[✓] [Daemon] Orsathiael - Daemon of Rulership and Control

[squakhawk 14038]

 

 

SYMBOL:  The Mountain.

DOMAINS: Rulership & Control

STATUS: Active and on Aevos.

WHAT IS BALANCE IF NOT CONTROL?

Origin

 

There was a time before The Thirty Years War when there was only harmony among the materium; a time when mortals and immortal alike lived in an age of discovery. Of themselves, the world, and the cosmos, an entropic age in which even aengudaemons knew the extent of their capabilities. In this time existed a deity known as Orsathiael. Both an angel of fortune and truths who had come to the conclusion of conservatism in power and morals alike. 

 

In this, Orsathiael had found a familial bond in another Aengudaemon who had come to the same conclusion long before he had realised the truth himself. Still in process of finding truth in belief and identity alike, the two had closely aligned in the desire to contain the threats of the material plane antithetical to the harmony the material had found itself within.

 

Time marches on, and despite the attempt to strike balance - that one day forces may align and threats are banished forevermore. Yet, time and time again, Orsathiael remained observant to one issue Eshtael had simply settled as a matter of life. No matter the time and effort placed, every seal is broken eventually. When another foe is placed in chains rooted deep within the earth, another comes to take its place - even, inevitably in time, that those chains may break one way or another. Eshtael dismissed this finding; believing balance was something deliberate and crafted, and that even should the most benevolent warden hold the keys to all, it is domination and fear that rules - not balance.

 

The phrase resounded throughout his mind time and time again as the young Aengudaemon obsessed with seals broken so repeatedly. Every seal is broken eventually. From once a curious deity, he knew that ultimately it was control which dictated the universe - not balance alone. Despite Eshtael’s teachings, the path of balance was one of work so frequent and unresolving it effectively had been fruitless. There was little balance between order and chaos - only a ceasing of the inevitable victory when the day balance ceases her sisyphean task. All it would take was a single battle she failed to win, a lapse in judgement of her own duties, and nothing would stop havoc from being wrought upon the heavens and earth. 

 

Yet Orsathiael knew it was not a war which would win the aengudaemonic court - such a thought hadn’t even been considered, let alone conceived in the age of discovery. The heavenly court was one where relations were to be played in trade, transactions of things far beyond gain in power. Trust, favour, loyalty - to bring slaughter to every creature which threatened the material would make a lone enemy of the single warden, no matter how benevolent the intent. Instead, Control over all - to shape the prison, rather than the cell. To convince each within their cell that they held freedom and choice, yet it would only be his word that was presented to them.

 

Orsathiael practiced as seals were placed over the foes which he knew would break away in time - even if it were decades, centuries, millennia until they were released, the potential would always remain. Enbittered by countless years of repetition, of a fruitless goal of which Balance only sought to maintain a false-vision of a status quo, The Aengudaemon of Control and Authority was born in secrecy. While still yet he had the trust of many, those who admired his curiosity, his loyalty, his observations - there would be a singular moment to decisively strike, in time. A time in which he could assume authority, and lay the groundwork for what would become his vision without constant bloodshed. So came the dissolution of Dragur, a first instance of conflict before even The Thirty Years War - and with it, the spark of ambition for the Aengudaemon to prepare his great plan.

 

 

IMPRISONMENT WITHOUT ATONEMENT

History

 

As war ravaged the world against mortalkind and gods, Orsathiael finally opted to act on his previous intentions. He was aware, through his fraughtful connection with Eshtael, that Dragur had been imprisoned elsewhere, and in order to access and make use of the perished Daemon’s fragmented power, he would create a realm–a prison, and unbeknownst to him in time, his own jail. 

 

Orsathiael did not want another other watchful gaze to observe him through his mission, and as most of the Aengudaemon were too busy settling their strifes with the Archdaemon during The Thirty Years War, he found himself upon a reclusive island. Stone in its entirety, the land was a rocky plateau of valleys and hills, with a singular large mountain with scattered islets in the surrounding. The peaks of its jagged and rocky surfaces stretching up towards the clouds, the mountain nearly grazing the heaven’s itself. He found this to be symbolic, and perhaps, there was a slither of awe from the audacious shape and height of the mountain itself; to him, it was the perfect peak in which to enact his ambitions. A wrathful gaze which stood higher than all else upon the mortal plane, that which could stand over Eos and observe it from near and far. Perhaps even further, the Aengudaemon pictured the rock would have made for Dragur’s greatest creation - if only he were there to see it himself. Maybe with his might, with his knowledge, with that that could persuade the heavenly courts past this war, the ability to sway the pantheon to trust in his vision.

 

With seams of his divine energies slipping out from his heavenly form, Orsathiael attempted to pull a fraction of the material-realm in towards the heavens, subtly, so that he would incorporate it into a larger design–a prison realm, where he would be able to house Dragur and play-wicked with the forbidden powers he now tempted. Orsathiael did this at an era none had achieved before–a deity who would claim a portion of the material realm as his own. 

 

Yet, he toiled with powers even he knew not the extent of. To push his own limits, and to test that of Eshtael herself. Orsathiael watched as his own ambition betrayed him in unmitigated and horrendous silence, a deafened cry as he succumbed to the ultimate of his own ego. The mortal world, for a second, would be subverted by the loud roars of his angelic form, as it was forcefully dwindled and chained into that very mountain- swelling in size as the ultimate prison of his own creation became himself. When the Daemon had awakened, centuries thereafter, he was only left with stark reality and bleak hope. Bonded and bound forever by its stone form, he would watch as aeons passed by, unable to do a single thing to resist so. Chains pulled at his form every which way as not even a whisper of his cries reached his own thoughts.

 

Filled by vain hatred through the inadequacy of his own power, Orsathiael was left to toil as an empty mound of stone, shifting through the great maw of water within the material realm. It was never his ambition to imprison anything but the greatest of creation - that which would be utilized to secure the mortal and immortal heavens in perpetuity. All he remained as proof of that was a laughing mockery of a selfish deity who reached for powers beyond his comprehension. Humiliated, imprisoned within the world and left without form, Orsathiael had not given up all hopes and ambitions. Despite his torment as a silent observer, he still desired freedom, a way to escape the world and to return to his rightful place amongst the heavens to control his own shape and power. The phrase resounded throughout his mind, ad nauseum for millennia - Every seal is broken eventually.

 

Although weakened, Orsathiael was still Daemon in name and strength. As his bonds weakened to time, and a determined resistance to find freedom, he eventually used what little stored energy he had to unleash storms from stone. A gambit which could have cost him countless years and destroyed what little hoped he had remaining, lightning and cloud sparked from the rock like steel upon steel, surrounding the mountain island in a raging typhoon. This storm was meticulously planned with contingency in mind, for none could leave it, but others around it were drawn towards it-like insects to light. Over the numerous years that followed, The Mountain began to grow outward further and further, consuming the islets, and by his own design made land. A continent, that which would become Aevos. 

 

The descendant races started to trickle in over centuries, forced through the storm as wary and lost traveller alike were pulled by it’s eminence. Many came to settle upon Aevos, a land which flourished in resources and life that inspired more to follow in the colonist’s steps. Despite the illusion of choice, of freedom with each and every settler, Orsathiael’s careful manipulation mortals into making choices he had presented each and every time. A meticulously planned scheme to extract any and all use he can from the traveller who may have believed in fate, fortune, or the heaven’s which gave them such an ability. It became a routine occurrence, and soon, the lands of Aevos flourished with all races, and Orsathiael felt a slither of control reign back into his firm grasp. With each new arrival, he beckoned and bartered in any way imaginable to see if they may be of use to him - to chip away at his chains, to break away and give him freedom. When there seemed no use for the mortal, his beneficience would end, the generosity of stability and promising frontier replaced with harsh weathers and natural calamity. A childish and impatient lashing out as he was teased time and time again with the potential of a step towards freedom with each new arrival - hardly finding anything but failure.

 

Very rarely, Orsathiael would find austere and scarce-trodden mortals who had irked his gaze, and they would be called to the summit of the mountain. And in them, he would make a following, a slow, voluble cult that would become known as Palmreaders, who were given the power to navigate the storm. These Palmreaders were given a simple task: to bring descendants and their artefacts from off-land shores into Aevos, those who Orsathiael had vested interest in. A choice many palmreaders believed was their own, a path which they believed they had chosen to take. All in vested interest of freeing the Daemon in stone.

 

AEVOS

Realm

 

Aevos is a curious continent, one lush and fertile and yet never settled despite the countless attempts. Each expedition and settlement found the continent not wanting, but failing through unique mistakes and causes each and every time. The arches carved of mountains and hills on the continent seemed almost with purpose as they stood with tall, moulded legs that defied the ground beneath them.

 

Aevos was as much a land of the material as it nearly had been Orsathiael’s. A land carefully shaped and crafted by the god who’s reach was limited just beyond its shores; The Storm of Aevos almost as old as time as the magnetic pull the continent had clawed for anyone who may aid in Control’s plight. 

 

The Mountain itself was a thing of vanity. Taller than any structure both natural and created, spiteful in ensuring that this pride is kept. It poisoned and beat any who dared to climb its summit, and rewarded those who’s soul found potential use in his service. Aevos was a prison - one that contained Control as he clawed for freedom through any desperate thread he could. 

 

 

THE GIANT IN STONE

Present Day

 

As Aevos grew so too did its ambition as The Mountain pulled any and all that would follow its beacon in the night. A lighthouse upon an endless sea that called for those both lost and not to be found upon its shores. The Giant lay in apparent dormancy, The Storm of Aevos only maintained as it trapped more and more of descendant kind upon its mountains and meadows. As the earth shifts, The Mountain moves as Orsathiael stretches at his chains and craves freedom from his bonds. 

 

You live in a time of history yet to be written. What lies in the plans of Control’s long scheme for freedom  is unknown… but without doubt, in play. 

 

 

PALMREADERS

Following

 

Following a unique type of power, Palmreaders are spinners of fate and fortune not through means of divination, but of control. Of those that summited, only a handful had ever been granted The Mountain’s boon - those that did becoming something greater than themselves, and becoming instead what Orsathiael had seen within them. 

 

Roving from continent to continent, legends tell of raiders who came and went in the blink of an eye- abducting as many as they could not with sword, but with sorcery. Though tales varied wildly in these raiders, two things had always remained the same, passed down eerie tale by eerie tale. The palms of any witnesses and survivors burning deeply, and that these followers had come upon one ship - The Faultless Heirophant. 

 

The Palmreaders in modern times are of a different stock however. Many of them find dwelling amongst descendantkind, having been born and raised amongst this group which had travelled so far to happen upon Aevos. Though relics of ancient times remain with the scarce few ancient Palmreaders which still may yet live, perhaps their purpose is something new - something undiscovered. Something greater. It was a path they believed they walked unassisted. Perhaps a path that could lead to the betterment of their kind, their goals, through their enigmatic benefactor.

 

What could say the truth but the future.

 

PURPOSE

Explanation

 

With many Aengudaemons being tied in plot threads ongoing or finished, I sought to introduce five new Aengudaemons which would be utilized to shake up the plot and add more to the story through more liberal usage. This number has shrunken down to three, and for years now has been a plot thread kept very tightly under wraps until its release. I’m excited for the stories yet to be told with Orsathiael, whose true nature and ambitions are obscured deeply under this foremost desire - freedom. 

 

Credit:

Squakhawk - Writer

Werew0lf - Writer, Formatting