutualistic relationship.
