Overview
The Mother of Light and Life and Matron to
Elven races.
Sola was the third
God The One and
The Other placed on
Mernac.
Path to Godhood
A Star is Born
Transcending time and space, in the deepest reaches of the cosmos, Sola was born out of the crucibles which cooked the very essences of reality.
A tiny, burning ember, hotter than the white pits of Mount Solarus, thrashed and boiled without purpose or meaning through the expansive sea of nothingness that existed between The One and The Other. Against all odds, against the oppressive void of emptiness itself, the ember struggled and grew, creating flecks of impossible matter, stretching wider and wider, growing hotter and hotter, until - within a moment of eternal brevity that had never before existed - the star of Solas was born. It’s light spread infinitely in every direction, but for millenia, touched nothing.
This indiscernible speck, this newborn sun, drifted alone - still growing, still boiling, still beating.
For within the star, lay something greater - a god, among the first of many, came to be. She was but a seed protected by an albumen of burning plasma. It germinated and grew, planting roots of quiet progress, breaking and reforming, pulsing and stretching, all the while shining a torch for all mortality that was to come.
The tiny fetus grew into a beautiful babe which mewed and squirmed within the womb of her star. She kicked and grappled with the fires that swirled around her and pushed against the membrane of magma that protected her from the void. The shell cracked and flared, light upon light pouring into the bleakest corner of the universe, pieces of her maternal home falling away into the infinite distance. Hands, feets, heart and spirit finally stepped into being - gleaming an array of colour, perfect and beautiful. But alone. She let out her first cry.
The mewling babe grew into a beautiful child, young, naive and timid. Her earliest years were fraught with loneliness, with no one to sooth her cries, no one to tell her of the glories yet to come. Time, without concept or meaning, passed her by. She explored the purpose of being through taste and sound. She gazed upon the darkest, empty corners of reality through clearing vision and heightened touch. She smelled the cinders of her immaculate nativity, and chased them across the cosmos. Though she was alone, with nothing but the instinct of life to guide her. She knew nothing of the nature behind her longing or desire - only that she would one day become the person she was destined to be. What urge was it that guided her into being, into living, into feeling?
No-one, not even The One or The Other can say.
The wandering child grew into a beautiful woman. She was the master of her own heart - a cauldron burning with curiosity, desire and hope. The woman, a maiden with limitless, perfect power over a domain of nothingness, decided to live a life of loneliness no longer. She was old enough and wise enough, now, to reflect upon her own conception. She pondered the meaning of self, and the distance she had come in a universe that did not know creation. Why was it then, that she knew of it? She decided, and declared to the blinking cosmos, let there be life. And there was so.
From the sparks of her neonatal shell she formed vast behemoths to accompany her. Each one unique, crafted to move, think and desire as she did. One became many. Many became infinite. No matter where she looked, or where she travelled, she decided she would never be alone.
It was then that her existence could no longer be ignored. The One turned to The Other and they gazed upon the sea of light and life the young goddess had created. They called to her so;
“Daughter of the Sun. You have created life and brought light to a place where before there was none. You are a goddess, a divine being, an immortal soul upon the fabric of time. You will be named Sola, and will be known as thus.”
All creations of the goddesses’ desire were cast aside. She had been given a name, a purpose, a father and a mother, a vision and a body. Her infinity of loneliness was ended. She was reborn anew. Sola first spoke;
“I am Sola. Goddess of Light and Life. Let all who hear me know they are not alone. Let all who see me know they are loved. Let all who touch me know that they are alive. I am Sola. Goddess of Light and Life. ”
Life & Death
Sola’s life after that day was one of immeasurable joy. The tale of how she came to be known on Mernac begins with the day she was called to join Siberlee and Barak in the creation of our world as documented in Siberlee’s Good.
While learning to love her brothers and sisters of divine order, she fell passionately for the one we know as Bu. He was to become the Father of Death and Destruction, neither of which were understood by Sola. She became fascinated with the way he saw the end to all things, a concept she would only come to understand later when it would bring her great pain. Bu, in turn, adored how Sola was able to create life. Though soulless, for the race of man had not yet come into being, Sola’s mortal creatures would astound the sombre Bu. He would watch her for days at a time, and listen to the sounds of all that she would make. It would sadden her, when his determination to destroy such things would bring about the silence of nothingness. But endlessly, they went on, playing and experimenting with what could live, and what could die. Others, among their brothers and sisters, would join and share their gifts. Questions; a list longer than the rivers of Evion, would be drawn, discussed and explored by the gods and goddesses of our fledgling world. It was discovered that mountains could not die, yet trees could wither and expire. Rivers, lakes and seas could not die, but the fish, crabs and snails within them could. It was obvious, through this discussion and evolving experimentation, that Bu and Sola were destined to be entwined as a couple for all eternity as two sides of the same coin. But, before the dissension of the gods, the implications of this inevitable fate was not fully understood. For a long time, they rehearsed their cycle of life and death in joyous harmony.
Light & Shadow
Sola was also lusted after by the god Barak, the most handsome and charismatic of all the male gods, who was to become the father of darkness and all that is evil. Since their first meeting during the earliest days of Mernac, in a time where all gods were devoid of want and jealousy, Sola and Barak complimented one anothers’ unique vision of beauty. Where Sola shone too brightly, Barak tempered with shadow. Where Barak drowned in darkness, Sola pierced with colour. It is said that in the night-eyes of cats, or the reflective scales of cave lizards, the harmony between Sola and Barak’s experimentation can be seen. Even the moons are caught in an endless cycle of darkness and light. As is the day, and the night - for one cannot pass without the other to follow.
Over time, as Barak and his closest lover Siberlee grew more distant, the glowering Barak would seek refuge in the radiance of Sola’s embrace. But their bonding was impossible. Such as the light and dark must forever border one another, Barak and Sola were to remain at a distance, bound by the inevitable facts of nature.
After the dissension of the gods, on the day when Barak’s soulless body summoned the first creatures of undeath, Sola and Siberlee wept together, without breath. They were betrayed by the man whom they trusted more than any other. They were angered by the twisted, rotting forms that moved like puppets as a mockery of real life. They were sorrowful that Barak had so obviously lost any sense of compassion. Sola wept with Siberlee and their tears for the corruption of the life they had created flooded the mountains of Mernac and froze, forming the glaciers of the Sunbleached Peaks.
Her betrayal, anger and sorrow continues to this day, but Sola is eternally resolute that she will bring about the end of death, destruction and darkness before Mernac is lost to the forces of evil forever.
Appearance
Indescribably beautiful, the poetry of words and imagery to describe Sola’s impossible form can only stretch the limits of mortal imagination. A descriptions from the earliest times of Sola appearing to humans is often taken as the standard expectations for any mortals’ chance encounter with the goddess;
“She stands tall and slender, with long, blazing silver-white hair that glistens with the splendour of a thousand stars. Her ascendant form is eternally bathed in a pool of light that brings vigour and life to everything she graces with her touch. Her skin is pale white, as if carved from the glowing hot embers of a raging fire, but cooled and softened into delicate curves without blemish or impurity. Her face is like the perfect moon, on the perfect night. The goddess wears a dress of ivory which hangs loosely from her shoulders, exposing much of her alabaster skin without concern for modesty or shame. It’s delicate threads, woven from the hairs of a unicorn’s tail, flow like the arcing flares of a burning star, and cascade beams of rainbow light across everything that does not cower from her form to hide in deconsecrated shadow.”
Ears of Beauty
All races, including the elves to whom she gave life, define Sola by the high, pointed ears of elven heritage. They are always long and slender, and greatly adorned with jewels of burnished silver and white gold. The beauty of Sola’s ears is exacerbated among artworks of particular centuries - some visionaries painting her to have many ears on both sides of her head, each more beautiful than the next, so that she may hear the cries of her children in times of chaos and struggle. For this reason many elven ladies wear elaborate eardressings when they aim to conceive a mate from within devout elven society. Dressings can be made from feathers, diamonds, precious metals and leaves, but the more spectacular, the better.
In some, darker cults, the practice of stealing elven ears is a cursed ritual to defile the body of an expectant elven mother, or enhance the fertility of a sorceress who seeks to steal the seed of a predestined elven male. One such sorceress, Mistress V’Sil, was transformed into a vile, rapacious creature once she failed to conceive a child through this practice, and now lurks the Cathall coast, luring men to their deaths through wicked song.
Eyes of Light
There is no-one who could deny the beauty of Sola, goddess of Light and Life, but among her features the most difficult to determine is her glowing, white eyes. It is said for a mortal to gaze for more than a second into those deep, infinite orbs is to witness, in a single, brief moment of eternity, the joy and sadness of all life on Mernac. Such a tale comes from the Book of Govy, when a child, seeking it’s mother, stumbled upon Sola issuing a blessing upon the family’s garden. The goddess turned, and forgetting to conceal her divine majesty for a moment, looked for too long into the child’s eyes. After that day the child would neither laugh nor cry, nor smile, nor frown. It was a good child, filled with empathy and kind words, able of mind, body and spirit, but it did not feel emotion too strongly one way or the other. It remained, neutral and good in it’s ways until death. We remember this child as Venezia, the Knowing.
Sola’s eyes are often painted in plain, bright white - a stark contrast to the vibrant iridescent glow that surrounds the rest of her form. In some artwork, such as that of the late Ephestus Glamor, her eyes gleam like stars in the sky, flaring beams of straight, white light in all directions. In other, more conservative works, the eyes are simple white almond slits, full of balanced wisdom and melancholy.
If Sola is ever shown to have iris or pupils, they are shining silver or burning gold.
Touch of Life
Images of Sola where she is not simply bathing the world around her in light show her touching and holding brightly coloured fruit, flowers, herbs and soft creatures. Within the halls of the Hearth of Eternal Light, she is most often caressing or curating such things, feeding small beasts, holding newborns or watering plants. Of the creatures she is often associated with rabbits, birds of paradise, mice, eagles and bumblebees. Of the fruits she is often associated with apples, rosehip, blueberries, grapes, pears and strawberries. Of the flowers she is often associated with roses, daffodils, daisies and petunias. Of the herbs she is most often associated with heather, saffron, basil and cinnamon.
Only in the most dour of artworks, deemed blasphemous by her most zealous sectarians, show a dead or dying creature or plant near to her. Some works, most notably the ones that refer to the lost love between Bu and Barak, show dead or dying creatures in the shadows cast by rocks and hills. Some very controversial anti-humanist paintings show human structures - castles, walls and towers - casting shadows filled with corpses of beautiful things, which Sola herself is sad, trapped among a forest of stone, unable to see all the life she helped create.
Alternative Images
Sola is sometimes depicted as a pregnant, buxom woman laying naked among the grass. The inclinations of this imagery are obvious, as she is the matron of fertility, pregnancy and birth. Animals and children are sometimes drawn to suck from her breasts, or proud half-animal half-men are portrayed as her passionate lovers.
Much less common depictions of Sola cast her in dark, translucent obsidian, as if hardened by the fires of a cosmic war. In stories to support such imagery, she is said to have died long ago, when her lover Bu damned humanity to inevitable death, a devastation from which she could never recover. Most elven denominations, particularly the Hearth of Eternal Light, damn these claims as ruinous blasphemy, and destroy any depictions of their goddess where she is not shown to be in motion, shining brightly coloured light and triumphing over death in plumes of cleansing flame.
Powers & Magic
The limitless powers of Sola’s original form have been reshaped and reformed by The One and The Other since her birth and puberty among the stars. It is a zealous, secretive cabal of mortals who claim The Other convinced The One to name Sola as a goddess so that she could be shackled to exist within the confines of their rule… but rumours as ridiculous as this hardly diminish the ultimate supremacy The One & Other hold among the hearts and minds of those who hear the Legends of Mernac. What is for certain, though, is that Sola is truly powerful, truly wise and truly fierce.
Gift of Life
First among her most treasured powers is the ability to create life.
She was the first to form beasts on the world of Mernac, even showing the great Siberlee what it means to love rabbits, wolves, birds and dragons, and still presides over conception, pregnancy and birth of all races to this day. Unsurprisingly then, all races on Mernac worship the goddess, and she welcomes each of them who are pure of heart to pray at her altar.
However, it is with this gift of life that she sculpted the body, mind and soul of the Elves. She created for them roots more nutritious than the finest game, herbs more flavoursome than salts buried beneath the earth and flowers more fragrant than the most distant spices. It was her wish for her children to live without the need to ever slay another living creature for sustenance, for death saddened her more than any other part of the world she had created alongside her divine brothers and sisters.
Sola also taught the most devout of her worshippers the way of the Fivor. To them she offered many powers, but chief among them was the ability to channel her lifeforce into them and others, to help them stave off the wicked wounds of death.
Gift of Light
Second among Sola’s list of powers is control over light. Without Sola, Mernac would have no colours to separate the grass from the sky, nor light to tell the moon from the sky. From the Book of Bundy:
“She tugs on the illuminating rays of the sun, moon, torches and stars like the threads of an ivory loom. They stretch wherever her fair hands guide them, and where they tether, boundless colours bloom.”
Wherever there are wanderers, lost and exhausted, Sola’s guidance can be found. She seeks to guide and illuminate the existence of all life on Mernac. Her powers to lift sailors from the sea and sing while carrying them to the dry beaches, is legendary. Lost explorers call to her for aid, begging their goddess to shine the stars brighter so they may find a way home. Elven warriors pray to Sola before each battle, asking for her to guide their blades, and daze their enemies with the sun.
A great spell Sola shared with her followers was to command light in reflection of their matron. She taught her Fivor to illuminate the darkest places of the world so that they could see, where otherwise they could not.
A common prayer refers to her battle with Bu;
“Mother of the sun and the moon, maiden of the fire and stars, let me bask in your radiant glory. Swallow the shadow within my flesh, shine your light into my heart, be my shield against darkness, be my sword against shadow, guide me, as the sun guides the moon.”
Gift of Conception
When Elves want to have a child, they pray to Sola for the gift of conception. She alone is able to bestow upon elven couples the rite of pregnancy.
In some elven cultures this practice is encouraged by entire festivals dedicated to fertility and impregnation, often culminating in many children born of indeterminate fathers. These children ‘born of the many’ are not shunned, but cared for by the communities as a whole, for their family is not just one mother and one father, but a whole host. The beauty of this communal union is encouraged into other communities by passionate missionaries, as it reflects the attitude of the gods, brothers and sisters joining freely together, before the creation of our world.
Disciples & Trauncha
Sola’s ultimate blessing is to make a devout follower a disciple. These chosen ones are made undying mythical beasts, denouncing their mortal heritage and abandoning their mortal soul to serve her purpose on the world. Though soulless, this does not make them evil, for her heralds are filled with the light of Sola so they may cast away the darkness upon the world, and they are filled with the life of Sola, so they may never be taken by death.
With every disciple, comes the trauncha curse, however. Those who become such creatures are unable to have children of their own. Without a soul, in time, all sense of commonality to their original form is lost. Family, friends, offspring, are forgotten.
For the goddess Sola herself, the shape of her discipline must take influence from the body of a creature she made when the world was first being formed. This beast, among her most beloved of creatures, may never exist again in the world. What remains of the last generation of those animals will one day be extinct - for like the discipline themself, they may never breed again.
Among the most famous of Sola’s disciples are thus;
Gaia, Lady of the Westwood
Once a beautiful elven princess, barely beyond maturity, Gaia was chosen by Sola to become the first among her disciples. Each dawn the young girl would awaken with sweet songs of joy and give every moment of her waking day to care for the old, sick and dying within her village. It was not until a cruel raid upon her town that Sola noticed the girl as a beacon of shining light. Gaia stood against the raiders, defending her baby brothers and sisters with nothing more than a flaming branch. Over the course of a decade Gaia was taken as a slave, kept in eternal darkness with but a single torch to light her cell, and made to embalm the corpses of those others who died in chains. Never did the child give up hope and kindness to all that she would meet. Her songs still soothed the dying, and her spirit never waned. It was on the day she died that Sola returned her to life as a great pearlescent bird and gave her a home among the forests. Gaia still sings each dawn, and shines colours of joy throughout the lands of elves to let them know they are not alone. Some say she appears to the dying before they pass, to let them know they are not alone. Others see her chasing away bands of raiders, piercing their skulls with her song, making them panic, cry and vomit at the divine beauty of her inner strength.
Aethon, Stallion of the Dawn
Half-beast Aethon rose from the ranks of Fur as a warrior who would give no quarter to those who chose the path of evil, even among his own men. It was through Aethon that a small band of heroes became a massive army, marching westward across the open plains, cutting down undead hordes that were rising from the battlefields of desecrated corpses. He was mighty, intelligent, cunning and ruthless. On the day he condemned his own brothers to death for sacrilege, Aethon stepped into disciple-hood for Sola. He became an even greater beast, a leviathan half-creature with hooves the size of houses. With these great weapons he now rides ever westward each day with the rising son, trampling the hordes of undead that rise from desecrated battlefields, and crushing those who steal the eyes of their enemies.
Ra Adun, Eternal Lightchaser
Not much is known of Ra before he became a king. An evil man, he made slaves of his enemies, and enemies of his friends. It was not until Sola appeared to him in a vision, warning him that the path he had chosen would lead to ruin, that Ra denounced his wicked ways. The king freed all his slaves and pleaded forgiveness from his friends. He stripped himself of all mortal luxuries and exiled himself to a cave where he studied the voices within his mortal soul. Realising his soul was corrupt, and that his mortal form was weak, Ra called out to Sola. He asked to become her beacon, so that other kings may never follow the same path he did. Sola agreed, and made Ra into an immortal multi-winged moth, so that he must always follow the light. Now it is said that whenever a ruler finds a wing amongst their halls, Ra has shed his warning upon them and the wrath of Sola is soon to follow.
God Stats
God of: Light and Life
Home World: Solas
Gift to Create Man: Eyes
Matron Religion: Children of the Sun
Matron Race: Elves
Matron Faction: The Immaculate Mothers
Matron Guild: Dawnguard
Matron Title: Everborn
Matron Classes: Fivor, Priests:
Matron Places: Traddlebow and Mount Solaris, Torbernia
Matron Creatures: Rabbits, Bumblebees, Bird-of-Paradise, Moths
Trauncha: The disciple must become a mythical beast, denouncing their mortal heritage and abandoning their mortal soul. Though this does not make them evil, for they are filled with the light of Sola, they are unable to have children and all sense of commonality to their original form is lost. Family, friends, offspring, are forgotten. For Sola, her blessing to her discipline must take influence from the form of a creature she made when the world was made. This beast, though undying and filled with the powers of light and life, can never exist again. There must be only one, and never may it bear a child.
One Desire: For her own world, where nothing ever dies, and life springs eternal
1st half of One Book Page: Sola for her entire existence tried to discover the secret of immortality without needing the Powers of The One and the Other to do so. She eventually found it and found that if…(page torn)
List of Disciples
Gaia, Lady of the Westwood - Elf
Aethon, Stallion of the Dawn - Fur
Ra Adun, Eternal Lightchaser - ?
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