One week later, afternoon in the Chantry library…
Just me, myself and I today. Anna’s spending the day with Lady Iris in the Sepulchre of God, spending quality time together. Wish I was there, but then I’d feel like a third wheel between mother and daughter. Probably. And so, here I am in the library. Lost in thoughts, all alone.
Days in springtime pass so damn quickly, like the caress of a breeze. I’ve been doing what needs to be done, training Anna up into the Paladin she’s meant to be, bit by bit. It’s going well!
Got some time to kill. Lady Iris said to honour the Order’s traditions, right? There are so many damn things to remember and know, for the record… and knowing’s half the battle, right?
I’ve got just the thing in mind – the gods of Nisha. Rinnah, and the Demon Lord, two gods diametrically opposed. They are Light and Darkness, Good and Evil. The war eternal. Oh, such melodrama!
Let this serve as a record that I remember, that I know what I know. Timelines be damned.
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Rinnah…
She is the God of Life, Light, Love, Creation, and Memory. In portraits of stained glass where her golden eyes gleam radiantly like the midday sun, she’s dressed in tattered black robes and footwraps that have seen better days, her shoulder-length hair an oddly esoteric shade of pink.
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The humans and elves of Nisha worship her. Their one true God. From the massive, opulent temples in the big cities, to the little chapels nestled in sleepy villages, she’s there, watching over us all. Her presence, her covenant with the mortal realm, binding forevermore.
Heroes serve as her hands upon the world. Her will made manifest on Nisha. Gods clad in flesh. We represent the good in her, I’d like to think. As the tides of fate and Prophecy decree, Monsters are slain, kingdoms rise and fall, and people are saved.
It is what it is, I suppose.
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The Demon Lord…
I remember those colourless eyes that glint heavily with malice, its hulking body of darkness black like death itself. Fucking hell in a handbasket.
It is the undisputed Lord of all demons – horrifying monsters of ice and shadow that prey on the souls of the mortal realm. It’s said that for every fear and phobia that the mortal mind can fathom, there’s a Demon waiting to be born.
By the hand of Rinnah, the Demon Lord and its servants were sealed away in Arcadia, the Land of Demons – a frozen hellscape said to be a cruel mirror of this world. She locked them all in there and threw away the key. Literally! It’s why the Runestone was shattered into seven Lesser Shards, divided across the world of Nisha. And by her word and divine law, no being of Nisha may ever forge the Runestone anew and repeat the mistakes of the past.
But that’s exactly that – the past. Defying the grand design of the divine, the Demon Lord’s influence and power grows day by day, corrupting the world even as it remains imprisoned within Arcadia, within the sacred heart of the World Tree. And as Nisha bleeds, demons peer over the veil as madmen and Monsters alike pay tribute to insanity, calling out to demons to devour and defile.
Thus, the Oracle sought a Hero from another world, a loophole to have someone save this world of Nisha from certain doom. She got me.