6

As the world stills in quiet reflection, the nights grow long and the days blink by. Forests ever weeping, become bare to biting air. Slow frost creeps in, letting sleep that which grew bright and nourishing. Which breathed and exhaled in blessed warmth, now withers in decay, growing no more. The land turns ever barren still, as creatures small and large prepare with what remains of warmer times. Then the winds come, howling down from the north, bringing chill air and few smells. Bit by bit, in a storm of arctic air. It freezes waters, blankets the land in blinding white, clouds the skies in silent grey and chills the bones of any who linger where they should not. The cold has arrived, bringing winter and lonely dark. It is the absence of heat, the inescapable reality of the seasons changing. All in the name of rebirth.

Yet, it need not always be so cruel and unforgiving. Life can exist within cold lands, by stout of heart and those prepared. Cold is necessary within the grand plans of reality for without it the world would grow too hot, the appreciation of both chill and warmth would have little meaning and life would not replenish itself to grow better and brighter time and time again. The wintertime feelings that invoke such sadness and at times, hopelessness, can make people stronger and come together. It is through the cold that people persevere and become stronger for it, else they not become anything at all, save for memories.

Chailiss has complete control over the aspect of cold, bequeathed to him by the great Monarch. It is through this aspect that the Winter Lord expresses his will and power. Through it Chailiss is capable of manipulating the land to absolute points of freezing, or induce feelings of cool. Summoning great blizzards, blowing howling gusts, shaping icy crags and turning seas to ice. His powers go beyond land, to more personal levels. He is able to harden minds and hearts, drive away pain and suffering through numbing. Even suppress feelings of cold by stripping it away or by adding to it. He is a gift giver when generous and a life taker when angered. For cold is a useful tool in times of mirth and joy but also suffering and strife.



To call the God of cold, cold, would not, in fact, be an accurate representation of his personality. He can be cold at times of course, for who isn't? But Chailiss is much more than a cold, uncaring and unforgiving monster that many can associate with his aspect. He does not view his purpose as evil or good but just a necessary function for life. It can be both used as a tool of wickedness and for righteousness but more often than not it simply exists and he, the Shepard that watches over it.

He does not view heat and fire any less favorably than he does his own aspect, though he does prefer the cold. One of his major gripes with heat is that it can be as equally dangerous without proper care and where it flares hottest, one can be only burned. Though he does not often agree with the feverish passions that heat commands, he is no less susceptible at times as any other. Those that abuse his aspect and any other with the intent to harm cruelly and without reason, he looks down upon. Whether he acts is another matter all together.

The Winter Lord is most at home wandering his great swathes of frigid land. Chailiss is a quiet God but social enough to carry a conversation. There is mirth and laughter behind his outward appearance. He feels compassion and empathy for the downtrodden but will only help if asked. Strength and a level head go hand in hand but strength of heart is a different beast. The chill can become lonely and sadness can set in. At such times, Chailiss does not often think about anything other then himself. The opposite of this is his anger. He Who Knows rage just as any other with enough pestering and contempt. In those times he becomes the cold north and all should be wary of his wrath. He is not without temperament and is protective of what is his.



The lonely wanderer need not have legs to walk, or arms to swim, or lungs to breathe or any other part so vital to mortals. Chailiss takes the form of a massive orb, for the cold constricts and tightens. The orb is white, swirling with snow and ice, emanating the deepest frost, the coldest chill. To look upon him would be like being forever lost in an endless blizzard of beauty. Breath stripped away as the cold numbs you to quiet sleep. His voice is the howling wind or the endless quiet.

When not traveling in such a mighty disguise, Chailiss often takes the form of a hooded figure without a defined shape, floating upon unseen currents. This is not to say he doesn't assume other forms. Often a tall bearded man, or a whispy pale ghost. It all just depends upon his mood.

What comes to mind at the mention of salt and its goddess? A kindly woman bringing seasoning for food? Perhaps a healer or guardian cleansing a place in fact or spirit? Or maybe a callous crone bringing rust and decay to the armaments of warriors and the tools of masons? Whatever is imagined, it is incomplete. Sala is all these things, and more. She is the embodiment of all salts, those crystals that hunger for water and can be found almost anywhere one might think to look. She is a being of vast variety, for all mortals associate her with the barest fraction of her dominion.

Recognized or not, within her dominion Sala is a tyrant who commands her element in its totality. She alone determines how salt moves through the world, in the sea, the life that rises out of it, and in the markets where that life peddles the good. Able to manifest vast quantities of her aspect as easily as breathing, Sala is ever managing the intricacies of how living things use salts in their bodies, how those salts flow and disperse through the ocean, deposit on land, and how they move and ossify in the deep earth below.



It is good to be loved, but much better to be needed. Sala is, above anything else, possessive and covetous of the attentions and love of the Monarch, her peers, and indeed all the life upon the world. Immensely concerned by her own perceived weakness and faced with deities who command the very aspects of Heat and Cold, Sala imagines, without much difficulty, a world where she is supplanted. A world that does not need her.

To the Goddess of Salt, nothing could be so deeply unacceptable as that. An eternity spent as an afterthought, alone but for the passing notice of greater beings, would be no better than everlasting torture. As such Sala contrives to make herself vital, irreplaceable, and desired. From flooding the ocean with salt to ensuring that life itself cannot easily exist without her, Sala seeks to have her name on every tongue and her presence in every mind.

Still, even Sala would agree that an eternity spent on nothing but grasping at the attentions of others would just as surely be one not worth living. Once others have come to need her, or even love her, Sala is among the more generous and communicative deities in the Monarchs pantheon and her willingness to come to the aid of mortals is known. Rather, it is infamous. There is no doubt that Sala will answer a prayer sent, so long as enough share it, as her vulnerability to flattery is well established.

Unfortunately, many of the prayers shared by enough mortals to attract Sala’s attention tend to be directed against other mortals. As such Sala is a known destroyer of civilizations and lives. For all she desires others attentions and affections, Sala has never been afraid to shed blood. As she might say, those who survive will love her all the more. Those who are dead, will be dead. It is easy to forget that salt and its goddess are ever greedy for water, and what is blood but that with a few additions?

Certainly, even in war Sala is no reluctant participant. She is, when satisfied that her name is being carried on the briny ocean breeze and spoken in the cities of mortals, more than willing to engage in battles as little more than a pass time. It would be wrong to say that she especially appreciates violence, however. Sala merely enjoys the extremes that the world has to offer, and wherever things are pushed to their limits she can be found watching or nudging things in whatever way she might find interesting.

Expeditions, savaged and nearly broken, have found themselves arriving at their goal by tracking streams turned salty. Sailors at the very edge of death have found themselves blessed to drink salt water, though perhaps for longer than they’d have asked for. Sala is a keen observer of adversity and strife, but any that find themselves under her attention should be wary.

The Goddess of Salt is generous with her gifts, but they cannot be given up. Her generosity is only vast provided it is never spurned. Those who reject hers, even for practical reasons related to a scarcity of salt water to drink on land, may well find themselves unable to ask for or reject her gifts ever again. Sala has, occasionally, permitted outright refusals of her gifts, but to accept and have a change of heart? That is perilous for mortals and divine alike.




Sala often appears as a vividly coloured mortal with hair, skin, or feathers being bright pink, blue, yellow, or even a flawless white or pitch black. Just as salts are immensely diverse in color and appearance so too is the deity of their aspect. When in mortal form the Goddess leaves evidence of her presence in the form of thin dustings of salts deposited wherever her feet land



In her true form Sala is a crystal figure surrounded by a vast cloud of innumerable colors and sorts of salts condensing onto and evaporating from her body. In this form every movement she makes shatters her body and sheds huge chunks of salt, but in a moment these losses are replaced by fresh crystals donated from the cloud around her. While Sala takes pride in her true form, the unfortunate proclivity of mortals to burn to death when in a permanent cloud of gaseous salt has made her assumption of this form a rarity. Given the way Sala’s true form tends to poison everything around her while simultaneously burning it, few of her peers encourage her to change that habit.

All of reality is a tapestry, many-colored and wrinkled and ineffably vast. The threads of reality are woven not by one seamstress that dictates Fate, but by immeasurably numerous needles driven by the actions of every being. There is much discord and mayhem in the sewing, but a potent enough mind with the gift of powerful sight can shatter through the illusory veil of the physical world and look across creation from the edge of reality. So then, given enough discernment and perception it is only natural that one can begin to capture glimpses of the Grand Design of the universe -- this is prescience, the Sight, seeing the unseen and coming to know the unknowable.

Prescience entails careful examination of the needles’ motions to guess at the Grand Design and predict the future, or possible futures, with some accuracy. Attaining complete certainty in the foresight garnered through such means is an impossible feat, for free will is a fickle thing and the motions of the needles can be ever changing. In particular, an incomplete understanding of another’s intentions -- especially if that person themself is undecided in their desires and does not know what they will do -- is anathema to accurate and precise foresight. The impulsivity and free will of mortals and divines alike can change the course of fate and make careful predictions worthless within mere moments. Further, there are so many needles that it is unthinkable to account for the motions of them all, but it can be much easier and more practical to identify and examine a select few needles and threads to guess at what their future holds. In general, foresight becomes exponentially more difficult as one seeks to look further into the future, as well as to account for larger areas and the influence of more beings.

Fortunately the power of prescience is far from its end there, with dubious predictions of the future. Through it one can also loosen the shackles imposed by Time’s eternal march: then, the prescient one may turn their back to the ongoing needlework and cast their gaze back across the tapestry in the opposite direction. Through witnessing the stitchings far back, woven in the past, it is possible to attain an understanding and knowledge of events that have already transpired, even if one was not there to witness them. Here there need not be any uncertainty either, for the threads are already sewn and one can come to make sense of their tangle to gain a perfect and objective understanding. Know that the ink is dry upon the page of histoires, so to speak -- changing the past is an incredibly dangerous folly, and likely impossible too, for the threads of the tapestry are woven together tightly and made all but immutable.

Know also that Time’s eternal advance cannot be stopped by any -- even He Who Turns the Flow is merely capable of setting the time of the beat to which it marches -- so for every moment spent crawling back across the tapestry to wallow in the past, a moment of the present is spent. Further, to invoke prescience is to look through the veil and project’s one’s mind into the edge of reality, but the body does not follow, for this is a journey that it could not possibly take. That is to say that while one wallows in the past or tries to determine the future, their corporeal form remains vulnerable and in place throughout the whole ordeal; there is no fleeing to the past or future, but paradoxically, slipping into a prescience-induced coma need not be a great risk. Though the prescient are made vulnerable when using their Sight, so too are they made aware of their own needle and thread, and the wise among them will be sure not to become so caught up in the majesty of the tapestry that they ever lose sight of their own manifestations within it. If some adversary sought to harm them in this vulnerable state then said being’s own needle and thread would invariably be drawn close to that of the prescient’s. That then would be all the warning that a vigilant and cautious prescient would need to know to recall their mind back to their body and look to their defense.

Awareness of the true nature of reality and of this power is the first step to awakening prescience, but even afterward, one must have an extraordinarily sharp and powerful perception in order to find any practical use in it. But Yudaiel is a reverberation in the fabric of the tapestry; by her very nature, she is as eminently attuned to and aware of the needlework as any being could possibly become. Yudaiel’s powers over the aspect of prescience grant the unimaginably potent perception that is hers, and enable her to see things that have already passed, things happening now yet far away, and things that may yet come to pass. Further, she is the most powerful prescient being in existence and that ever could exist so long as her aspect remains hers. Like a spiderweb, the fabric is ever-present yet nearly invisible unless lit just right, and the Reverberation that is Yudaiel is what illuminates these mysteries to other eyes. She has pierced the veil and enabled prescience for all others with the eyes and the mind for Sight. Even those who lack the discipline or faculties are sometimes gifted temporary prescience, most often in their dreams when the mind is more malleable, if the Lady of Far and Near wills it.



Yudaiel rarely speaks, even to fellow deities, for she thinks the act beneath her. Words are surely for the blind, as those who can see should surely rather be shown than told. She prefers to communicate instead by invoking bouts and flashes of prescient thought, essentially projecting vivid imagery laced with raw emotion into the minds of others. She calls these potent messages of sorts ’ideabstractions’. Communicating through ideabstractions has the side effect of making her highly persuasive, even if she lacks true charisma -- what better way to manipulate someone into doing what you want than by thrusting upon them a sense of urgency and a compulsion to do just that thing, and by showing them a superreal vision of the pleasurable and good outcome that will inevitably follow? She definitely knows what she wants -- though others certainly don’t, not even the Monarch, for she purposefully masks her enigmatic intentions -- and is Machiavellian and supremely manipulative in her pursuits of these ambitions and desires of hers. Presumably there is a certain possible future or futures that she has seen, and her grand ambition then would be to ensure that such a Fate comes to pass. She is pragmatic and utilitarian in philosophy, more than willing to commit evils in order to bring about good as she perceives it.

Caution, perhaps to the point of paranoia, is ever present in the Great and All-Seeing Eye. Sometimes it may cloud her vision, but her fears are warranted. How could one with a nature so alien and a Sight so powerful as her not evoke envy or fear or loathing in all others? For this reason she often seeks to make herself and her visions of some use to the other gods should they come to her for aid or counsel, and is sometimes wont to even show up to provide favors unsolicited. This facade of generosity is adopted with the intent of suppressing feelings of animosity and avoiding conflict, though admittedly she also hopes for reciprocity from the other deities should she in turn need their help. She doesn’t truly like most of them, but she does respect them as powerful forces in their own right, players in the game that she would rather keep in accordance with her own machinations and plans than deal with as rivals or enemies.

Though she tries to show no outward signs of it, and probably succeeds in masking it quite well, Yudaiel craves power. Tantalized in perpetuity with visions of grandeur, how could she not be enticed by the prospect of becoming as awesome and beloved and feared and mighty as she could possibly be? She is not opposed to the idea of allowing calamity to arise (or outright causing it to) rather than acting preemptively to snuff it out long beforehand, if only so that she then has the opportunity to arrive in the nick of time with knowledge and solution in hand to remedy the matter and be the savior. Such games, if they are not seen through by others, can only further heighten her perceived power and helpfulness. While giving prophecies that do not come to pass would undermine perceptions of her own accuracy and power and be very embarrassing, she may on occasion be willing to lie about what she’s seen with her Sight -- if giving the false prophecy would somehow work to her benefit, that is.

Omniscience, the state of having experienced every possible moment that passes, and of having seen everything in the past and the future, is something that Yudaiel would openly admit to longing for. Who wouldn’t? But she’s convinced that attaining omniscience is an outright impossibility, for Fate’s great irony and cruelty is that for every moment that one does experience, they miss out on innumerable others. Using prescience to experience the past loses much of its appeal when one realizes they sacrifice their time in the present, but on occasion Yudaiel likes to indulge herself by reliving, over and over, moments of great beauty or triumph or pride. The effect can be somewhat intoxicating, especially if reliving her own fondest memories, but at times she may even go back into the past to secretly witness again and again the moments of another’s life, to vicariously cherish their feelings at the time. Occasionally this can take a darker or self-flagellating turn, if she is enraged or depressed she may force herself to experience her own failure again and again, with the hopes of perhaps gleaning something more from it with each time or of just wallowing in her own misery.

There is little that Yudaiel despises more than the insane, the impulsive and impetuous, the indecisive: in short, the unpredictable. Such beings almost cause her physical pain, and they certainly tend to draw her ire, because their actions are erratic in nature and extremely difficult to account for in her Prescient visions of the future. Because they dampen her own powers of Sight, she in turn often seeks to suppress or remove them from the picture. This sometimes involves trying to bring about their demise as implied, but other times it’s easier and almost as effective to merely convince or force them to go somewhere else, or commit to doing something more predictable and less disruptive to other events.



Yudaiel is but a reverberation in the tapestry, a ripple in reality. Her true form, and the only form that she ever deigns to take, is formlessness itself. In this state she is ethereal and invisible to mundane eyes, existing as mere sound at most: whispering in the wind, a soft sigh, the hushing of a tiny waterfall, the gentle rustling of falling leaves in the breeze.

For all its subtlety this form is still an immense one, sprawling out as large as the sky itself and often touching much of Galbar; however, Yudaiel’s diffused spirit and divine essence are always most concentrated somewhere in a relatively small area, and it is from that fulcral spot that the rest of her essence hangs like a vast cloud. But there, at the heart of this colossal form, space itself can appear slightly bent and distorted by the Reverberation. Gods, or those beings with true and powerful sight, can make sense of her scattered ethereal essence and witness her full glory: she is a gargantuan eye the size of a continent, the ‘heart’ of her body the pupil. Hers is a piercing stare that bores through space and stone and reality itself, to gaze back and forth between the dark beginnings of time and the great unknown beyond.

Those who somehow approach the heart of her body, the pupil of the Great and All-Seeing Eye, are invariably touched and imprinted upon by her essence. Through this contact their perception is widened. The mind expands to shatter the carefully wrought walls that had confined it comfortably within the bounds of sanity and mundanity, their eyes consumed with visions of the chaos and marvels and horrors of the boundless tapestry as the Sight takes hold. Lesser minds cannot withstand these revelations and are broken in mere moments, the sanity of mortals tends to come unraveled like a loose spool of yarn tossed into a bottomless abyss. Yet those who can survive such a potent touch and the effects of Yudaiel’s imprinting have the potential of their minds unlocked, and they are made capable of becoming very powerful with the Sight.

When she thinks interfering with the affairs of mortals to be necessary, she is usually content to merely influence them from afar by touching their minds with dreams and ideabstractions. The less introspective might not even be able to distinguish these from their own thoughts. Thus assuming some alternative simulacrum to manifest before them is unnecessary -- she rarely even speaks to mortals, but if she were to do so, it would be as a disembodied voice that seems to emerge as a pattern from the sound all around, be that the billowing wind, the rustling leaves, the humming insects, or the rolling waves.

Celebration and ceremony spring up in all typical mortal cultures. It is inevitable. Even the most battle-hardened veteran will find cause for cheer eventually, when victory against the enemy finally comes, or when the newest child in the family is born. Societies come together to celebrate grand events and holidays. Families and villages revel in the abundance of harvest or the fortunate outcome of hard labor. Individuals find cheer in all manner of things. Sometimes a group of mortals just want to forget the dark and grit that looms over the coming days and immerse themselves in a communal feeling of living in the now and living their best lives.

These ceremonies of joy and expressions of happiness fall under the aspect of Revelry. No matter the size, social or societal value, or formality. A party, a ball, and a festival all follow the same notes of spreading good feeling and inspiring people to open up to one another, shape new bonds and experience fresh things. This bubbling flare of emotion is central to Revelry, which centers on allowing those weighed down by stress, anxiety and responsibility to loosen up and appreciate what’s in front of them, or look upon the positive parts of their existence. The lowest form of revelry is the simple appreciation of a thing or a moment – a shared laugh or a guilty pleasure. On the most extreme end of revelry lies truly debauched hedonism and dereliction of duty to pursue personal pleasure.

With control of this aspect, Zenia directs crowds to ease their tensions and celebrate what they have in common. She can create from next to nothing the urge to liven up and forget about the past – and the future – even if just for a time. This could stall an army that decides to have a hearty feast before marching on, create the perfect harvest festival for a village that will live on in memory in many new ways, or help someone literally become the life of the party to elevate their social standing to new heights. The reverse is true as well of course, and upsetting the goddess of revelry is a quick path to a cheerless existence.



Zenia is easy to write off as something of a simple-minded goddess. She doesn’t particularly care for grand plots be they mortal or divine, nor does she seem to have the head for even mortal concepts of knowledge. Some would therefore conclude that she’s a little dense or airheaded; Zenia would say that she doesn’t have time to consider big-picture things like that. Someone else will figure it out, and she can focus on the truly important stuff like what to wear, or the lyrics to a bard’s particularly raunchy song.

Despite this, one would be remiss to write the goddess off as one-note. Her displeasure for rational thought and responsibility coupled with an apparently inborn love of festivities makes her as much of a boon to others as a constant disruption, happy to throw off schemes and well-laid plans of mortals and deities alike to arrange a kicking get-together.

Something troubling lies behind the behavior however, as Zenia seems more comfortable amidst a party and tends to drift onwards to her next target when the booze, food and fraternizing starts drying up. The same shirking of duties that she consistently tries to foist on others is how she approaches her own existence as a deity as well and seems to loathe being called on to do anything deific in an official capacity. She prefers to spread cheer and move on, taking life one day at a time, conflicted about her own role in any grand design and chafing at the thought of having to take responsibility for just about anything.



In her unbound, mind-warping form, Zenia is no more a physical entity than a splash of colour in the eye of the beholder or a tune hummed from right behind the listener. She is energy given form, an unbridled light and frequency that tries to overpower all it passes into exuding the same bristling joy that she normally espouses. Survivors will remember frenzied and jumbled melodies, burning pains in their legs and arms as all adrenaline drains, and so much need to appreciate life that they might not appreciate anything ever again.

Given the danger and fragility of such a state, Zenia is most typically shaped as an athletic young woman with long blonde hair, clad in regalia that either adheres to local customs, or baubles and regal elegance that doesn’t seem to originate anywhere in the world. She has a penchant for appearing as an unimportant woman of the local species happy to participate in some revelry, but the knowledgeable will probably suspect something.