The Lady of the Mountain
Material Goddess of Strength, Earth, Mentorship and Renewal
The Lady of the Mountain is an ancient and storied warrior-god, one of the strongest, if not most-so, in the Material Pantheon. The name began a title, given by the now-extinct First Age culture that lived near her mountain fortress, who varyingly called her Ninurišalga and Ninurišacala (lit: "Great Mountain Lady" or "Great Immovable Lady" in Old Alanthian).
In the First Age, the Lady was still known by her birth name, Emeliat Reis. She was one of the founding members of the Insurgent Gods, who arrived from other planes to counter the destructive hegemony of the Colonial Gods. Likely the most powerful of the group in direct combat, Reis was known for throwing herself at the biggest threats or most troublesome obstacles in pursuit of insurgent victories. Because of this she was sometimes given the morbid title: Lady Deathwish.
It is difficult to say what has become of Emeliat Reis, whether she can be considered officially deceased, or whether she still exists, in some sense, within the current Lady. Regardless, her feats and philosophies remain inspirational for many modern heroes.
The Lady of the Mountain's alignment is Lawful Good.Appearance & Heraldry
See also: The Lady of the Mountain, Emeliat Reis & Wardens Image Gallery (External)Emeliat Reis was bereft of vanity and disliked being treated as a demigod (the facts of the matter aside). What few remaining representations of her are usually simple sketches of a tall, powerfully-built but otherwise plain-looking humanoid woman with shaggy, white, braided hair and Ghentish grey skin. See the profile picture of the Material Gods article for one such sketch.
In some regions, newer incarnations of the Lady are portrayed, often when a local hero is believed to have ascended to taken over the role in a Generation after Reis. Though there is only ever one Lady, she is said to be able to take the appearance of any past hero that has held the role. As such, depictions vary.Worship
Paladins of the Lady of the Mountain are most often known as Wardens. They are protectors not only of the vulnerable and innocent, but of stories, teachings and histories. They emulate the philosophy of the Reincarnating Goddess, who gains new perspective by “adopting” ascended heroes into herself, while retaining the teachings of her previous selves. As such, they are passionate about the stories and teachings of others, beliving accumulated wisdom to be more powerful than any sword.
Her clerics and empyreal sorcerers are usually called Wardens as well, though they're sometimes distinguished with the terms Warden-Seeker and Warden-Sage respectively.
Wardens have a reputation as untalkative and humble, yet curious and adventurous. Unlike the Mortal Swords of Saint Ajora or the Field Marshal, Wardens are not typically tied to a town or city and rarely make political allegiances, instead traveling to seek their destinies with unclouded minds. Her church is popular among the orphaned and exiled.
It is common for the Wardens to be trained in martial arts, particularly The Lady's style of Kung Fu (see § Favoured Weapons, below).The Lineage of Stone
Sometimes called the Reincarnating Goddess or the Lineage of Stone, it's said in some societies that every few centuries the Lady calls a great hero to her mountain, location unknown, to replace her. The now ex-Lady, stripped of her godhood, remains for a while as a spirit of sorts, imparting wisdom and keeping the new goddess company, before eventually fading away. These cycles are usually called Generations of the Lineage of Stone, and there is heavy theological disagreement on exactly how many Generations there have been since Emeliat Reis.Valamon
Worship of Ninurišalga is most common on Valamon, a Constitutional Queendom where the ruling queen or Ruskandireij ("Landschosen") is believed to become an avatar, of sorts, of the Stone Goddess after defeating her other competitors and winning the throne. Indeed, the trials of the Ruskansmøt ("Landsmoot") do seem to impart some level of divine, earth-aspected power to the victor.
Note that while the Ruskandireij do seem divinely connected to the Lady, not all Ruskans ascend to join the Lineage of Stone, and indeed some heroes claimed to have risen to the role never set foot on Valamon, let alone ruled it.Marai
The Master Warden is also a relatively popular subject of worship in the Commonwealth of Marai, where she is named Reiza-no-Mikoto ("Reiza On High", lit. "Reiza of the Downward Gaze"). "Reiza" is thought to be a cognate of her mortal name, Reis, while the suffix is standard for the Kunitsukami and their parents Amaterasu and Kagemitsu.Domains
The Stone Goddess's primary domain is Might. Her secondary domains are Earth, Protection, Duty, Vigil and Kung Fu.Favoured Weapon
The Lady's favoured weapons are the lucerne hammer and unarmed/Kung Fu. Her Relic Weapon is the polehammer Dolmensrouw.
Her martial art is varyingly known as Mountain Gales Style, Elder Willow Style or Wing Chun. It employs a delicate hand for deflecting and manipulating attacks (the gales), and immense leg strength for a sturdy stance and powerful kicks (the mountain) to punish openings. A few scholars attribute the art to a Middle-Second Age boddhisattva from the Highlands of eastern Marai, (perhaps the Morō, Setsu or Matsunagayama clanlands) known to teach a similar style. Indeed, the style is still popular among Highlander clans and has even gained some popularity in the Heartlands, for example among the Erayo and the Raan.History
The Lady's is a long and storied history, beyond even Waking Materia and before even the First Age.Antiquity: Egwain
Emeliat Reis was born milennia ago, on a plane called Egwain. Hers was a mountainous, northern people called the Ghent, hardy humanoids with thick grey hair, pale skin and curved, ram-like horns, who lived in the far northeastern reaches of the plane, in the Whalebone Mountains. The strongest and most willful of her father's progeny, Reis was chosen as the scion of her clan in her seventeenth year, and joined her father in rebellion against the ruling clan of the region, dissatisfied at their reclusiveness in the face of increasing hegemony on the borders of their lands. Nonetheless her clan was defeated. While most of them were assimilated by the victors, Reis and her immediate family became Shorn: their horns were removed and they were extradited from the Whalebones.
Fate would eventually bring the young warrior to the Order of Weapon Masters, an ancient and austere school who, as the name implies, aim to master the concept of the weapon itself, rather than a particular type or style. Exceedingly strict and uncompromising, graduation rates were low. And Reis indeed failed, albeit on grounds of discipline as opposed to skill. (In fact her talent was such that one instructor would later ask her to return, and she did for a while, but her relationship with the school soured again, and she did not return a third time.)
It was around this time she met and befriended the eccentric hedge wizard Merlinkainen, thus beginning a friendship that would last millennia and change the fate of worlds. They became adventurers of great renown over the following decade, seeking especially to counter and undo the nautical hegemony of the "Reiver King" Inum'indiron'aravaut, god-emperor of the Ula'thau'la peoples of the Spiral Islands, also called the Kelpeaters. Thanks largely to Reis and Merlinkainen's efforts, enough of the northern Egwithian nations put aside their own differences long enough to turn their collective faces on the Kelpeater Empire, and the Reaver King's forces, opposed also by Reis's tactical genius and Merlinkainen's illusions and divinings, faced a devastating string of defeats. The Ula'thau'la retreated to their faraway homelands, and peace was restored... for a while.Antiquity: The Lost Years
Though Merlinkainen considered life a day-by-day thing, Reis did not know how to live in peace when she had only ever known conflict. She worked as a mercenary for a while, and in this she was extremely successful: combining the hardiness of the Ghent with the training of the Weapon Masters of Khara'ad-Du'um, her skill in combat was second-to-none by now. But mercenary work was unfulfilling, and unlike fighting warlords, some of the jobs weighed heavily on her conscience. She even returned to the Ghent for a brief period, but quickly realized the outside world had transformed her, that she was no longer fully Ghent or fully Mainlander, and that her presence was sowing more confusion than counsel among her people. She left, even more lost than when she arrived. Only the friendship of Merlinkainen kept her going during much of this difficult period.
But quiet comes and goes, and the duo eventually heard through the grapevine some devastating news: Inum'indiron'aravaut and one-fifth of his entire country had left the plain of Egwain to colonize a fresh world. What he and the Ula'thau'la could do to an advanced and established civilization like Egwain was only a tenth of what they could do to a more primitive, unsuspecting one. The Reiver King needed to be stopped yet again.The Void
It took another two years of tireless searching, but Merlinkainen was eventually able to recover the secrets to Voidwalking in a dream-memory of Inum'indiron'aravaut's library, and so the two adventurer's set off.
But planar tracking is a very different thing from merely Voidwalking: finding the Reiver King among thousands of planes is like hitting a tiny island across a vast ocean with no navigation experience. But with a great deal of wits and some luck, the two eventually made contact with the Sagasingers: a loosely-associated group of planar guides, mercenaries, eco-warriors and anthropologists. In fact, two of the founding members of the Sagasingers, the human spellsword V'Shaat al-Avra and the skald Galadnock mac-Kenzie, were so charmed by the two Egwithians that they joined their cause. And thus, the four Insurgent Heroes, eventually to be the Insurgent Gods, arrived on Waking Materia.Early First Age
The First Age was, at least in part, a series of wars between the Insurgent Gods and the Kelpeater Empire. Reis was by and large the strongest of the three in direct combat, mostly acting as a trump card where possible in clashes between insurgent soldiers and Ina'ut's armies. She and a squadron of elite Wardens were largely responsible for the crushing of a new colonial nation under Inau't's defected lieutenant, Lichlord Io'a.
Reis is also thought to have been a mentor to the great hero, wandering monk and former assassin Hanaviri-no-Kishiki ("The Knight of Petals"), who would later become the ascendant god of aid, leadership and sacrifice, The Field Marshal.Late First Age
Near to the close of the First Age, Insurgent God Reis had grown tired; not of swinging a sword, but of being forced to choose, constantly, between multiple bad options at the expense of lives. Lives not just of insurgent soldiers but of the now-demigod's own worshippers. When Lichlord Kozu'e sussed out a major Warden settlement and nearly wiped it out with a contagion, it was more than Reis could bear. She secluded herself for centuries; it was during this period she became known as Ninurišalga (lit: Mountain Lady" in Alanthian) by locals of the region surrounding her remote fortress. (Her oracles never seem to mind the name, suggesting she doesn't either.) She would only to be drawn out a few centuries later, by the Ascendant Demigod Solonn.Second Age
The Lady's Mountain Gales Style Kung Fu bears a resemblance to martial teachings of a famed Second Age bodhisattva from possibly the Morō, Setsu or Matsunagayama clanlands in Marai, who one day packed her belongings and took to the road, never to return. Popular theory holds she is a recent member of the Lineage of Stone, perhaps even the current Lady.
Banner art credit: Phobso
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