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Legend of the Valkyrian Baths

Long ago, in the Age of Anxiety—the age when the Sky Herself raged against mortals, and innumerable monsters roamed the land and sea—the Demon Lords of the Planes Below set their jealous eyes upon the Material Plane. So they began to rip threads from the fabric of the Planes. Stitch by stitch, the curtain unraveled. Inch by inch, the barriers thinned. Soon there were holes in the Material Plane, holes large enough for demons to crawl through and terrorize the mortals. They began to create domains of their own horrible design wherever they could reach.   The gods of the good could not stand to see this betrayal—the curtains between the planes hung for a reason, and this was a violation of everything the multiverse was designed for. Odin, blesséd son of Fricka, could stand it least of all. So he reached down through the thinning curtain himself and created a band of blesséd warriors: pure-hearted, steel-willed, soaring on wings like the angels themselves. He christened them the Valkyries, and he sent them after the heavens' foes.   The Valkyries roamed the land for years slaying every demon and demonspawn they could find. Their blades were like cleansing fire. But deep in the Blue Mountains, they found one they could not dominate: the Demogorgon, Master of the Spiraling Depths. It broke their forces across the most forbidding peaks, cast their bodies towards the deepest trenches, tried to scatter them to the winds. Brünnhilde, their leader, gathered the pieces of her sisters as she wept and stitched them back together in the shadows as she fled the Demogorgon's wrath.   Battered and broken of body and soul— but not yet defeated in spirit— the Valkyries retreated to the south, to sail alongside the sun elves to distant shores. They climbed the softer mountains of Luömisáde, marveling at the diamond-white pureness of snow untouched by demons' claws.   One day, in their wanderings, Waltraute came across the sound of weeping. She followed the lamentations into a valley and found it full of pure water and white steam. At the other end was the goddess Eir, weeping into the valley and filling it with her tears. The pure-hearted goddess had thought the Valkyries dead, and had been so distraught over the loss of Odin's warriors that she had filled the entire basin. Waltraute dove through the waters to reach the goddess, to console her—but by the time she had swum through the basin, she realized her dreadful wounds were healed. She showed this to Eir, who was overjoyed, and swum back to bring all her sisters into the waters as well.   With the strength they gained from bathing in the waters of the basin, the Valkyries flew back to the Demogorgon's lair and defeated it easily. They banished the rest of its kin to the Lower Planes forever and ushered in an age of peace, under the watchful eyes of the Erden Dynasty.

Historical Basis

The Dwarvish word for Aasimar is "Walküri." Some speculate the Valkyries were the first aasimar.
Date of Setting
Y2020 Age of Anxiety - Y1 Age of Integrity

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