Hortaconn

### Life, Reign and Crimes

Hortaconn the Bluffer was the founder and first king of Dawnhame, before that territory became part of Aranesia. King Hortaconn promoted navigation and commerce, but was avaricious and deceitful. He earned the nickname 'the Bluffer' because he was a cunning trickster, known for his abilities to decieve gods and humans alike. He was also known as a murderer in his own kingdom, as he would often entertain himself by killing guests in his castle. He took pleasure in these killings because they allowed him to maintain his iron-fisted rule.

Hortaconn and his brother were known to hate each other. Hortaconn consulted with the Oracle of Malbri deep in the Southland Forest, on just how to kill his brother without incurring any severe consequences for himself. There he learned that if he had children by his brother’s daughter, they would destroy their grandfather. Without a second thought, Hortaconn violated his beautiful niece Cafno. The oracle went unfulfilled, however, because Cafno, learning of the prophecy, killed her son borne of Hortaconn.

Called “the craftiest of men” by the scholar Halim, Hortaconn's crimes against the gods began with Othma'gel. Through the Aranesian prophet Tamuz, Hortaconn learned that that the trickster demigod Othma'gel had secretly kidnapped twelve maidens bathing in the river Vyx and taken them up to his realm in Menione for his entertainment. Sensing an opportunity, Hortaconn in his prayers to the gods told them that a demigod had broken the cosmic laws and intervened on earth. He offered to name the culprit , but only of the Deities would create an eternal spring for Hortaconn’s kingdom, Dawnhame. As the legends go, this endless source of fresh water, later named the Endless Spring, miraculously appeared at walls of Dawnhame, and Hortaconn named Othma'gel as the maidens' abductor in his prayers. Enraged, Othma'gel was punished by the Deities and forced to return the women to Aeglion.

### Cheating Death

In his time on Aeglion, Hortaconn killed, raped and stole. Hortaconn was killed in a feast, stabbed by a spurned lover. He arrived in the Void to face judgement by Avarkim, the Deity of Death, knowing that he would get sent to Naraka for his crimes. The trickster demigod Othma'gel, who still had a grudge against Hortaconn, gave Avarkim a set of blessed silver chains crafted by the God of the Forge Ingorf to bind Hortaconn's soul with before sending him to Naraka, so that he may be in utmost discomfort. Hortaconn slyly asked Avarkim to demonstrate how the chains worked. As Avarkim was granting him his wish, Hortaconn seized the opportunity and trapped Avarkim in the chains instead. Avarkim could not free himself, and Hortaconn promised to let him go if Avarkim agreed to send him back to Aeglion. When Avarkim complied, Hortaconn did not free him. Instead, he closed the entrance to the Void on his way back to earth. With Avarkim bound by the strong chains, and the portal to the Void shut, no one on Aeglion could die—no matter how gruesome the injuries suffered. The headless, bloodless, mortally wounded, and disease-torn continued to walk the earth, racked with pain and begging for release. This caused an uproar especially for Gurzil the god of war, who was annoyed that battles had lost their fun because combatants would not die), and so he intervened. The exasperated Gurzil freed Avarkim, who reopened the entrance to the Void causing a flood of dead souls to pour in and freeing the walking dead on Aeglion.

In his old age, before King Hortaconn died, he conspired to cheat death again. Stricken with consumption, he told his wife to poison him, purportedly as a test of his wife's love for him by not letting him suffer. His wife complied, and upon death Hortaconn's soul was sent to the Void, where, as expected, he was deemed unworthy of Menione. Upon arrival in Naraka however, he complained to Fresca the wife of Balith, that his death was murder, a sign of his wife's disrespect for him and that she had escaped justice. He persuaded Fresca to allow him to return to the upper world in spirit form so that he may scold his wife, with the promise that he would return once he was done.

Hortaconn, of course, had no intention to return to the world of darkness. He reneged on his promise to descend. Once on Aeglion, the ghost of Hortaconn haunted Dawnhame and refused to leave, terrorizing his family and the occupants of the castle. The ghost had much fun at the expense of the castle's inhabitants, until it was exorcised by the prophet Tamuz.

### The Fate of Hortaconn

At his third and final judgement in the Void, Hortaconn was deemed guilty by an enraged Avarkim. For his offenses in life and death, Hortaconn was condemned to eternal punishment in Titania, the lowest region of the Underworld. The king of Dawnhame would forever roll a massive boulder to the top of a steep hill. But his efforts were always in vain, for whenever Hortaconn neared the top, the rock would roll right back down again. Hortaconn was thus forced to start his labor all over again. The maddening nature of the punishment was reserved for Hortaconn due to his hubristic belief that his cleverness surpassed that of the gods, and that he had betrayed Othma'gel's secret as if it were his place to be involved in the affairs of a god. Othma'gel accordingly displayed his own cleverness by enchanting the boulder into rolling away from King Hortaconn before he reached the top, which ended up consigning Hortaconn to an eternity of useless efforts and unending frustration in the darkest realm on Naraka. Thus it came to pass that in Aranesia, pointless or interminable activities are sometimes described as *Hortaconnean*.

Hortaconn was succeeded in Dawnhame by Byerd the Rider.