Wælmist

(MERX - “PRICE PAID”)

“COME BACK TO ME.
EVEN AS A SHADOW,
EVEN AS A DREAM.”

The Wælmist: Specter of Grief, Memory, and Mourning Shrouds.

Aliases: The Mourning Shroud, the Price Paid, the Merx.
Symbols: Clasped hands, steles, bouquets, braided hair, burial cloth, veils over thresholds.
Worship: Honor the dead, ease the living; covet your grief, let it be as nourishment for your empathy and devotion; seek humanity’s wounds where they are deepest.
Dwelling: The battlefield, graveyards, and elegies sung for the dying or dead.
Equivalents: Agents of the Exalt Erono (Orthian Concord), child of Harm’lyoth (Aardayni), folk aspect of Syah’varfutl (Aardayni).

There was a shroud about the battlefield on the day the Wælmist revealed itself. The pale hands of wraiths reached through the watery veil between worlds, guiding the souls of the slain to their place on the other side. Somber melodies choked from the lips of the dying; all men, living and dead, were moved by a thousand thousand elegies. Such is the myth surrounding the fall of the Throne of Ensas, and the bloodshed of that brutal day. Since then, much like the eulogies at Ensas, the worship of the Wælmist has spread without source or end. Wherever there are humans, there are Wælmist cults. Wherever there is suffering, its followers flock. It may be the case that no single mythology can be credited with the origin of its worship. Perhaps all men find her when they lose their appetite for death.

To the Lagainians, the Wælmist is not one thing—they are the innumerable agents of the Exalt Erono, visiting men in their hours of need to usher them back into love and light. Healers of Lagain pray to the Wælmist for protection, and clergymen entreat it for safe passage on long pilgrimages. Meanwhile, in the Empire, the Wælmist has largely avoided reinvention as a Latter Hallow. So ubiquitous is the suffering of the people that every effort to rename him has failed. The daylife elegies of the Vemairians have become hymns of its worship, featuring a “merx motif,” which is unique to one’s heritage and connects their music to the cumulative sacrifices of a specific bloodline or ancestry. And, on the border with Lagain, the holiday of Wælmas in the Season of Harvest was respected as a day of armistice by both sides of the war. In Aardayn, the Wælmist is viewed as an aspect of the First Voice Harm’lyoth, either as an extension of her mourning songs or, perhaps, the hands of the Neverborn Syah’varfutl returned to comfort the children she created.

The Wælmist is depicted as a pair of clasped hands reaching out from behind a veil, the hands are styled differently based only on the artist’s own desire. No face, no body, no status is ever attributed in totality to them as the god represents the pain everyone experiences at the passing of another. Her clergy are often mourners who never truly let go of their pain and knowing the damage that can cause, seek to help others avoid it. His gates are often floral arches, the keys being small gravegoods bound up with braided hair taken from the dead. It is said the Wælmist holds dominion over pain and suffering, the avoidance of it, and the fogging of minds as age sets in.

Acts of Favor

• A handful of flower seeds (1 Favor)
• Braided locks of severed hair (2 Favor)
• Bouquet of flowers (3 Favor)
• A clean gravehood or clean burial cloth (5 Favor)
• A written account of a person’s life, either as an obituary or elegy (5 Favor)

Invocations

Brainfog
Complexity: 1
Favor: 1
Range: Touch
Duration: Persist (5)
AP: 2
Effect: The theurgist creates a ward around a creature. The ward causes the first attack against it in each round to have Disadvantage (2) so long as the targeted creature does not attempt to deal damage. If the targeted creature attempts to deal damage, the spell immediately ends.

Lost in Thought
Complexity: 2
Favor: 10
Range: Touch
Duration: 8 hours
AP: 5
Effect: The theurgist marks a territory in a Sphere (15), causing a mist to surround the area. People and beasts inadvertently avoid entering for the duration unless drawn or forced within.

Terminal Lucidity
Complexity: 3
Favor: 5
Range: Touch
Duration: Persist (3)
AP: 2
Effect: The theurgist wards a creature, allowing them to push past the agony of a terrible wound. For the duration, the target ignores the effects of any Surface, Aggravated, or Traumatic Major Wounds. At the end of this, the effects of the Major Wound resumes.

Elegiac Lullaby
Complexity: 4
Favor: 15
Range: Earshot
Duration: 4 hours
AP: 5
Effect: The theurgist recites a prayer for respite, causing those within Earshot to feel the sudden onset of sleep. This automatically fails in combat. Those under the effect will not suffer nightmares, clearing all Fatigue if allowed to rest for the full duration, ignoring Flaws and conditions. Once asleep, targets may attempt a Save at any time to wake up.

Sacrality of Life
Complexity: 5
Favor: 20
Range: Eyesight
Duration: Persist (3)
AP: 5
Effect: Lights like a thousand threads spread from your palms, binding the hands of the violent. All creatures within range must succeed a Willpower vs. Strength contest; on a failure, they are bound by the threads and prevented from making attacks. They must repeat this contest each time they attempt to make an attack for the duration.