Leena Salmai, 776 BU, School of Nyralstead
Few alive know the claims of the ancient Salgarians and their worship of gods long forgotten to the turn of millennia. We can look to some of the skivra'kel as eyewitnesses, for their longevity surpasses even those of the primordial beings who brought the world to heel near the beginning of all. We also look to the ruins of Sartygg and other great cities in the Vulrian Desert, to surviving manuscripts penned from the hands of Salgarian scribes, and to tales the ancient Koronelans and today's Netzoreans tell of their neighbor to the north.
I speak as one who claims direct lineage with Liu-mai and Ru-ten and Salgar alike. This lineage does not grant me inherent insight into which gods they deemed true and worthy of worship, but it does demand of me a certain conviction to see the stories of the Salgarians out of the Blight and desert that brought their empire to ruin.
What, then, shall I make of Vulroch of the Hunger?
Liu-mai herself spoke of this heathen deity mere days before the Blight reached its climax.
"We should never have let those sagremar [nearest translation: plural of sacrilege] continue their sacrifices unchallenged. Talfen was ever a sight of kru-venimar [vengeance, never satiated], and the Lady of Vengeance finding her way to its shores was only a matter of time." Ancient Annals, Chapter 41: "On Empress Liu-mai and the Vulrian Blight"
Where human insights fail to provide proper context for Vulroch of the Hunger himself, we may look to skivra'kellan words. The Empress of the Salgarians may not have been trying to scribe a record for later eyes to see, but as far as we've garnered from our interactions with Daromis and his people, theirs is an insight more focused on creating a unified history for all creation, as their worship of Eveyla demands.
Daromis Eydrial has been consistent in his eyewitness testimony at every turn.
"Whatever Vulroch may have been before his corruption, it was lost to an endless mire and murk of shadow and smoke. Vulroch's visage was crawling and grasping, deadening land and animal and human and kellat'skiv alike. Only through Eveyla's light and mercy, granted by almighty Ablael, could the human empress and I drive back the shadow and chain Yshlii to the west." Writings of Daromis, manuscript 3K
What we understand about the combative nature of the pantheons of old and new gods seems to suggest that Yshlii, for reasons only known to her, sought to undo the work of the old gods for their role in her people's death and her decades of suffering. Certainly she held Xarran, as overseer and arbiter of all things, living and dead, chiefly responsible. But her wrath would not cease with Xarran alone. His love, Hramma, must have also been found wanting in the eyes of Yshlii, for Vulroch's devastation of farmland was also absolute.
Vulroch himself, as either of the old (the "Xarran Pantheon" from now on) or new ("Ablael Pantheon") deific orders, is a bit of a mystery. Given Liu-mai's prejudice against the followers of Vulroch of the Hunger, as well as the overall lack of supporting documentation in the face of absolute devastation, we can, for the moment, glean Vulroch as, at the very least, an evil or false deity in the Xarran Pantheon.
Though consensus is rare in the Ablael Pantheon, I have not found a single text referring to a god or goddess of desire or hunger beyond Carnafex, whose roles and powers differ wildly from both Daromis's above description of Vulroch and contemporary depictions of the deity near Sartygg. One could argue, as Gregos Nyriam has in his twelve-volume
Treatise on the Great Eastward Diaspora, that the initial societal memories of the first vagabonds of the Blight set up an inherent bias against gods of hunger and desire, hence Carnafex's continued negative portrayal in the Ablael Pantheon.
Furthermore, Gregos Nyriam also posits "the first generation of eastbound wanderers purported a simultaneous strong resentment toward the reckless, unchained desires that brought about the first Blight with an equally strong pioneering spirit brought upon by the example their martyred empress set."
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