Frigia

== Frigia is the mercurial goddess of Winter and all things cold. ==
Frigia is both a young and an old goddess simultaneously. She was a spirit of winter on Annarion who was in love with the Terian spymaster who would one day become the North Wind. When he died and passed too deep into the Astral for her to follow, she began to keen, and the Isles became colder than they had ever been for a solid month. This was not worth mentioning at the time due to the invasion and the fact that a colder tropical island is still tropical and therefore fairly warm, but the sound of her wails sometimes made their way into the dreams of Denvaddio's troops and they were anxious to leave. After the destruction of Annarion she rode comets for a time, amassing power and wonder at the new worlds she saw while trying to bury her pain. Layers of ice and strangeness accrued as her nature twisted away from any one world, as a spirit of winter unbound from the cycle of seasons should begin to lose herself and wither until being reborn as something else. She, however, did not weaken. She only grew stronger and stronger in the cold of space, sprung free from the wheel of the year and growing until she attained divinity.
=== Coming Home ===
Frigia returned to the Annarion Belt after the Age of Rebirth, and set herself up first in Veradorianis and then elsewhere as a wandering Elvish singer, entertainer, and fortune-teller. As a former seasonal spirit, she has more ability to glimpse into time than most gods, and hoped to keep up the appearance of "making a living" that way, though her visions were almost always of loss and death or limited to times of deep cold. She sought to expand her abilities, and began to study arcane magic, becoming extremely proficient. Being a goddess in the era before the War of Deific Magic she could already bend the force of sorcery in certain ways and send power to worshipers (of which she had none at the moment) but she wanted to learn to wield gifts beyond her sphere. She wandered centuries, changing name and race as needed, but she was always a pale woman with white hair and cold blue eyes.
Building a Cult
Frigia cared very little for mortal concerns beyond those of the individuals who caught her personal interest. However, she began to hear the prayers of those who lived in cold regions struggling to survive, and of those lost in sudden snow storms. She heard them not just on Dorhaun, but on every world she had ever visited. If they cried out to other gods she did not hear them, but when they lifted their voices to the storm to cry for aid without direction, it came to her. So she began to wield more of the divine powers she had ignored. She would protect some of those who called out (she is easily offended and was never mortal, and so occasionally refused for reasons which might not make sense to a mortal - e.g. "He had the nerve to call for salvation when he walked out wearing green."). Some she actually froze solid immediately if they were doing something she disliked, or subtly hampered their journeys. She is not fond of invading armies, for instance, and if they attract her attention she frequently makes it harder for them. She chose a divine name from the Druidic tongue, Frigia (literally Winter's Kiss, figuratively "the false warmth felt before freezing to death"), and revealed it to those who prayed to her. She is not the most attentive goddess, but in a true emergency she can be found, and her worship spread.
Seasonal Goddess
Despite no longer technically being a spirit of winter, Frigia still organizes her time on Dorhaun according to the seasons. She alternates each year between the two hemispheres in determining the current season. She is the most active as a goddess in winter, spends most of spring entirely on mortal matters (except true emergencies), uses the summer to wage vendettas against those who have angered her in the mortal or divine spheres, and in autumn she begins to set her affairs in order to spend winter in mortal seclusion and study while attending to divine matters.
The White Witch
Frigia, going by the name Daria Foresythe, assumed the form of a young half-elf and made her way to the city of Telvimbror in the spring of year 307 of the Age of Sistona. She had found the place stuffy and hidebound when it was run by the Elves, but now it was filled with different races and peoples, and the Arcans who ruled it were now marvelously diverse. At first she pretended to be a druid and hedge mage, though neither was really pretending as she now understood nature and arcane magic well enough to use them as a mortal did. However, it quickly became apparent that she was far more powerful than she seemed. A burglar who had taken to killing those whose homes he had invaded was found turned entirely to ice... but still alive. And screaming. While his crimes were known and no one had too much sympathy for him, the Arcans were extremely interested in who had managed to case the curse... and what else they might be doing. Divinations led to her eventually, though only because she let them. She actually had used her Arcane abilities to weave the curse, which was impressive, and though she initially foresaw them coming to kill her because she was too dangerous to leave alive, but those futures melted away when one of the Arcan's said "Why not just kill him?" Her response, "Because he was taking more than their lives, he was taking away the feeling of safety everyone was due in their own homes. So I took more than his life. It was just.", impressed the Arcans present and their staff enough they invited her to undergo training with and and placement in the Guardians Arcane, the magical portion of the city and surrounding territory's guard. Her odd schedule, see above, was tolerated because she proved so skilled, and within a few decades she had been promoted to White Arcan. She served as White Arcan through most of the Age of Sistona, only retiring permanently from the public eye due to her evident lack of mortality. She dwelt in a manner at the edge of the Hedgerow until it fell to ruins, and some magicians still go to that place and try to call up her spirit. If she is amused, she answers.
The Winterborn
In the depths of winter, in the year 2033 of the Age of Telvimbror, Herbert Goodman was mourning the death of his wife. He screamed his vengeance and bitterness against Moldravion, against his own goddess, against the world itself. He called out to any god to come and face him in battle, on equal terms. In the darkness, in the cold night of Raknar's deep woods, he contemplated ending his own life then and there. A voice from the dark said
"Won't work. A paladin dying by suicide in the grips of grief? You'll be Twice Dead, and your pain will be endless. Why not make good on that challenge? I heard you, we can do battle."
When he turned he saw half-elf with white hair and blue eyes standing in the moonlight, glad in thick hide and holding a wicked black scimitar. When he asked who she was, she said
"Daria Foresythe, now no more questions, to arms."
They fought to a standstill, each wounded with many cuts, and fell into each other's arms. In the morning he found himself still alive though he should have frozen to death, thanked the gods for this chance at life, and set about atoning for the blasphemies of the night before. When he found out that Daria Foresythe should have died millenia ago, he set about atoning for laying with a ghost, until he found a baby girl wrapped in swaddling clothes crying in front of his window. on the cloth lay a letter. It read
"Her birthday is the Winter Solstice. Her name is Denise. She is yours. Take good care of her. I am not suited to motherhood, and cannot give her what she needs. Love her if you can." - Daria.
He adopted the child as his own once the priests confirmed she was a normal human baby girl, if with a trace of elvish blood. Due to her standoffish nature and birth date, the older people in Raknar often called her "Denise Winterborn." Frigia was glad to see her daughter grow, and when she died, she gathered her up and made her Herald of Winter.
Category:Deity
Category:Religions
Category:Annarrion
Category:Arcans