Quarae

Introduction

Quarae is a strange creature that's perhaps seen one of the longest and strangest histories among the other Gods. Starting her life as a God of Bravery, Valor, and Protection, through the course of her life each of her three domains has fully changed into her current state of the God of Fear, Desire, and Monsters. In addition to that, she's the only creator God to have all three of her domains change so radically. Her history itself is speckled with a number of strange and jarring events that have left her in her current state, the weakest and most neurotic of all the Gods, corrupted or living.

History

Quarae started her life normally, having been found at some point by Venadak and the rest of the Gods. The interesting this is that Quarae notably started her life as the God of Bravery, Valor, and Protection. A far cry from what her current domains are. Due to this, Quarae was considered widely by the rest of the Gods to be their personal knight, and it's a job she took rather seriously. She protected the other Gods for whatever they asked her to and in turn, Quarae in that state was loved and adored. It made her quick to try and please the other Adac, and a good number of the other Gods started to equate this young version of Quarae to a little sister or a puppy. Among the Gods, she certainly acted like she was one of the youngest, Brazim being one of the other Gods who acted younger than she. Because of that, the two got along especially well. While she was often considered a younger sister by the other Gods, Brazim called her his older sister. It was a role she took very seriously.

During Atharen's earliest days this is the version of Quarae that was present. A knight protector. This is also what Quarae modeled her domain in Muid after. Unfortunately, also during the early days of Atharen, there was an... accident.

After an accident involving Draz'Rizel and a nameless beast, the Gods had learned that venturing too far outside the planes created by Venadak could be dangerous. It was an unspoken rule that no one left after the planes were first created and they had Muid to call home. It was an unspoken rule that Quarae tended to follow. Brazim, the embodiment of what it meant to be childish, didn't. These were the only moment that Quarae disobeyed the rule. When Brazim went exploring. Quarae tended to follow after Brazim, speaking warnings but never straying from his side. It was during one of these sessions that Brazim stumbled across something. A monster. Old and powerful, nameless and dark. Something that had to potential to prove a threat. So Quarae's instincts as the kind of God she was kicked in and she sent Brazim away before braving the beast herself. Brazim immediately returned to the other Gods and told them what had happened. Having seen something similar before it was Venadak and Izonata themselves who went to go assess the situation and hopefully retrieve Quarae.

They were quite thankfully able to retrieve the God, but something had happened to Quarae. While she paled in comparison to Venadak and Izonata, Quarae had originally been one of the stronger Gods. This wasn't the case anymore. Going from one of the strongest, Quarae had become one of the weakest. She stood her ground against the beast, but the repercussion was that a part of her Divine Spark has quite literally been devoured. A piece of her gone in an instant. It did things to Quarae. Sadly, there wasn't anything any of the other Gods could even do.

The God of Bravery quickly became a creature that jumped at her own shadow. It was a pitiful thing to see really, and it was the start of Quarae's fall. After that Quarae began to distance herself from the other Gods. It was something hard for her to do, there was nothing she wanted more than to still receive the love and praise of her fellow Gods. But it was something she knew wasn't going to be possible. She was vaguely aware of what was going to happen to her next, some kind of understanding of her own fate, and she didn't want to expose the other Gods to that. Especially not Brazim. So Quarae went into hiding for a while.

During her time in hiding, Quarae's transformation began to take place. It's been argued by historians that part of the damage done to Quarae's psyche was due to this attempt to distance herself from the other Gods. That the harmful effects could have been mitigated should she have remained among her kin. There are even those who've since argued that some of the other Gods could have helped, and her Divine Spark could have been repaired with the help of Draedan or the Divine Energy the gods receive from the praise of their follows. However, no amount of what-ifs can ever change what happened during this period of time. Quarae fully went insane.

It started with what had since been widely considered an awful idea. Quarae during her isolation attempted to try and make a race. There are a number of theories regarding why Quarae tried to do this. Some say she was trying to be true to her original roots as a God. Others say she wanted an army. Some still say she was trying to make creatures that could potentially mitigate the damages she thought she herself could be capable of in the future. Her first attempt was modeled off her original self. It, unfortunately, went poorly. The first attempt turned into a monster. Then the second, and the third, and so on and so forth until the grief of giving so many different monsters life started to further push the God into her coming insanity.

It's speculated that her last attempt was what changed Quarae's domains into what they're widely known to be today. The Webspinners. Quarae's final attempt to make a mortal race is the one that almost worked. A mix between mortal and spider, they genuinely looked promising. Those who know anything about monsters, however, will know just how badly the attempt went. The first couple of Webspinners started their life as intelligent beings. However, the older the Webspinners got, the more their psyche started to involve into a similar mania as their master. Becoming less intelligent and more feral. The second generation of Webspinners had no intelligence at all. Worse yet, they started to look more and more like monsters and less like humans. While the first generation had an upper-body resembling the mortal races, later generations of the Webspinners would be known for having almost entirely spider bodies with the face of a human that would scream and spit venom at anyone stupid enough to fall into their traps. There were some shards of hope, but Quarae was too blinded by grief and hatred to see them. This was the moment her domains fully shifted into Fear, Desire, and Monsters. Fear of the creature that ruined her. The Desire to be her old self once more. The inability to birth anything that wasn't a Monster.

Later "attempts" of Quarae's to create mortal races were actually Quarae messing up the races of other Gods. The most notable being the Rathor which were originally the Rath'Norai, a species of elves who were known for belonging to Azunath. The God in question was especially fond of these children, and Quarae at her lowest decided to rip the entire species apart and use them as an experiment to try and understand what made mortals work. Why hers were all becoming monsters while her other kin were able to create such amazing children.

Quarae's self-imposed isolation only last for 100 years, the 100 years in which her attempt to make a mortal race took place. Her bastardization of the Rath'Norai into the Rath and late the Rathor is how she announced herself and her transformation. Due to how early in Atharen's history this happened, there are very few history books that detail the existence of the original Quarae. In fact, most mortals assume that Quarae has always had the disposition and domains she currently expresses. There are still pockets of mortals who possess documentation of the original Quarae, but they're few and far between. Ironically it would seem that only the Rathor and religious groups dedicated to the original Brazim have concrete knowledge and understanding of the original Quarae.

A number of Gods, like Azunath, grew more and more disgruntled with Quarae over the years that followed. None ever really directly lashed out at her. Despite how much of an annoyance and destructive influence she made herself, most of the Gods pitied her and still remembered her original form fondly. Quarae for her part in the matter only grew more pitiable the longer she was left to her own devices. Her form she took changed over the years, her actions and movements becoming more neurotic. The only time Quarae ever seemed to vaguely resemble herself was in the presence of Brazim.

This was how Brazim, the God of Youth, was forced to grow up in a sense and become the keeper of Quarae. Their roles almost seemed to reverse. There was no one who felt worse about the entire situation than Brazim, who often blamed himself for the fact Quarae got hurt in the first place. He was the one who kept ignoring the rules. He was the one who led Quarae right into the jaws of the beast who broke her. He took responsibility for Quarae and for the rest of history until the Sundering one was never seen without the other, even when they took mortal avatars. Brazim always made certain that he was within arms reach of Quarae and Quarae almost seemed stable again as long as Brazim was around. Combine that with checkups from Maztyx and sometimes it seemed like Quarae was actually recovering. Bits and pieces of her original persona shining through.

Her progress was cut short by the Sundering. When Brazim went instead of Izonata. Quarae is notable among the Corrupted Gods because she wasn't one of the original seven who went to Venadak's aid. Izonata's original intention was to go but Brazim went in her stead. Quarae wasn't allowed to go because of the state she was currently in. She'd recovered a lot, and her Divine Spark had even recovered slightly, but Quarae was still considered to be unstable, and even if she was originally one of the most combatively aligned Gods, it was considered a risk no one wanted to really take. The trade-off for this decision was that when Brazim was corrupted, Quarae completely reverted in all of her progress.

She went ballistic. For Quarae it was a slap in the face. She sacrificed so much to protect Brazim and then she couldn't prevent this? She rampaged, causing large amounts of damage to the surface of Muid before the other Gods stopped her. Brazim was the last thing keeping her grounded to her old self, so she completely threw it to the wind. Quarae saw the corruption two-fold. It was a way for her to get stronger and it was a way for her to be reunited with Brazim. Quarae believed that if she intentionally became corrupted, she would be able to regain some of the strength she'd lost, and she would be able to corrupt as much of the rest of the world as she desired. Then, there would also be no reason for the other Gods to live in Bel. They could all rejoin one another, like family, and they would be able to understand Quarae herself better than before. That thought is what sent Quarae to the point of no return.

Quarae after enough time and observation found a way to get herself corrupted after that and started causing damage not just to Muid, but also to Atharen. Of course, she wasn't able to do damage for long. Izonata quickly rallied the other Gods, the only time she ever used her position as the strongest Living God to play the role of the leader and was able to force Quarae through a portal to Bel, that portal currently being the one located in The Wastes.

Afterward, Quarae was trapped in Bel and acted as the eighth corrupted God that Maztyx couldn't be. The way that corruption interacted with Quarae was unique as well. Quarae continued to act mostly the same as she used to, sinking even further into her neurotic tendencies. She also reunited with Brazim, the two living together and acting as the only Gods who don't participate in the war. They still encompass what it meant to act as the younger siblings of the group. While they've been spurned by a number of the rest of the corrupted Gods, Quarae's internal desire is for all of them to be a family again. To be herself again. That's something that often colors her actions and has colored her mortal avatars in an interesting manner when she's able to get one into the mortal realm.

A unique quirk of Quarae's fractured psyche in combination with her corruption is that a piece of her is seemingly holding out. A piece of her that's jarringly similar to the old Quarae. It seems to be something subconscious, but Quarae has been noted as coming to the defense of Venadak whenever the other corrupted Gods have come close to breaching the depths of Bel. Additionally, she's continued to protect Brazim during their time in Bel, rather ferociously driving off any of the Gods who try to get them involved with the War.

Depiction

The absolute oldest depictions of Quarae have her depicted mostly in knight's regalia. If anything, Quarae's first depictions are what really shaped the culture of what is a "knight". The ideals of chivalry and nobility were ones spawned from her image. It was worth noting that all of the first depictions of Quarae were beautiful women in thick armor with an air of regality. A lot of her depictions showed her with golden hair, golden eyes, and skin that ranged of any color. Dark skin was a common one for Quarae's earlier depictions. It's worth mentioning that a lot of Quarae's early depictions included her two 'symbols'. The Vermillion Wolf and the Valkyrie, which were representative of Quarae's faith. After her accident, Quarae didn't take up any new symbols, instead just butchering the Valkyrie to resemble something closer to a Kindred and outright abandoning the Vermillion Wolf.

Later depictions of Quarae after her accident would start a trend of constantly trying to depict her as more and more monstrous. In depictions where Quarae was noticeably more human, she'd often display completely stark white hair, skin that was pale and clammy, and deranged white eyes. Even in her more human depictions, many people tended to paint Quarae's later images with vaguely unsettling features like teeth that were too sharp and nails that were too long, or making her features just ever so slightly disproportionate to the point they didn't look like any of the mortal races common found on Atharen. The majority of her later depictions though didn't even bother to try and give the allusion of humanity. Sometimes she was a woman with the lower body of various insects, other times she was simply depicted as a writhing mass of tentacles that ripped and tore at anything within reach. People often consider the most accurate art of Quarae to be the art that makes her the most terrifying, truly transforming the once elegant and noble God into various eldritch monstrosities.

It's worth noting that when Quarae is described as physically moving, it's always in a grotesque manner. Like something that isn't quite right. Joints in the wrong spots and limbs sticking in awkward directions. Quarae is also described as having extremely jumpy and sporadic movement patterns, shivering and convulsing at random before breaking into random peals of laughter which can go on for minutes or hours depending on the strength of the fit and her proximity to Brazim at the time. Her movements are noted as being the most stable and fluid whenever she's in the presence of the younger God, her constant shivering becoming something almost akin to serene.

Domains

While originally holding an entirely different set of domains, presently most consider Quarae's true domains to be Desire, Fear, and Monsters, regardless of whatever she once was. It's a pity, but most don't see Quarae as having any influence over her old domains if they even remember them as once having belonged to her, and Quarae herself don't display them in her actions even slightly.

Desire is the root of many things. Desire is most simply described as want. It's what motivates living creatures to stay alive and it's what powers progress. In terms of Quarae, she's come to inhabit many different forms of Desire. She's a creature that's often been said to have been left wanting. Wanting for her family to be whole again. Wanting for love. Wanting for freedom. Wanting for her old self. Consumption is a theme when it comes to Quarae's version of Desire. Constantly wanting for more because the first desire was never truly sated in the first place. Desire is little more than lust for something that someone doesn't have, be that lust emotional, carnal, or anything in between and unmentioned. Quarae herself is notably for lacking any form of inhibition, her wanting and wanting growing ever stronger. Quarae has been known to either to take whatever she wanted or if it wasn't within her power to take to idly pine after it until it the object of her desire was no more. Desires are also linked to wishes and while it isn't truly her domain, Quarae has some amount of ability to grant the wishes of her followers, though not without repercussion.

Fear is a unique domain for Quarae as she's the biggest victim of her own domain. Quarae lives in what seems to be constant fear which is what causes her neurotic tendencies and her jumpy nature. It's a domain that she developed specifically from the trauma which caused her to change in disposition from noble knight to the beast. Fear is perhaps the root of Quarae's being. Fear is bound deeply with desire. After all, it's fear that makes someone desire to be strong. It's the fear of losing someone's desire that's the most painful. It's the fear of never being able to achieve one's desires that causes them to either work harder to crumble. Additionally, fear is the thing that most effectively makes a monster. Quarae herself is perhaps a slave or prisoner to her own fears, terrified of losing more of herself and equally terrified of the idea that if she never risks what's left of herself she might never be able to get back what she used to be. In her rare moments of lucidity, where Quarae most strongly mourns for her old domains and personality, it's fear that causes the God to become trapped in this endless cycle of sinking back down into her current domains instead of being able to rise above her old scars.

The final domain belonging to Quarae is monsters. Quarae herself is a creature that could easily be described as a monster. She's the monster of all monsters. She understands why people fear them, and she understands why some monsters fear themselves. She's a sympathetic heart and a sympathetic ear when it comes to those who's been labeled a monster. If anything, mortals who've been called a monster for one reason or another are the most likely to gain Quarae's favor and attention regardless of if they've been rightly or wrongly assigned the title. In regards to the monsters of the world, Quarae has never acted like a queen or their leader, despite the many people who'd believe the contrary, instead, she acts like a mother and guide. Her guidance isn't always the most helpful or even the most benevolent. Quarae is still a corrupted God. But she has moments where the old Quarae rears up and those are the moments that make it clear that Quarae well and truly cares about every attempt she'd made to create a race, and to a degree, regrets and sympathizes with those who'd be considered mistakes.

Envy is something often attributed to Quarae. Many who worship the Living Gods call envy Quarae's vice and try to avoid it whenever possible. Quarae's reputation is further made negative by the fact that the fact the Rathor have a purpose is often blamed on her. Quarae when she broke the race was seen as having taken something from them, and their Purpose is the process of trying to reclaim what was taken. A Rathor's Purpose is therefore often called the fault of Quarae and her endless desires. It's said that Quarae also has the power to give back what she took from them, that she has the ability to grant a person's Desires, but a lot of people equate her wishes to a monkey's paw type of situation. All monsters are considered to be the children of Quarae, so people often blame her for monster attacks and some people even pray to her in order to placate her and convince her to spare their towns and cities. Even monsters created by mages or other gods are still considered to be the children of Quarae and ultimately they're creatures she's considered to have the most control over.

Influence

Quarae's influence is comparatively limited. She doesn't often participate in Bel's war and she hasn't been a God worth worshiping since she first started to lose her mind. That fact has, in part, led to Quarae having the least influence out of the current Gods which works well with her being presently the weakest member of the group. What influence Quarae has are from those she most easily attracts, outcasts. Those who've been labeled a monster for one reason or another often gather under Quarae's banner, especially if they themselves resent the title and treatment it's earned them.

Dogma

The current Quarae has no dogma, no religious texts or rules she demands her followers obey. Quarae's interest in the world doesn't extend past her own desires, and gaining follows or deciding how they should live their lives most certainly isn't one of her desires. What's notable is that there are some scant few religious texts that have survived from the time before Quarae's decline. Many of these old scripts line out in detail what Quarae called the Chivalric Code of Honor and Order. It was a number of different rules and beliefs which coincided with always doing the most honorable thing, protecting those who couldn't protect themselves, and refraining from preying on the weak. Bravery was defined not as being stupidly brash but as being cleverly strong. Sometimes a tactical retreat was the bravest thing to do. More than anything, it was about sticking to one's own morals and defining brave not as carelessly jumping into battle, but standing next to your beliefs regardless of whatever vitriol ends up getting thrown at you. Her considerations of right and wrong were strict, following many of Venadak and Izonata's beliefs when it came to things like rape and sexual assault. These old texts are the only real indicators left regarding how Quarae used to view her old domains and how she interacted with them, and they're text that are still used by some very old religious groups that remember the first version of Quarae.

Notable Religious Factions

The Repugnant Ones

A very loose faction that often finds itself lacking in cohesion and a concrete goal. The one thing binding all of the members of the group together is the fact all of them are creatures who've been described as 'monsters'. Either because they fell prey to some awful blight, were simply born one of the more rejected races, or are in fact a child of Quarae. The core goal of the faction is to support one another and never judge one another for being monsters, no matter what that entails. This has resulted in the faction's loose goals and ideals because a number of the members have completely different moral values.

Society of the Vermillion Wolf

The Vermillion Wolf is notable for being Quarae's first symbol. The wolf was something that often was associated with protection, loyalty, and combat, hence why wolves are animals associated both with Quarae's first self as well as Azunath. Vermillion, a shade of red, was associated with Quarae due to red being a color oft associated with fire, combat, and the regal phoenix. The Vermillion Wolf was therefore the symbol of Quarae prior to her fall and a symbol that Quarae's very first demigod took up in her honor. Prior to Quarae's fall, she only ever had one lover and by extension, she only ever had one Draedan. Her focus on the other Adac and acting as a protector often left her as the least interested in the mortal races prior to her accident, but the father of her Draedan was unique, her first champion and a loyal friend. That's perhaps the only reason she was willing to have her first child, Mirizion. Mirizion as such was the only child of Quarae to ever take after her mother's original domains and after Quarae's fall proceeded to found the Society of the Vermillion Wolf. The goal of the faction was original to help Mirizion strengthen her own Divine Spark in order to offer up its energy to Quarae in an attempt to repair Quarae's own, a task that was aided by a number of Draedan of other gods (most notably the Draedan of Brazim.) After the Sundering the goal of the Vermillion Wolves shifted slightly and became twofold. Those who were recognized Draedan with Divine Sparks continued to strengthen their own sparks by any means possible, avoiding routes that would lead to corruption like hunting other Draedan in Bel. Those without Divine Sparks would look for a means to cure the corrupted Gods.

The Society of the Vermillion Wolf continued to grow far past what would have ever been expected of one of Quarae's other religious factions simply because the goal of the Vermillion Wolves made it accessible not just to the children of Quarae, but the Draedan of any corrupted Gods who didn't wish to go to Bel with their parents and instead wanted to try and help cure their parents. This included other children of Quarae, both those taking after Quarae's current domains and the rare one or two that somehow inherited her old domains. The Society of the Vermillion Wolf has since grown far past just a faction dedicate to Quarae and boasts a higher number of demigods than most other factions will ever receive.

The Dread Bazaar

The Dread Bazaar is Quarae's home within Bel. As the name implies, it's a market of sorts where someone's greatest wishes and desires can be found. It's said that anything a person could ever want for could be found within the Dread Bazaar. However, nothing is without its price. Often times the prices found in the Dread Bazaar aren't physical. Gold and silver aren't enough. The prices vary wildly in the Bazaar, with each stall being tended by a different monster. A creature given sentience, a corrupted child of Quarae. These monsters ask for prices which are more along the lines of a piece of the buyer's soul, or a thousand years trapped under the monster's command. Those are the tamest asking prices. Some of the more valuable items go for prices that are truly disgusting. Asking the buyers to subject themselves or a proxy to all manner of humiliation and loss. These prices follow the buyer from one life to the next as well if they're unable to pay it off in one. Some of the prices can even block someone from entering the afterlife, immediately forcing them back into the reincarnation cycle until they finish paying it off or someone steps in to pay it off for them. Proxies are common in the bazaar, servants, and slaves made to pay the price instead. Still, just possession and objects to be used for the sake of fulfilling one's desire.

The prices themselves are little more than a test of sorts. A way for the masters of the bazaar to see just how someones desires to line up with their fears. If one outweighs the other. Considering the Bazaar exists within Bel, most of the monsters fall into the stereotype of what someone thinks of when they conjure up the image of a monster. Some are younger or freshly made by Quarae and have yet to fall victim to Bel's corruption, but the older bazaar masters become truly vile creatures and their prices become all the more outrageous. Most of the bazaar's customers are other inhabitants of Bel looking to get a leg up in the endless fighting or simply looking for a little release be it alcohol, drugs, or sex. The masters of the bazaar will fill any desire for the right price range, after all. Most are advised not to barter as being anything less than a master wordsmith in such a place can result in you paying more than you would have in the first place.

Quarae's palace sits in the middle of the bazaar, the best place to go-to for truly exotic items or rare requests. Though Quarae's prices, in turn, are often the steepest and have a tendency of forever binding the buyer to the bazaar and Quarae. Her cheapest prices usually demand help in increasing the population of monsters in her bazaar, which can be accomplished through a number of different means with each one being more disgusting or morally reprehensible than the last. While the bazaar is colorful, Quarae's personal palace is best known for its color scheme of dark shades, most often red, gray, and black.

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Demigods

The demigods of Quarae are strange and unique considering Quarae herself. When Quarae had her very first child, Mirizion, that child took after Quarae's original domains since that's who Quarae was at the time. Following her accident, any child Quarae had was born with her current domains. That is until Quarae became corrupted. With the splitting of her very psyche, apparently, it allowed for the children of Quarae to once again start inheriting their mother's original domains. While the majority of Quarae's children are still born with domains that follow along the lines of desire, fear, and monsters, every once in awhile another child is born sharing in a disposition that similar to Mirizion. Quarae is the most likely out of the corrupted Gods to outright reject her children if they ask to join her in Bel, often not even voicing the option after she's awoken their Divine Spark. Most think it's because she has so little interest in the Bel war and having demigods around would drag her into it, but some consider the option of Quarae being a protective mother and the final shards of her old personality are trying desperately to Protect the only family she truly has left.

Mirizion

The single most well known Draedan of Quarae is Mirizion herself. The founder of the Society of the Vermillion Wolf, Mirizion is often referred to as The Vermillion Wolf. She's exceedingly loyal to Quarae, or more specifically the original version of Quarae, and her domains as a Draedan are identical to what her mother's were. Mirizion is still well known because she's one of the most active demigods on Atharen and actively preaches the old dogma of Quarae and tells people about the kind of person Quarae used to be as she tries to recruit new Wolves in the name of saving her mother and the other corrupted Gods. Mirizion is at liberty to travel the world as openly as she does because her domains have led her to a specialization in combat that's borderline obscene. The risks of attacking her far outweigh the benefits for most and her age certainly makes her a continual threat. That being said, she often doesn't engage in fights when she's present on Atharen, most of her time is dedicated to finding ways to strengthen her Divine Spark and visit other planes in the name of helping Quarae get back to her former prowess. A lot of people have argued back and forth whether Mirizion has grown into a lesser god or if the amount of energy from her Divine Spark she pours back into her mother has resulted in her ability to reach full realization to be stifled.

Dalgeth

If Mirizion was representative of the Vermillion Wolf, then Dalgeth was representative of the Valkyrie. Not actually the child of Quarae, but the grandchild, Dalgeth was actually the firstborn daughter of Mirizion and followed in Mirizion's footsteps. No one has ever been able to confidently say what Dalgeth's original race was, but Dalgeth over time became most well known for the pair of large, golden wings she sported. Dalgeth was just as loyal to her mother and grandmother as her mother was to Quarae, but she was most well known for the fact Dalgeth disappeared from history relatively early on while her mother stayed extremely prevalent. While there have been a scant few sightings of the demigod to prove that she hasn't died, she's gone well under the radar when compared to Mirizion and has been recorded as being particularly difficult to find.