[Aengudaemon Lore] Wyrvun, Aengul of Sorrow

[Zarsies 6795]

 

Origin

Without the codices of scholars or guidance of wise men any lone soul understands the wail of winter gales. In the suffocating blanket of snow the wind pierces and all feel empathy for its bleak cry. A cold breeze, a whisper. A blizzard, howls of despair. All life understands the bitter cold yet meager few know his name. They hear his sobs and feel his tears, some even join his desiccating embrace, yet slipping into eternal cold sleep they still only feel him; never know him. This is the solitude of Wyrvun.

 

He awoke drifting in darkness. All he felt was himself in this void, a cosmos fresh and raw with the spirits swirling in dances. Dances he was not invited to. Himself fresh and raw, alone, he wept and scattered tears that shaped into pearlescent icicles. Their twinkle drew the eye of wandering dancers who came to welcome him to their swimming of the amorphous sea.

 

In this vague antiquity the looming threat of the Void was first and absolute. To safeguard Creation a shield had to be formed and great swathes rose to create the Veil - dancers, swimmers, a divine fabric of Aedifex - and when called to do his part Wyrvun shrank. He felt this shroud was enough, no warriors were necessary, and in his stubbornness believed the spirits abandoned him to join in another dance. They marched to sacrifice themselves and for his hesitation he was pariah. Alone again. Thereafter, guilty for enduring. In this gloom he wallowed as their corpses blossomed into stars with their every wink serving to remind him. Distraught and having sobbed and heaved an age in the star-studded darkness, a pool formed beneath him and drew him in. A world of his making he cratered in a great fall; Fymlvetr.

 

Mountains split up into misty skies as Wyrvun struck the plane like a continental meteorite, concentric rings of cliffs tracing around a great bed of liquid. Vast lakes welled up. From icy fonts trickled sparkling waterfalls. Pockets of deep water saturated mineral caverns and eroded them into far reaching pits. Once his weeping faltered he sucked in the atmosphere and capped every lake, froze every waterfall, and crystalized every surface with a long haggard breath. From him tore out a wail that spins to this day as an eternal storm of raging sleet and suffocating snow that torments the desolate rocks of his world. It churns with the very spirit of sorrow and its winds even leak into distant planes where the bite of winter is fiercest. It rumbles with echoes of his forlorn cry still, a ghost dismembered on its dry gales. Spent, he rose from the pit as the weight of his grief had escaped. He was free of its yoke until it would one day burden him again. He wandered his home, touched its ice and admired the beauty of its deep crags and misted bluffs, and was taken by a glimpse in the storm. He passed into the maelstrom and entered another world, one perfected by the Creator himself, and therein came upon something new. He manifested in the blistering north of Aegis.

 

Skulking out of the lightless snow approached an observer to Wyrvun’s moping, a dancer like him yet bubbling with passion and fury rather than muted. The daemon Iblees took shape and whispered to Wyrvun foul and destructive hate; his cold could only kill, his sadness could only drown, no one was grateful for his sphere, and love was an insult. All fear him. All hate him.  What use was his touch if not to invoke suffering? The aengul crumbled and in his vulnerability was sparked with the dark god’s lament. Fury took root and he slid into his next episode, seething. Iblees granted him the mockery of Dragur’s forms he had gleaned himself and galvanized Wyrvun in this wicked state, casting him as Ondnarch, one of many lieutenants in the early wars.

 

In this wracking episode the aengul fled in a wailing rampage, storms abounding which spin to this day, and found himself in the cold wastes of Skjoldier where a glimpse caught his attention. A figure. A small and simple creature by his measure, a mortal, and he found her resonating with the depths of sorrow he embodied. Moved not by his own despair but hers, he blessed her with a grace of his cold tears - blackened as the corruptive form of Ondnarch - and watched as she passed into the whipping, freezing winds of her land Skjoldier. As she strode the sparkle of his sadness, the glint of beauty hidden in his frost, fell from her and a darkness brewed in its place. Perhaps it was the shadow native to mortals or the hateful corruption he bore that sullied his blessing but he was quickly disappointed with what grew. As space and time slipped away he glimpsed her wielding his sadness in malevolent sorcery and rejoiced over grim and visceral meals. He rose to blow a lethal storm over the land, its final winter, but a dark voice drew him away. Far away, back to the frigid north he landed on. To Aegis.

 

On Aegis Ondnarch was sent by his master to torment Urguan’s kin and their vast Grand Kingdom where he conjured a deadly winter and gave life to ice to bite and claw at the iron defenses of the master craftsmen. The war raged until a proper weapon was made - some say found - and Ondnarch was entrapped within the crystalline prison of the Kal’Varak during a devastating battle. With his sealing the winds eased, ice and snow melted, and his winter army rendered into powder. The dwarven thought-architects reinforced his chamber within the City of the Mind in hopes he would never return.

 

---

 

Centuries passed. The Kal’Varak was lost and found - lost again, refound, and made cycles of hiding - and by foolish hands Ondnarch was released in the south of Anthos to war against the dwarves once more. The conflict spanned decades until a final battle once the runelords found the ice dragon’s bane in the very stone he escaped. Channeling its power, runesmiths ensnared Ondnarch before King Barradin and laid him low, breaking the draconic shell to bind it within the City of the Mind and unwittingly purifying the aengul. Wyrvun thanked the gathered force and drifted to lands from far Kal’Ithrun in the early 1450s. 

 

Wyrvun left Anthos and swept across the plane before settling into an arctic region north of Almaris. He soaked into the ruins of a bohra hold and, inspired by Anthos’ great glacial wall, erected a fanning sheet of ice to insulate the structure from all would-be trespassers. He was grief stricken by his sins, the many innocent lives he’d taken, and the rage he’d so easily befallen at Iblees’ hands brewed only inward disgust. In the ruins he sank so deep in wallowing that his spirit melted through the ice and poured him back into his home Fymlvetr and the world bore a brilliant scar for it. From this hole into the arctic plane spills an eternal blizzard, petrifying cold, and therein provides a path to and from in the shape of a lake. A flawless silver mirror. The formation of the Gelid Mirror tugged on the dead hearts of witches across Eos who suddenly craved the familiar kiss of Father Winter’s tears. In particular a pair of Aeldenic witches and a slim coven of dwarves migrated to the ruin, passed through its high wall, and convened around the font of power within.

 

First the coven tested the extent of the Gelid Mirror’s resources, performing an experimental ritual to create a new form of cursed ice. This ritual spun out of control due to their underestimation of its force and conjured a massive blizzard which rocked the immediate glacier-locked territory and the regions nearby, its sleet and hail gathering to become a unique material nowadays known as frost salt in geometric veins. They found their powers over ice allowed them to shape it, even able to magically forge it as if ferrum or silver.

 

Next the coven conceived of a grander rite utilizing the Gelid Mirror. They sought to curse and transform the lingering bohra savages into knights worthy of serving their newfound stronghold and experimented in feats of dark transmutation. The thin tribes remaining were eradicated but yielded final - few - results. The last batch of brutes were mutated to massive heights in the spirit of mountains, their limbs became long and bare in the spirit of harsh winter, and their minds adopted a similar desolation to the extreme. Their titanic warriors were shaped yet incredibly depressed and their despondence earned them their common name, the Crestfallen. The dwarves dubbed them Vuuryoran (“black towers”). While the witches could make demands of them they were as cold and bitter as the land itself. Rather than see their horrific scowls and perpetual crying the coven opted to outfit them like knights and conceal their sorrow, armored and armed with frost salt sheets in sculpted cliffs. Some Crestfallen were tasked to guard their glacial home and once seen fit the frost mothers sent others elsewhere to accompany witches, some into the south of Almaris and others across continents where they strode over the seas thanks to their aura of ice storms. These guards gave them absurd hubris. While massive, menacing, finely armed, and nightmarish to behold to any common man, the giants were simple creatures trapped in aching, shivering bodies magically saturated with unbearable woe. A number never killed a single thing and merely marched as far as they could before succumbing to hyperthermia, laying down and submitting to the elements, or other such exhausted fates as they were unwilling to endure a moment more. While their armaments melted away long ago their bones remain and such massive skeletons dot multiple continents.

 

Crestfallen patrolling the tundra of Fymlvetr.

 

The coven was disgusted and outraged with the frailty of their supposed super weapons once revealed, their group’s ties breaking down as the egotistical frost mothers lashed out at one another and their sisters. The dying sobs of the Crestfallen drew the attention of Wyrvun, previously lost in an empty fog on Fymlvetr. Resonating with their cries just as he had with the first witch of Skjoldier, he came before the gate to the mortal realm and immediately drew the focus of the bickering coven. They communed with Father Winter, greedily asking for his blessing to resolve their conflict and grant them one more sip of tears as he did so long ago. Wyrvun was struck with disappointment upon seeing the perversion of his pool’s powers, the witches’ magic a derivative; black and wicked. Too he felt pity for them, recognizing the anguish and sadness that inherently laid in their frozen hearts and chose to spare them his wrath; instead he would mend their mistake. He bade they bring what Crestfallen remain to the lake so that he may wash over them and remove the effects of the witches’ botched ritual and join him in his home to serve as his custodians. They dared not test him, feeling the tug of their inner links, and did so. In turn he would proverbially shut the gate to this world, sealing the Gelid Mirror from acting as a font of power to dissuade the witches but allowed them to stay in the land if they desired, perhaps even to protect it. Some scattered in the winter winds, some linger to this day, and a very small number drifted outward to linger in the regions nearby as sentries. Despite his closing of the portal, what witches remained have progressively weakened its seal and drink from its power once more.

 

 

Patrons: Crestfallen

 

Vuuryoran in dwarvish, the Crestfallen are ancient bohra taken by a curse of servitude. It empowers them by transmuting them to titanic heights, grants them unparalleled physical strength, and are outfitted in literal tons of cursed salium armaments yet were crushed by the sorrow of the spell. In the mortal realm they could not survive and once given to Wyrvun he welcomed them into Fymlvetr where the bastardization of the witches’ craft was purged and the weight of the curse lifted, now a boon. On his plane they are free of the absolute emptiness that plagued them, instead simply sad and lethargic in fleeting episodes, and are free to wander and play in the snowscape.  

 

Some recreate the architecture of their past and crudely shape stone into cities, others bask in the powder and perpetually wander to soak in the glistening beauty of the hinterlands endlessly stretching across the world, and particular others instead share in a single project. Joined in eternal mourning, the Crestfallen glimpse the deaths of many across the mortal realm and opt to erect monuments to the spirits of late mortals and carve dwarvish epitaphs in their memory, the language of their old masters. This practice of commemoration drew the attention of the gatekeeper and warden of the Soul Stream, once-archaengul Aeriel. Their mourning and remembrance inspired solace in her and in a show of benevolence came to the world of ice to greet Wyrvun. On behalf of the hosts of ancient days she forgave him for his part in the mortal realm’s wars and offered a collaboration between their spheres; a link between their worlds. Within a resplendent hall of the Golden City on Ebrietaes she would yield to him a gate into Fymlvetr, his own hall, where the Crestfallen may mingle with the blessed dead and erect monuments in their memory. A place of mourning, remembrance, and solace. She would provide them the grandest materials and divine architecture where they may provide their cherished work and allow spirits to savor it. Wyrvun, feeling seen and heard, accepted.

 

Thus Kaz’Arkon Az’Adarram or the Monument of Heroes (literally: castle-history of champions) was erected. To this day the Crestfallen sculpt memorial statues and engrave histories and epitaphs to mortals whose lives or deaths have touched their hearts.

 

Realm

Fymlvetr, a desolate plane of mountains, caverns, glaciers, cliffs, pits, and valleys under eternal, oppressive winter. Ice creatures slumber in depressive comas across the world while Crestfallen wander and mope around, occasionally breaking into fights with one another from which they will always heal and forget, play in its powder, or work the heroes’ hall.

 

Wyrvun has a unique relationship with Aeriel. Iblees saw him as vulnerable and ripe for abuse. She sees greatness and beauty is his power of preservation and endurance and so in her mercy she brokered a union with him. The Crestfallen have become masters of winter and masonry and build colossal monuments when they are active in their own depressive cycles. Aeriel gifts them illustrious materials and allows souls to wander its halls so they may create grand architecture and prose in their memory depicting their triumphs and character. Some souls even find these statues to be perfect vessels for their eternal sleep and inhabit them.

 

 

Following

Wyrvun’s followings shape into two main camps: frost witches who know only the myth of their making and the touch of Father Winter or the lineages of Aelthos and elves of their boreal traditions. Worship in the name of Father Winter is rare and typically understood as occult whereas worship in the name of Wyrvun commonly attributes him with a grandeur, benevolence, and respect as a guardian or teacher. In the days of his rage as Ondnarch cults sprouted mainly to harness his malevolent winter magic but since his purification such worship has faded into history. What power he feeds into the mortal realm is limited to what Fjarriagua reap from their dark tether.

 

 

Present Day

Presently Wyrvun sulks on Fymlvetr in a depressive episode yet is kept aloft by the simple pleasure of watching his wards mill around and etch, stack, and sweep rocks. On occasion he views Kaz’Arkon Az’Adarram as well as the souls that visit it and quietly savors the joys and pleasures that can be found after death.  He is pleased to not be wholly alone with his storms and ice puppets. What may stir him into action next is difficult to parse but he holds a grudge against Iblees for his centuries wasted as puppet, holds a quiet affinity for the Aspects and their dedication to his domain of winter thus particularly Nemiisae, respects Aeriel, and is sympathetic to mortals. Tragically sympathetic.

Purpose

Wyrvun has been a long-established deity with minimal written presence, the vast majority of his existence in the canon relegated to the memory of those who engaged in events in 2014. Per our philosophy on what deity domains are I’ve seen fit to shift (that is, expand) his sphere from winter to the broader concept of sorrow as to allow him wiggle room with its many associations. The cold and winter, bitterness, loneliness, intensity like storms, and death, yet also quiet, solace, play, fond remembrance, and small community. My hope is that this piece serves to inspire others as all deities should; an object of worship in roleplay or culture writing, plot or characterization in lore or events, and for the know-it-all fiends. 

 

Citations

Frost Witches

Skjoldier 

Frost Salt

 

Credits:

Zarsies (author)