• Red Sky • Mythos • Ebét •
The divine hero who commanded light and bent it to her will, burning those who opposed her to stone and dust. She reigned over the River of Life, bringing enlightenment and oblivion-in-unity to the young peoples of those times. She demanded clarity, openness, and a disavowal of secrets. Pustari still tell tales of how they fled into the dark wastes, far from the unmoving sun, to stay safe and individual.
Some tribes recall the Glass People, the Shtrakha, who hid inside an egg of light so that their own being could not be swallowed by the Virgin Medusa.
She was slain in later epochs by the New Sun, only-begotten child of the Flesh God.
From Her Death Came
- The Fire Traps, the terrifying complex of volcanoes beyond farthest Pust, grew where her dismembered flesh fell. It burned so far into the ground that Deep Earth’s own fiery blood erupted, turning noons grey and sunsets scarlet for half-a-dozen years.
- The Bore Pits, known as the Wells of the Hells, were dug by her dripping milk as she fought the New Sun. Each a plumb tunnel into the deepest reaches, where the liquid bowels of the Deep Earth eventually suffocated it in molten rock and iron.
- The four-winged snakes of the Vast Pust, those trackless places of sand and gravel that bound the River of Life and the Realm of the Flesh God, came from her scales that fell like dust.
- Some tribes of the Far Oases drank her water-blood and became the many-bonded, the tangle-minded, who found fusion and union while losing their humanity and individuality. The Kashassari of the Pearly Clutch and the Umiks of the High Valley of Ül are proud of this heritage. Most other tribes deny it and hide their tangled-minds from the human world about.
- The chilli-and-chocolate biscuit known as the gaze-of-fire is named after the legend of the Virgin Medusa.
- The Pustari tales of the all-revealing lights inspired piscomancer extraordinaire Restya del Narabai to engineer the ill-focus fish. This fish hunts in murky waters with seizure-inducing flashes of light. After the Pleasure Dam incident, the ill-focus fish spread widely and is now a nuisance in many regions.
Other Names: Lady Lightning-brows, Azmya, Ferōkla
Oldtech Heresy: No living creature or godly hero was she, but a tremendous biological void ship that some older folk, perhaps the Viles, perhaps the Lings, possibly another people altogether, suspended close above the face of the Earth to shine day and night upon it.
of the Vastlands
There is kindness in the snake’s eyes.
There is no snake.
Trust it.
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