Hyalor's Long Ride

## Learning The Myth

The most common way to learn the myth is to send a pilgrimage to Cenala when prompted to do so in the News of Cenala event. Clans can share Hyalor's Long Ride to you if asked as a favor for information on god stories.(Needs confimation)

## Prologue

Hyalor has ensured the survival of his people through the exodus and the first split. Mortally injured by your clan's ancestral enemy, he undertakes one last ride, to every corner of the world where Riders dwell. On his last stop he finds a surprising union and through it becomes a god.

## Story

Hyalor died from three wounds.

The first came during the first decades of exodus, when Yenfar the Capturer stole Hyalor's eighth wife Vashya, (Your story tent probably tells you that he and Vashya founded the last of his lineages, but I stand before you as proof that this was not so.) The sorcerer struck young Vashya with a howling emanation as Hyalor, Gamari and Ostalar the First Chieftain fought to rescue her. Though the son in her womb was coaxed out alive, Vashya herself died. This tragedy was the First Wound. It aged Hyalor, who had always remained as young and virile as any warrior. After the ash from Vashya's cremation mixed with his tears, he looked like a doughty man of middle years.

The Second Wound came after the great split, when the chieftains of the new clans went to war with one another. Hyalor had always declined the role of king, and so could not command them to make peace. Riders, he said, were meant to make their own way. But when he saw them start to fight and kill one another, a rent opened in his heart. His golden hair turned white, his skin loosened and dried, and blue veins became visible through pallid flesh. Hyalor now looked like an elder, and a feeble one at that. Two of the chieftains, Zenangar and your ancestor, Basikan, rode to the Gods War to restore him, but it would have taken all four. It was fear fear that stopped Nameforgot and brutality that prevented Stelfor: he meant to conquer the other three and knew it would never happen with Hyalor still around.

It was not he who dealt the third and final blow, however. This was struck by <Ovadorudus, the Ram god so violent even the Rebel feared him. He came upon Hyalor as he bathed in the sun and beat him with a club./Shargash the Demon Sun. Any ordinary person would be struck dead by a single slash of Shargash's mace, but Hyalor tottered away, mortally wounded./a troll who was also a spider, who punished him for trying to see her web before it was time./Aroka the dragon who filled his lungs with salt water./Mostal Dwarfking whose strange weapon filled his veins with molten iron./a new god that doesn't have a name yet. It left him with a weeping neck after trying to pull off his head. >

He staggered to Gamari's side. Hating to see her old friend in this state, she gave him part of the flame he had once used to heal her. Gamari tried to give more, but Hyalor would not let her sacrifice her life for his.

Still he had a blessing left to bestow. He rode to all the Rider lands.

He went first to the East Clan, where he told Zenangar to teach his people the difference between cleverness and wisdom.

At the South Clan, he told Basikan that curiosity meant nothing if it did not extend to the ways of of other peoples- even enemies, even the <Vinkotlings/Dara Happans/trolls>, who killed him.

When he went to the North Clan, he told Nameforgot that his failures would one day be redeemed, even if he himself would not. Everyone, Hyalor told him, needs someone to blame.

Finally he rode to Stelfor Westclan, who he expected to finish him off. But Stelfor knelt before him, and wept, and asked for forgiveness. Embracing him, Hyalor said he should not seek forgiveness, but grant it to others.

Surprised that he was still breathing, Hyalor then rode to the places he thought the Riders might one day live. He left behind treasures and secrets and blessings.

In this journey he came upon a plateau. As the light of a dying day struck it, it lit up, appeared to him as a golden tablet.

He bid Gamari farewell. After much persuasion she agreed to go.

Hyalor climbed to the top of the plateau, expecting to expire on the way up. But the roots and vines that covered it surface lifted him, granting him nourishment.

Atop the plateau he found my mother, goddess of the wildlands. He told her of his life all eight generations of it, and of the revelations of the ride that had brought him to her. She enveloped him in a green nimbus. Through it she spoke without speaking, saying:

    DEPRIVATION

    COMBINATION

    DESOLARIZATION

    EXTIRPATION

    GERMINATION

    FERTILIZATION

    RECOMPOSITION

    RESOLARIZATION

    RESTORATION

Hyalor understood these loving ideas in their entire implication.

*But I have given myself to too many women
    Sired too many sons
    Have mourned too many*

Aldrya sang him two songs: one of his people dying out completely in a land without light or plants. Another of a new sun rising one day, born from a seed dependent upon it for its own future generations.

And Hyalor succumbed to her bounty, and the two of them joined.

Upon consummation, Hyalor divided his essence into the seed I was born from, and into a sunburst that rose not from the heavens to the earth but the other way around.

Thus he ceased to be half-divine (or a mere man as he had often claimed) and ascended as a god to the throne room of the Sky Court.

How Elmal greeted him I cannot say.

But that is the act of cosmic love in which I, Cenala daughter of sun god and plant goddess, came into this world.

I have been waiting for you, to grant you blessing.