Valhalla

**Valhalla** (Old Norse: Valhǫll, "Hall of the Slain") is the royal palace of the wisdom and death god Odin, within the heavenly realm of Asgard. It is a great golden hall where the one-eyed god and his consort sit on several thrones with their sons, which allow them to observe every realm in existence.

Beyond is Valaskjalf, the main hall of Odin, where he sits on the throne of Hliðskjálf, where he observes the whole universe.

## Description

In Norse mythology, half of all warriors who die in battle end up in Valhalla, while the other half go to the fields of Folkvangr. There, those warriors, known as einherjar, are brought by the valkyrie women to fight and be trained for Ragnarok, the final apocalypse, where they will fight under Odin against the demons and giants.

Every day, the einherjar feast and fight, and many of them get killed. In the next morning, they awaken and are brought back to life to fight and feast again. Their final fate is oblivion, where they end up getting killed as they slay the giants.

In spite of this, the ancient Norse regarded this as a preferable fate than spending a cold eternity in Helheim with the ancestors, especially because they lived under harsh times when food became scarce and warfare was frequent.

## In the Rabydosverse

Because Odin collects the souls of half of almost every warrior who died in any fight, the earlier einherjar were non-humans and aliens. Among them was Raldoxai, a reptilian Aldorkin warrior who fought the corrupted Celestial emperor Trisakoras, defeating him before he was able to transform into a powerful demon.

At the end of the Celestial Age, Bariwas the Celestial was brought to Valhalla, where he was assigned by Odin to help the humans of Jerde fight a Celestial invasion, and stop it from extracting Jerde's magical power.

### The Distortion of Valhalla

In the culture of the Freyrgardians, a cloned race of Norse humans, Valhalla's and Helheim's values were inverted. Their warlike ancestors became more brutal to seek a shorter passage to Valhalla, and feared Helheim as a cold wasteland. The Freyrgardians turned Helheim into a paradise for the righteous, and Valhalla was transformed into a punishment for the brutal and the cruel, an ironic hell where they faced cruelty and violence endlessly multiplied and returned to them. In Freyrgardian mythology, warriors could make Valhalla a better place with their refinement and honour, but the brutal and the tyrannical will find only unceasing torment, as their fatigue and frustrations will make them everlasting targets of the other einherjar's brutality and vengeance.

Some Norse cultures distorted the value of Valhalla, to the point that their people became brutal just as a "shortcut to Valhalla". Two examples of this were Aspiera and fascist Baesorja.

To mock them, other people make many jokes about evil and brutal enemies ending up in Valhalla simply because they were brutal, only to receive their ultimate reward: being mutilated and butchered by the impatient, hot-tempered einherjar for all eternity, at every waking moment of their pathetic afterlives. This was why the Freyrgardians were brutal when waging war against some enemies, especially the more-savage and horrific ones: by sending them to death and Valhalla, they are bringing their enemies to glory, but dooming them to their eternal punishment beyond.

In Novantirna mythology, Valhalla is also considered as a paradox - it is Heaven for warriors, but also Hell for warmongers and war criminals. Generally, Novantirnas prefer not to go to Valhalla, because the prospect of dying again after every fight is considered as a torment for them, even to the most fanatical devotee. However, their glee in hunting and killing their enemies was to mock their ill-gained glory, so the prey who committed atrocities would end up being tortured in Valhalla.

However, in their devotion to Odin, Novantirnas add that those who worship him with intelligence and science, rather than with fighting for the most part, instead end up in his library at the back of Valhalla, an endless hall of books that is large enough to become a vast city of knowledge.

The souls inside the city will also rebuild the universe after Ragnarok ends.

Malendors use "Valhalla" to mean "endless pain" or "agony".

### The Celestial Library

As Odin is the God of Knowledge, Malendors believe that behind his throne hall of Valaskjalf is the Celestial Library, and beyond it, the rest of Asgard's forests. Even as an enormous library, it is like a pocket dimension due to its endless size, as a representation of all information that exists.

Carrying over prehistoric traditions of burnt offerings, the Novantirnas and their Malendor descendants moved on from burning food and slain animals to incinerating flammable valuables and goods. This led to the bizarre practice of burning certain books as sacrifices to the Gods, especially Odin. In Malendor religion, burning books is offering the books to Odin as sacrifices, as a symbol of thanking him and the other Gods for the wisdom bestowed to the Malendors.

They also use the embers and ashes rising from the fire, as if they are joining the stars at night, to represent the books' supposed ascension to Valhalla's shelves. Once a book reappears in Valhalla, its cover and pages look as if they were just published and made.

Due to the veneration of knowledge, only two kinds of books are allowed to be burned, and only as offerings and for mourning. The first were yellow folders containing pages, with any numbers of discoveries of the year, read aloud to a crowd of worshippers who record their contents. This is the Festival of the All-Seeing Eye, in honour of Odin's knowledge and self-sacrifice.

The second kind of book worthy enough to join the Celestial Library were usually damaged books. Malendors tend to mourn and cremate books that were too damaged to be read, as if they were departed living gods. Malendors also worshipped Odin by offering old journals written by the elderly and departed: like in the Festival of the All-Seeing Eye, the sacrifice can only work if the books' contents were copied somewhere else.

Conversely, Malendors condemned empires and tyrants who burned books in censorship. They considered burning things as worship, but what the tyrants did was more similar to offering rubbish and refuse as sacrifices. Such unclean material presented to Heaven will anger the Gods, who will curse the book burners to terrible curses.

The Celestial Library will be one of the locations that will survive Ragnarok, as a heavenly shelter against the destruction of the universe. When everything settled, the saints protected inside will join the einherjar in rebuilding the universe, using almost everything their learned in aeons of study.

## Trivia

* Like "Ragnarok", "Valhalla" became a cliche in pop culture themed after Norse mythology.
* The aversion towards Valhalla in some Rabydosverse civilisations was based on how extremists used Valhalla to justify violent attitudes, and actual modern Norse pagans condemning this as a distortion of their beliefs.
	+ Therefore, some civilisations mock their enemies by turning Valhalla into a "heavenly hell", where war criminals were punished with the same brutality they committed in life. It is somewhat influenced also by "contrapasso", an ironic punishment that represents the sin an evil person commits in life.
* In Heronoi mythology, if you get eaten by a kaxare ghost (which looks like a birthday cake with a mouth), you will immediately end up in Valhalla. Kaxaremai usually appear to those chosen by Odin to go to Valhalla, which is something most Heronoi are afraid of due to the negative depiction of the Norse god in their mythology.