Lords of Gossamer and Shadow NPC’s: Belethar Endren

Portrait of Belethar Endren a.k.a. Sacrifice Image by Anna Shellkova, legalese at bottom of page

I apologise, I did not realise you were speaking to me.  Yes, yes, that is my right name alright but I have been called it so seldomly that I do not recognise it like you would your own.  Why?  Well that is a complicated tale but I will try to simplify it for you.

I was born on a world of Gossamer known as Olympus where nigh all of the inhabitants are gods or half man half god.  Their laws are cruel and inhumane as they treat the humans with disdain out of fear I think.  The God’s power in their eyes came from the worship of humans in a different Gossamer world, or so they believed.  It was a strange arrangement in Olympus as the shadow barely separated the two worlds from one another and in the ebb and flow of the shadow occasionally they would merge.  Sometimes the moments were fleeting other times they lasted years.

Well, one of their own half breeds worked against them and chose to exist in this other world and for punishment the Gods visited great suffering on their lands.  But the hero stood up and defeated the Gods at their own game.  This seemed to be the straw that separated the realities for all time and the Shadow flooded in.  The Gods were fools and afraid that at this time they would fade and vanish with none to worship them.  they created simulacrum and forced them to worship them but they neither heard nor felt their prayers.  In such a flap they were that they then decided it was not the faith the humans had shown but the sacrifices they had made that kept them in existence.

And so they created me.  A god born to the King and his Daughter.  I was named Belethar Endren for it was written that I would be the last God and that should be my name.  But to them, these cowards that do not understand the ways of the Gossamer World I was called Sacrifice.  I was the God of Sacrificial Offering.  This sounds impressive until you realise that at dawn for every day of my existence in Olympus they would sacrifice me in honour of them.

Nor were they satisfied to make the sacrifices quick and painless.  They would draw them out over days, my brother slowing down his chariot so that I may be eviscerated slowly and they could enjoy the immersion of the event.  They sat back with wine and food and laughed at my pain.  On many occasions some of them would even eat of my liver.  But it was my curse to be restored every day so that they could sacrifice me.

It was that way for I do not know how long, millennia possibly.  Centuries at the very least when my Sister-Mother came to me in the first rays of sun.  Those quiet moments sitting in my prison at the top of the mountain where the sunlight warmed me, promising a time of hope.  She spoke to me with honeyed words meant to soothe me as she sometimes did.  but this morning it was a visit far earlier than normal and these moments were meant to be my own.  A rage filled my heart as I leapt at her, the naked god in a cage and I wrapped my hands around her throat through the window of that cell.  I knew this was futile but I squeezed with all my strength.

She laughed and pulled away.  As she did something caught in my hand.  A chain to an amulet she wore always.  The same amulet she would press against this door to bring me forth later.  She turned alarmed and with glee I pushed the amulet against my door and it swung open.  I would run, they would catch me but I would be free for a while.  I leapt through the door.

I found myself on the Grand Stair as you can imagine.  While my Sister-Mother’s amulet opened my cage for them, it released me.  What is that?  yes, this cloak clasp is the one and same amulet that saved me.  It has been some time now since my escape.  I am not angry with them at all, I pity them and I wear this amulet to remind me of what was and what shall never be in my life again.

Call me Sacrifice.  It has a ring to it that reminds me of home.