The Beauty of Calwinna and Tethira

 The Crown Prince Themistius, the other child of Queen Kleopatra and the King Consort, married the halfling Queen Belree of Agricola, cementing Banorite-Agricolan relations for generations. Queen Kleopatra and her husband hoped for a similarly diplomatically auspicious match for their daughter, Tethira.

 Unfortunately for them, Tethira proved uninterested in the succession of suitors: the sons of foreign kings and local dukes, of high priests and prosperous businessfolk. Worse than uninterested -- each suitor she spurned and insulted before sending them away.

 After Tethira insulted her first suitor, the King and Queen promised to find someone better, someone more to her tastes.

 After Tethira insulted her fourth suitor, the King and Queen began to beg and plead with her, offering sweet enticements to accept a betrothal.

 After Tethira insulted her ninth suitor, the Queen proposed she perhaps join a nunnery, take a vow of celibacy, and perhaps with the force of her beauty she might rise to the Archbishopric. Tethira laughed off this suggestion.

 After Tethira insulted her sixteenth suitor, having brought Banor to the brink of war with the rest of the continent, Tethira was locked up in a tower in the capital of Torrolerial, to soothe the ruffled feathers and ruffled egos of Banor's neighbors and vassals.

 Meanwhile, the Duke of Scyllias was a harsh and jealous lord. Because he doted on his daughter, Calwinna, he saw all her suitors as insufficient in virtues to match her beauty. He rejected each of her suitors in turn, and in the end he locked his daughter in a tower by the sea to keep suitors away.

 So it was that, wandering the skies of the Material Plane, a pixie in service to the Court of Whimsy, known as Zephyr-Maeve, seeking out shenanigans in Torrolerial, came by Tethira's tower, and caught sight of her sleeping by the window. Zephyr-Maeve was struck by Tethira's beauty, and sat on her balcony gawking for hours. When Tethira stirred, Zephyr-Maeve fled.

 Meanwhile, a fairy dragon known as Elida-Chepi, in service to the Court of the Bath, caught sight of Calwinna, bathing in the sun on the roof of her tower. Transfixed by Calwinna's beauty, Elida-Chepi stopped and stared. Eventually, Calwinna noticed the fairy dragon, so Elida-Chepi fled.

 Naturally, Zephyr-Maeve and Elida-Chepi were good friends, and they shortly met up over brunch to gush about their respective discoveries.

 Each insisted that the princess they had discovered in her tower was the most beauteous creature in this or any Plane. Each scoffed and could not countenance the possibility that the other might have found an even more wonderful princess.

 Zephyr-Maeve led Elida-Chepi to the tower in Torrolerial and showed off the sleeping Tethira to Elida-Chepi, who allowed that yes, Tethira was wondrous pretty... but not so much as Elida-Chepi's discovery.

 So Elida-Chepi led Zephyr-Maeve to the tower by the sea, showing off the sleeping Calwinna to their friend, who allowed that yes, Calwinna was wondrous pretty... but not so much as Zephyr-Maeve's discovery.

 So Zephyr-Maeve and Elida-Chepi argued until the sun had scooted across the sky, laid down for a nap on the horizon, and rose from the other horizon, until it was time for brunch again.

 At this point, the two fey realized they needed a neutral arbiter of beauty. So they put the two princesses under a sleeping spell, and brought them back to the Feywild for judgement.

 Elida-Chepi fetched forth a concubus they knew, who opined that Calwinna was the fairer. Zephyr-Maeve harrumphed, and fetched forth an erinyes they knew, who opined that Tethira was the fairer. A deva opined that Tethira was the fairer; an archon opined that Calwinna was the fairer. A slaad opined that Calwinna was the fairer; a yugoloth opined that Tethira was the fairer.

 It was a modron who proposed an objective, conclusive test: lay the princesses next to one another; wake one, and allow her to see the other; sleep her again; wake the other, and allow her to see the first; sleep her again. Obviously, each would fall instantly in love with the other, because of course they would; whichever princess fell more deeply in love with the other (as measured objectively, of course) must obviously be the less beautiful of the two.

 So it was done!

 It is not known today which fey ultimately won the argument; which princess fell more deeply in love; which princess was more beautiful. It is known that, once returned to their towers on the Material Plane, the princesses each desperately knew they must find the other. So each broke out of her tower and went in search of the other.

 The tales of the princesses' adventures, their swashbuckling exploits and derring-do, is another story, or many stories. Suffice it for our purposes to say that they ultimately did find each other again, and they married each other, and they adventured together, first on the Material Plane and then throughout the Planes, and then they settled in the Feywild, where they lived happily ever after.

 Today, the tomb of Calwinna and Tethira in the Feywild is the eighth of Numiel's Four Sacred Places. Their sepulchre is an overgrown arbor of gold-leaved willows and flowers of splendidly-grown topaz jewels, where two beautiful marble statues stand side-by-side, holding hands and gazing into each other's eyes — an enduring place of pilgrimage for lovers seeking refuge.

— from the writings of Archbishop Aurelia Castoria "the Corrector"

late second century ante inundationem

Cosmogeny

From Various Scriptures[1]

Assembled by Vesper Alan Nisroch, Thought of Mirk

For Elucidation and Edification

With Annotations and Marginalia[2]

Before the beginning, there was not nothing. The world was, however, without form, and void, and nexus[3] was upon the face of the deep.

In coalition, the gods, led by Numiel, acting on mystic secrets invented by Mirk, threw back nexus, gave time a direction, and permitted the world to burst into being.[4]

The gods took immediately to the game of creation, collaborating first on humanity. But each god saw their collaboration as imperfect and devised individual upgrades -- Sequoia the elves; Hafgufa a succession of seafolk; Magzagrond and Urdle the dwarves and gnomes, respectively, plagiarizing freely from one another; Dalya the halflings; the Burning Hate a prolific oeuvre of variously monstrous and chimeric races; and so on.

Each god planted their creations in an environment optimized for them. Humans, adaptable, along with halflings, were placed on Androsia, that continent of a variety of environments (humans later migrated to cold Kryia and hot Sola). The dwarves, gnomes, and elves were placed on Heim, where Mirk went to work persuading elves to follow the ways of night, shadow, star, and moon. The other gods let the Burning Hate have barren, arid Stepa for her minions.

Sequoia and Hafgufa created the wild flora and fauna of the lands and seas, respectively; Numiel created dragons and the Burning Hate perverted them in her own image[5].

It is not known who invented the all-sacred Cat – the priesthoods of half a dozen gods attribute this creation to their patrons. Certainly, Sequoia created the catfolk, the tabaxi, who still revere her today. Sequoia and Numiel, in the days when they were close, collaborated on the lion. The Burning Hate created the tiger-demonic Rakshasa. But these were based on a preexisting model; the Cat herself may have existed with the gods, before time was.

Early on, but not immediately, Numiel invented Good and Mirk invented Evil[6], which led the gods and their creations into conflict[7]. Sequoia and Dalya sided with Good, the Burning Hate sided with Evil, and other gods refrained from taking sides, or attempted to play both sides against each other, or invented Chaos and Law in imitation of the Good-Evil dichotomy, until all of morality and ethics was a hopeless muddle[8].

Fear Not

In the long ago, in time that was, before the quarrels and strife of recent centuries:

The new Archbishop of Banor had been raised to her position through promising a tremendous plan to defeat Calabia. Seven times in the centuries Banor had tried righteously to conquer Calabia; seven times the bloodlords’ military superiority and judicious political alliances had rebuffed the crusades. Eight is not an auspicious number to the Numielites of Banor, but the Archbishop made grand promises, much grander than any portents allowed for.

The Archbishop’s tremendous plan was this: she prayed to Numiel to send angels to free all the food from the stockpens of Calabia, so that the food might rise in revolt and Banor might sweep in as conquering heroes.

And so the Archbishop’s prayer went up the celestial bureaucracy of Numiel’s demesne. It may actually have reached Numiel, or it may have been intercepted by an archangel, saving Numiel’s attention for more important matters – it is difficult to imagine what might have been more important to our god’s attention than this, but little do we know of the bureaucracy.

It is known that someone at or near the top received the prayer, and answered it by delegating, sending an order back down the celestial bureaucracy. It is not known why the order was passed on by all the ranks of angels – perhaps the might of Calabia was respected even in the heavens, perhaps the bloodlords’ intertangled political alliances extended even there, perhaps the difficulty of the task was generally recognized by the host, perhaps Numiel’s ineffable designs simply called for it to be so.

Eventually, the order wended its way to an inexperienced junior angel. His complete true name is not known – it may even have been erased from reality as a consequence of his actions – but history knows the angel in question as Arossiel. Arossiel had little experience with humans, but he was eager to prove himself to his superiors, and so he volunteered to take on the task of freeing all the food of Calabia as Banor’s army approached, rather than passing it on as all above him had done.

In the stockpens of Calabia, there was a food who was a human woman. Her hair was black and short, and her skin was pale as teeth, and the name that she was called by her friends, and that we call her today, was Lily – the overseers had a different name for her, or more precisely an alphanumeric code, the specifics of which are of little importance and have been lost to us.

It came to pass that, as Lily was getting ready for sleep in the stockpen, this celestial angel Arossiel came to her, a frightful whirlwind of wings and eyes, shining hot and brilliant like the midday desert sun, intoning in a terrible and awful voice, “FEAR NOT”.

Utterly disregarding Arossiel’s perfectly clear instruction, Lily gave a terrified squeak and dropped her hairbrush.

The angel had little understanding of mortals, but it was quickly becoming clear they cannot follow simple instructions, so he pondered for a moment, then did his best to tone down his terrifying affect somewhat by mimicking Lily’s humanity, folding in wings over eyes and shining less radiantly.

He was between Lily and the door, and there were no windows in the stockpens that one might dive out of, so she could not flee; she could only cower in terror.

Arossiel began apologizing and begging Lily’s forgiveness, “Terribly sorry, please forgive me; I did mean it genuinely: fear not.” He began to sense that his holy mission to free the food and raise them up in revolt was already going poorly, barely having started at all. He shrunk down further, modulated his voice and his apologies, trying to calm and soothe this petrified human.

After many long minutes of his apologies, Lily came to more thoroughly grasp that this unfamiliar creature was not there to hurt her. She grew less terrified and more curious, eventually opening a dialogue with a befuddled, “What…?”

Just the same while, Arossiel began to panic about how far behind he was already running on his mission. The armies of Banor were thundering towards Calabia, and he hadn’t even freed a single food. It was taking this long to get her mood barely back to where it started before he showed up. Still, he tried, “It is very important: I need to rescue you, and you need to rise up against your overseers. You and all your friends.”

A dozen problems with this request flashed instantly through Lily’s mind, and she protested, “I have three friends. Together, we have…” She looked around for an example, then picked the hairbrush off the floor and brandished it like a weapon, “Not much more than this. The overseers have… even if they didn’t have swords, which they do, they’re a lot stronger than any of us.”

“You outnumber the overseers ten to one!”

“Yeah, and they could take ten of us each even unarmed. We’d be torn to shreds.”

Arossiel examined Lily’s human arms and legs, consciously recognizing for the first time that she was, unlike an angel – or for that matter a vampire like the Calabian overseers and ruling class – not equipped with much in the way of natural weapons, defenses, or abilities. He grew crestfallen; he had been so confident that he could pull this off, but his unfamiliarity with human anatomy was proving to be his undoing. It was far too late in the mission to requisition incandescent holy arms and armor with which to equip a myriad of humans. “Oh.” His light grew dim and his many wings drooped.

Lily, native to the stockpens, was intimately familiar with despair; she could recognize it easily, even in an angel. She sat by Arossiel and reached out to touch him. Where some of us might have criticized, might have scolded him for not thinking his plan through, Lily had more kindness in her heart than we do. She was still not clear on the exact nature of Arossiel’s mistake or the extent of his inexperience, but she intuited the general shape of the error and said, “It’s a mistake anyone could have made.”

Arossiel remained filled with doubt and despair, but Lily gradually calmed him with soothing words and gentle touch. At this point, he fell in love with this individual human, and with humanity itself, seeing here the best of it in her. Still, he realized that he would not be able to convince a myriad of food to rise up in revolt if he could not even persuade one that it was possible. So it was that Arossiel stayed with Lily that night instead, a more pleasant experience all around, and she taught him much about humans and what he would need to know to actually help them.

Battle was soon joined in the fields of Calabia, and the Archbishop’s armies soon lay derelict and ruined. The fate of the eighth Banor invasion of Calabia had been decided before it began.

Arossiel the angel fled Calabia with Lily. He fled from his duties and from Numiel’s service; he fell from grace and lost his wings – though it’s unclear just how literal the histories are on the point of the angel’s wings and the loss thereof. The two wandered the world together for at least some decades.

After Lily’s death, Arossiel continued to wander, now alone. More learned and exalted theologians than I have debated important questions about Arossiel’s angelhood, his true name, and his place in history. However, I insist that he never truly escaped his nature or his love of humanity, because it is known that he helped to solve mortal problems wherever he went, helping humans without the direction or blessing of his celestial former superiors. We have records of good works perpetrated by Arossiel dating at least a century from the day he met Lily in the stockpens of Calabia, before he falls from the pages of history.

Today, Arossiel is generally reckoned among the saints, though he has long been deemed ineligible for official ecclesiastical recognition.

From the Hagioigraphy, chronicle of the lives of Numielite saints by Dord the Tall, Archbishop of Shell, written some eight hundred years after the events described.