From the recent Short Story Contest (July-August 2019), story #9 The Mythology of Ghur “… and the Celestial God, Ometotl the Bright, and Gukumatz, the Feathered Serpent, discovered the Realm of Ghur floating in the aether. “Upon the realm they found the Great Devourer-Beast Cipatcli, the Living Avalanche; and trapped inside its amber flesh, Hwatzili-Patzli the Green. “The Celestial God and the Serpent did battle with Cipatcli, and unleashed the Warring God from his bonds. “Together they fashioned the still-living body of the Living Avalanche, for the Beast was of the Empyrian and could not be banished. “The Beast’s back became a great land: its spikes becoming high mountains, its scales rolling steppes, its joints deep valleys. “It still breathed, still hungered, only the debt of blood could keep the One who Hungers in slumber.” Ghyrria Stela 3, Verses 2-6 (Ghyrria 3:2-6) Professor Jourdain of the Collegiate Arcanum looked up from his parchement to the torch-lit classroom and his assembled students, gesturing to a few stone fragments strewn across his podium. “At first glance most of this comes across as gibberish. This is written in Old Ghyrrian, in one of the lost tongues that few in this day-and-age can speak, and even fewer read.” “As my translation clearly demonstrates, this fragment details the pagan creation story of the Realm, in its earliest state long before the establishment of the Four Kingdoms. In fact, I would argue that this evidence could be traced to the Age of Myth, long before the Angovals, the Traxons, or any other human tribes established civilization within the Realm.” Travelling across the stage now, the professor pointed too many of the granite busts along the edge of the classroom. He first pointed to the sculpture of the bearded man wearing a crown of stars. “ First we have the god known as Ometotl, the Celestial God. He seems to be the primary pagan deity, lord of the heavens. Clearly this is none other than Sigmar himself, who rules from on high.” Moving next to a giant dragon-headed bust. “Second we have a great ‘serpent,’ Gukumatz. Described as a being of great power that can travel the cosmos, lots of imagery pertaining to stars. This must be Dracothion.” Next he pointed to the bust of a two-headed Orruk. “Then we have Hwatzli-Patzli the Green. My translation leads me to believe this was also a two-headed god, and a War God. This must have been the lord of the Orruks, Gorkamorka himself. Who was trapped...” The professor then pointed to an ancient painting along the back of the room, covered with an chaotic mass of heads, teeth, horns, and claws. “…within the Amber Mass, the ‘Living Avalanche” as the stela so suggests. This is undoutbly Drakatoa, a being all of you are also familiar with. Here then is the legend itself in its earliest form, and even suggest why the Voors and the other original inhabitants of Ghyrria have been shown to conduct ritual bloodletting and human sacrifice.” His nose wrinkled in disgust at the thought. “…fortunately this barbaric practice has been stamped out, save for the shamanistic holdouts in the far hills, and the orruks of course.” Back at the podium, he closed his hands in conclusion. “Therefore my students, I propose that this evidence shows us where much of the beliefs we hold true came from. When our human ancestors conquered these realms, they adapted the beliefs of the locals into their own pantheon. They adopted the creation stories and the myths of the locals, and added these stories and adapted them into our own pantheon. “Clearly much of this is a just ancient myth, a fantastic and superstitious way to explain where the land of Ghyrria came from, to explain the great mountains, the deep valleys, even the jagged rocks as the ‘teeth’ or ‘scales’ of this ancient beast. Fortunately, nowadays we are less superstitious than our ancient forebears.” The professor finished his speech and began to answer questions from the audience. As he did so, one of the students at the back of the room stood up an exited the chamber. The student moved some way down the vaunted corridor and came to a halt. Checking first to see if there was anyone hiding behind the stone columns or the sculpture in the corner, the student took a small metal cube out of his pocket. Pressing the cube, it began to glow, and soon a disembodied and reptilian voice projected from within it. “Report chameleon, what have you found.” “It is as you foresssaw lord priest, the warmbloodss found another one of the lost plaques-sss.” The disguised students’ lizard-tongue flitting in and out as he rolled his “s’s”. The voice responded. “Were they able to translate this one.” “Yesss. The transsslator is very good. However he came to wrong conclusionsss. They describe Ss-Sotek as an aelf dragon-kin, and believe that the Cipactli is a myth.” The disembodied voice let out a croak of mirth. “Fools. Very well. Continue to monitor the situation, and arrange for both the stela and this adept but foolish translator to go ‘missing.’ The Hungry One will appreciate the sacrifice.”
Comments, critiques, and quotations from the contest. Good stuff, and thank you for the reviews! How did you know!!! Yeah I guess it may have been a bit obvious it was me after all. I had a lot of fun coming up with a mythology; I wanted to explore both the stuff I had just learned about Aztec mythology, and transplant that into AOS (which is all about nebulous gods doing things a long time ago). Seemed to fit pretty well with minor work. The “aelf-dragon-kin” part was a reference to Dracothion, the “milky-way-dragon” that Sigmar is supposed to have found when he regained consciousness floating around in space. I read somewhere that this was an elvish/aelvish (or elfish/aelfish) name for him somewhere. And I had always liked to think that this giant magic dragon à SNAKE creature was actually an old one from Lizardmen lore (hence, Sotek). Thanks! And agreed, other than me having fun writing some mythology and lore, not much really happens in the plot of the story. Just backstory. I need to do a better job of not mixing up lizardmen/seraphon in these stories. I still stand by the idea that both of these names are what they are called by outsiders/other races, haven’t settled a preferred name for them yet. I am working on some of the lore of Ghyrria (within realm of beasts) to help flesh out this backstory a bit more, I will add that shortly. Yup, it is always hard to rate your own story without completely revealing your secret identity , but this essentially shows what I started going for. To include list of characters/gods and their various names.