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.

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.

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