Lares, Guardians of the Hearth
Lares are household guardian spirits. Small statues near the hearth receive daily offerings; in return they ward the home, its crossroads, and its store of fortune.
Story beats
- 1) Families set Lar figurines in a shrine (lararium), offering food and wine at meals.
- 2) Travelers invoke Lares of the crossroads for safe passage.
- 3) Each household’s Lares carry ancestral memory; neglect can sour protection into mischief.
- 4) Public Lares guard city districts, linking civic luck to private devotion.
Context & symbolism
Lares fuse ancestor veneration with practical warding. Daily offerings show reciprocity: prosperity is upheld through remembrance. Crossroads Lares echo Rome’s obsession with boundaries and order.
They demonstrate how small rituals weave social and spiritual security.
Motifs
- Hearth shrines
- Food offerings
- Guardian spirits of place
- Shared civic and private luck
Use it in play
- Restore a forgotten Lararium to lift a house curse.
- Carry a small Lar statue as protection on the road.
- Appease offended Lares in a neighborhood to stop accidents.
- Swap Lares between houses to reroute fortune—at your peril.
Comparative threads
- House spirits: Domovoi, brownies.
- Boundary guardians: Hermes, Eshu, Janus.
Hooks and campaign seeds
- A Lar statue cracks; find why before protection fails.
- Crossroads Lares demand an offering to let caravans pass.
- Someone steals public Lares to sway an election; retrieve them.