Helda's Seeds
Stand out in the wind on a hilltop where the grass is stirred by a starry sky and gaze into the black vault for long enough to witness Helda sow her seed.
Tiny, flying, glowing, they vanish into the air and the rocks, they cease to be seen before watching eyes can guess where they will land. Helda's seeds are seeds of magic, seeds of life. Where they do not fall there are dead, unremitting places, dark wildernesses of imaginationless wind-torn sand. And sometimes they land. Ranging in size from the knurled warm gobbets clutchable by kobolds to the venerable Monolith of Saesse, Helda's seeds are impregnably tough and deeply mysterious. Some say they are the reason for Life. Some say they are the reason for living.
The legend takes many forms and is ubiquitous in folklore and childsong. For the cities in the Askharnn mountains, Helda was the supposedly unfaithful wife of Msenes who punished her alleged adultery by cutting out her ovaries and forcing her to cast her eggs over the world so that their power might be consumed by mortals. For the elves of Lysriya, Helda is the cold queen of the four moons who likes to corrupt and toy with men by offering them great power. For the men of Erezzi, she is a vague, forgotten legend who gives her name to the magical stones so sought after by thieves and Kings. Of course, the men of Erezzi have only seen the tiniest twisted seeds and they also call them fragments of meteorite, fallen from the firmanent, gifts from the Benevolent Father. The gnomes perhaps know Helda best. For them she is Wyschaschkiya, the Lady of Stones, and to them she has imparted several of her hugest stones, buried safe in their mazelike kingdom.
Those who have studied the stones know their true nature. The Seeds of Helda are magical stones that have fallen from a void we call the Heavens, where it is their fate to wander forever in search of their partnerstone. Sometimes they are unlucky enough to fall to earth, and they can never find what they are looking for. Such a life of floating in the hopes of such an unlikely encounter may seem empty and hopeless to humans, but it is better than a life confined to an orb where they cannot continue their search. The Stones want to escape but there is nothing they can do, save try to communicate with people.
The Great Seeds of Helda are very few, but sought after by the greater powers who may lie waiting many centuries for them to arrive: Dragons, Kings, Enchantresses, forgotten beings. Their powers are subtle but great, and easiest described by example.
Udrabat and Udragor - Two halves of a stone cleaved by Brutus, the Giant King. One is kept by the terrible Stalagmite Throne, one by the Amphitheatre in the Giant's Valley. This was the Stone of Udrr, saved from the depths by Brutus but then cleaved by him in a fit of rage. The curse of this Stone was to bear Brutus deformed twins, each one half of the same entity, and to turn him into a slowly petrifying rock formation, barely conscious, sitting on his Stalagmite Throne.
The Dragonstone - Once upon a time, in the dim and distant past, a DRAGON fell to earth. Slain by the unlikely slingshot of an elfish boy whose name is forgotten to history, the DRAGON thundered into the ground and rose up mountains around him. The earth beneath him shattered and a foamy sea arose in the crater where he lay. He slowly rotted into mineral veins in the rocks beneath the waves. The elfish boy was praised and made King. The slingshot he used was a tiny but powerful Seed. It was stolen from the Regalia of Lysriya by Rivallo and Morigata, two devious elf-mages, who fled from the Court of Trees to Sthanzpherazzin. Morigata, the more devious of the two, blinded Rivallo and disappeared with the stone. He went mad and his lunacy and potent magic has made the wood an impassable tangle haunted by spiders and terrible creatures ruled by him, the Eyeless King. Morigata meanwhile has installed herself on an island in the Dragonsea, where she is studying the Dragonstone, learning its true secrets. Of course, this is not known to anyone but Rivallo: everyone believes she is dead and that the Eyeless King has the Dragonstone. For what woman could outit such an awesome mage?
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? Responses (1)
Hmm, eggs, seeds, orbs, stones - quite a few names in a short article. That just does not seem to work for me. Helda's Seeds, Stones or eggs all sound rather bad to my mind - apparently I'm stuck in the gutter.
Why do they have partner stones?
Hugest is not a word :)
There is a nice mythic feel to this one. The idea has some merit and puts me in mind of the Milky Way, but needs some work.