Ghazreli
The First Fury | The Crown Prince of the Seraphim | Hate Incarnate | The Firstborn
Patronage:
Nature, Revenge, Hate
Primary Clerical Order:
The Repentant
Propitiation:
Respecting nature, desecration of rival movements, penitence
Date of Birth:
278 BE
Family:
Ghazreli is the firstborn son of Zynterra and Feidhleamad. He has two siblings, Kerna, Goddess of War, and Naxera, Goddess of Deception.
Appearance:
The appearance of the Seraphim morphs to resemble the race of the beholder. In many cases, the Seraphim appear human, as humans have long since monopolized art and depictions, skewing the expectations of other races. Though there are still many facets of a Seraph's appearance that are consistent across depictions.
Ghazreli is a stern, imposing individual. Being born rather than manifesting sees him inherit his mother's diamond-shaped face, his father's flat scowl, and one of each of their eyes. The left his mother's green, the right, his father's cloudy blue. His perpetual anger has turned his features sharp and severe. That, compounded with short, practical silver hair and towering height, it all makes for a rather intimidating appearance.
Brat, Tyrant, Destroyer
Ghazreli was the first God to be born, rather than manifesting from nothing. No one was sure what would come of such a child, but few could have predicted this. Ghazreli showed a natural affinity for nature from birth, in line with his mother's dominion over earth. However the boy was forever behaving like a spoiled brat. Without companionship with gods his age, he grew accustomed to his seclusion and sulked in it endlessly. After a long millennium, Ghazreli was of age, and no sooner he was demanding authority over any domain that was even tangential to nature. He demanded his mother's earth, his uncle's seas and storms, Omnil's agriculture, and Uren Ka's light and sun. Each of these demands saw him enter into fruitless wars.
As the pantheon expanded, he only grew more ambitious as more domains were 'stolen' from him. When his mother disappeared, he made a gambit for her throne, taking control of his sisters' minds and forcing them to aid him. His war was a long one, but a failure once again, and his transgression against his family saw him imprisoned for centuries. Many believe he would have been banished as his uncle was, but expect that such a power lies only with the absentee Zynterra.
In more recent eras, Ghazreli has turned his ire on the laity, directing his followers to attack those that worship the Gods he sees as intruders, or even those who appreciate and care for nature without making any offering to him.
The First Challenge to the Throne
The Court of Zynterra, wherein lay her throne, servants, husband, and all her great loves, was a place of peace. The eldest love of hers, Ghazreli, demanded audience. This was most peculiar, as the Allmother, by her nature, has no shortage of time for issue. Such demands were superfluous and ill-mannered. In this meeting, the name of First Fury became apt. Though Ghazreli was not the first to anger, he was the first so rage with such unsympathy and animosity that his own mother, the creator, was afraid.
​
The Allmother found her firstborn in the throne room, ahead. His eyes, one hers, one her husbands, glared angrily. Oft subject to this ire, she ascended the dais and amused her son's demand. ‘You father will be here anon, and then we will have this audience.’
The creator’s finger had glanced the arm of her throne when Ghazreli began. ‘You need not sit, Mother. Nor need Father come.’
​
‘Then your summons will be brief?’ Zynterra seated herself, nonetheless, to the annoyance of Ghazreli, though to draw such from him was no difficulty.
​
‘What thought have you given to inheritance?’ There was little use in formality. Will you model it on the systems of your lesser creations?’
​
‘I shan’t speak with you so long as you call them that,’ she said with unmoving conviction of motherhood. And Zynterra studied intensely every detail of the room which was not her son.
​
Some have said that the meeting ended there, and another audience came later. Nonetheless, the next phrase exchanged was this: ‘Will you model it on the systems of mortals?’
​
Zynterra saw her son once more, and asked, ‘You mean the transferal of titles to the eldest.’
​
‘I do.’
​
‘How kind of you, son, to muse upon my death.’ Zynterra could do little but laugh. ‘How might I die so as to grant these titles unto you?’
​
Ghazreli’s fists whitened. ‘Do not be difficult. There are other means.’
​
‘You would have me abdicate?’ Zynterra lost her son once more, looking to the door that should soon welcome her husband. ‘Perhaps, when you are older.’
​
A rumbling came from beyond the throne room. ‘I have lived a thousand years.’
​
‘And are scarcely free of adolescence. Your sourness has left you no more than your rebelliousness has.’ The rumbling beyond stopped, and her son flinched, infinitesimally. ‘If you are quite finished ripping up the garden like a child, Ghazreli, there is sense in this meeting. The matter of my successor wo-’
​
And the throne was torn asunder by terrible vines. Their thorns ripped the skin and committed greatest sacrilege. Zynterra was thrown from her dais, and in her place grew a new throne of cruel constriction adorned with flower and fang and fury. The winds carried Ghazreli to his birthright and the king decreed, ‘Concede and cede your domains to me, Mother. Earth and Life are mere aspects of my great Nature.’
​
‘He struck me,’ Zynterra gasped, being raised to her feet by the too-late-arrived Feidhleamad. She was wide-eyed and breathless, finding the wound to her heart more severe than any scrape or cut. The great artist spared only a curt hug, for he had business with his son.
​
‘Stupid boy!’ to get Ghazreli’s attention. ‘Are you proud of yourself?’ to keep it.
A dozen wolves were set upon the artist. Though these were not flesh and blood, mere imitation. There was an art in that imitation, which Feidhleamad unravelled and turned abstract. He stood before his firstborn defiant. ‘If these domains are owed to you by Nature, then am I to hand my artistry to Dream? You peddle nonsense, boy. And when it is seen as such you are little more than a child.’
​
‘I am no child,’ Ghazreli roared, it stung more to hear it from his father.
​
‘Then what sort of man are you that strikes his mother? No son of mine.’
​
‘So be it. Rid her of my family too, she who cannot defend her throne.’
​
‘She who will not strike her son.’ Feidhleamad’s voice overpowered his sons, his own rage scarcely contained. ‘Her subjects will grant you no such grace.’
​
‘They are my subjects now, father. Kneel.’ Ghazreli’s rage was so singular that the arrivals escaped his notice. He heard not the low thunder above, nor did he feel the laze weighing on his eyelids. He saw not the arrival of his sisters, half-dressed and fully armed. He was ignorant of the dozen tattling signs of divine visits until a dozen stood in opposition.
​
Zynterra stepped forward again, steadied by her daughters and passed to her husband. ‘Son... someday you may succeed me, but not as this monster.’
​
Ghazreli scanned across his adversaries, weighing the odds and finding no route to victory. Zynterra approached him, arms outstretched to hold his face. No. The throne consumed him and pulled him beneath the earth where he made his escape.
His uncles gave chase. His sisters chased onlookers from the hall. His father held his mother. And his mother wept.
Background:
This is not a story that Ghazreli likes to be repeated. Chroniclers and storytellers only whisper it in hushed and guarded circles. Fewer still document it in repositories like this. The restricted section doesn’t cut it for tales such as this. This book should be stored in hidden compartments, fake walls, secret passages, anywhere out of divine sight. This means no magic too, for the Gods can smell arcana.
​
This version of events is of unsure provenance. The fragmentary nature of the parchment suggests this was once a longer text. Oral tradition relays a longer argument between the Crown Prince and his parents. Some of the few scholars who have seen this text discount it as fake. They feel the text reads as a poor mimicry of older dialects in an effort to lend it veracity through age. They point to modern terminologies in the text that would have been foreign to the writers it appears to mimic. Others treat this as the definitive account and argue that it is the oral version of the story that should be questioned.