Solanil and the Dust Devil

Art Credit: Eric Deschamps, artist of the Magic: The Gathering card "Ephara, God of the Polis" http://www.ericdeschamps.com/

Summary

Spirix, the land of nomads and sand, a tapestry of cultures each with their own rich histories and a collective identity shared between those who call the desert home. The Glowing Sands have a well understood geographical history as a stretch of land that has been desertifying in the rain shadow of Terisirae's central mountain chain for millennia. This explanation is well-documented, erudite, and scholarly, but it lacks the presence and punch of a solid origin story.
More importantly, it fails to sufficiently explain a population native to Spirix that can trace its heritage back further than any other in the area, further back than most of the other indigenous populations on Terisirae itself. A significant number of Elves and Half-Elves in Spirix have, in their ancestry, Sea Elf biology. Many are still Sea Elf dominant, having many of their phenotypical expressions visibly evident. Where did they come from?
A story is shared between the many peoples of Spirix, traded from one person to the other during long dry days and infinitely cold nights. A story of Terisirae carved in two, a great ocean dividing the powerful country cleanly in half. Under the protection of the Sea Goddess Thassa, the sea was populated by many different creatures. Most powerful and reverent to the mighty deity were the Sea Elves, a race native to the area since time immemorial. With blessings from the Mighty Tidecaller, the Elves fulfilled a role they still practice to this very day, aiding voyagers in their journey from one end of Spirix to the other as Guides.
According to legend, those foreign voyagers paid less and less respect to Thassa as time went on. Outnumbering Spirixian natives, the great sea god slowly became bitter. Finally, like the last drop of water spilling over the rim of a glass, Thassa's discontentment became too great to subdue any longer. The waves roiled and rose, draining from the basin that split Terisirae and leaving back into the Restless Sea--an event that lives on in myth by the name The Waning Waves. In her anger, Thassa combed the seafloor and deposited her gatherings in Spirix, filling the void she made with endless sand. Those still devout to Thassa, those original native people, gathered together to pray for relief, to ask for one last blessing from their beloved goddess.
After her anger had been quelled, she saw the piety of her people and wept a single tear, a tear that fell to the earth and sprouted into a new divine being, a daughter who would care for the once people of the sea, the new people of the sand. That daughter became Solanil, The Goddess of the Oasis, and the nomadic people of Spirix would pay her respects everywhere they went to create new springs of water and to find new lands capable of sustaining life, if even for a little while. Brief aside--Solanil also has, included in her portfolio, a duty to keep and preserve culture, specifically through ritual and clerical practice. This makes Solanil the Goddess of Oases as well as the Goddess of Holy Scripture, the Goddess of Dogma, and gives her discrete rule over Spirix.
Even Solanil, infinitely loving and benevolent to the people of Spirix, had within her the same anger that once stirred inside her mother. Perhaps a remnant from the conditions of her birth, or a divine balance to preserve the culture of the desert itself, Solanil harbored a dark entity within herself that would creep to the surface whenever a traveler disrespected her people, her culture, or her desert. It is common among Guides to prepare religious trinkets and ornaments before venturing into the desert, for themselves and all those in the caravans they lead. It is also common for Guides to inform those they travel with when the noon hour is upon them, a culturally significant time of day when the sun is highest in the sky and the heat is at its zenith. During this time, falling to one's knees for a few minutes is customary in showing reverence to Solanil, and also serves to keep them a foot below the rising heat of the trembling sands.
But there are stories. . .tales of those reckless few who refused every opportunity to observe Solanil in her native home and paid a horrible price for it. When those discourteous souls set foot on the sands, they awaken the wrath of Solanil's alter ego, the portion of her portfolio that is concerned not with giving water but selfishly hoarding it; The Varamtasch. In ancient Spirixian, the word roughly means Dust Devil. Those who encounter it, even from afar, are seldom seen or heard from again.

Historical Basis

For all the people between Waleah and Huvora, there is a well-known tale of a man who went by the name Kybrion Nyveram. Historians have gone back and forth for many years on whether Kybrion was a real person, a cautionary tale, a mixture of the two, or any other historically ambiguous category. Regardless, Kybrion is known as a foolish Cleric of Ilmater who attempted to make a pilgrimage across Spirix. His Guide warned him many times of the danger his relics and religious artifacts posed to their caravan, but those concerns fell on deaf ears. In order to protect the caravan, the Guide instructed everyone but Kybrion to leave one day earlier and left word in the town of Sable for other Guides to be wary of the hardheaded holy man. 
Kybrion woke the next morning with no way to cross the desert, alone in a hostel with rumors spreading about him posing danger to any caravan soon to leave eastward. Intrepid and impatient, Kybrion left by himself into the desert with minimal preparation. Whatever he did must have angered Solanil greatly, for the entirety of Spirix was caught in a maelstrom of desert storms and wandering tornadoes for nearly a fortnight following Nyveram's departure.
There is some historical evidence to suggest this 20-days long storm actually happened at some point between E.Y. 740 and Y.E. 400. Mineral and soil deposits from Karusha to The Scar all share similar disturbance patterns at a depth indicating a few hundred to roughly a thousand years ago. There are also stories among nomadic groups that live along the peaks of The Green Line that corroborate huge storms and strange weather patterns around the same time. All this together seems to suggest that Kybrion indeed incurred the wrath of the Varamtasch, and if anyone else was nearby they would have suffered a similar fate. In the modern era, the story is used as a way to convince travelers to listen to their Guides and pay the proper respects on their way through the desert. Studies have also found that many rituals of nomads moving through the desert have the dual usefulness of warding off nearby predators. Specifically, moving in large groups, keeping the heaviest materials in the middle of the caravan, stopping every few dozen miles for a few minutes, and walking roughly in synch all serve the purpose of disuading predators from approaching those that move through Spirix.

This entry is narrated by Brayden Bradley.

Date of First Recording

7900s E.Y.