Mother and Child

Deep in the mountains controlled by the troll armies, there stands an odd volcano, which might be two volcanoes.  In primitive times, the local trolls worshiped a volcano they lived on the slopes of, offering all manner of sacrifices in hopes of appeasing their goddess and avoiding her catastrophic wrath.  But their goddess eventually went dormant. With seemingly nothing to fear from her, the trolls were at a loss.

So, the trolls decided they would create a new goddess. They gathered stones and built what they thought was a new caldera.  This deep bowl of stones was then painted red to more closely resemble what their previous goddess had looked like.  While their actions might seem childish and silly, the troll priests were skilled, and they quickly built up a strong belief in this “false god”.  The common trolls began to fully believe that this was indeed a “baby god” who would hatch from the bottom of the stone bowl soon.

Magic is a funny thing, and it works in unpredictable ways.  The worshiping of the stone bowl eventually created a fire spirit inside of it.  As they believed so it came to pass that the fire spirit was contained within the constructed caldera and was getting ready to “hatch”.  The glowing redness of the bottom of the bowl told the trolls that they had done it right.

Except the older volcano was not extinct, but instead just calm for a few generations.  As the fire spirit within started to notice that her worshipers were no longer providing her the adoration and sacrifices she expected, she began to grow angry.  As everyone knows, angry volcano goddesses are dangerous.

When the older volcano finally erupted, her anger was largely aimed at the fake caldera.  But the fire spirit inside was only strengthened by the enormous heat and lava she sent his way.  Amidst the eruptions, he was “hatched”.

As the replacement volcano was built on the slopes of the previous volcano, this new spirit is not a volcano by himself.  He is simply too close to the older to be considered separate.  Through this all, the elder fire spirit now feels like she caused the new spirit to hatch, which primarily she did.  Further, he is feeding off of her lava flows.  Rather than continue to see this new spirit as a rival, she now sees it as her offspring.

The volcano now known as Cassallday es Geyrlok (Mother and Child) is then one volcano with two exits, but inhabited by two fire spirits.  The original hatching eruption poured huge quantities of lava down on the fake volcano, turning it into a far more natural looking vent.  The baby spirit tries to erupt, but typically belches out smoke and sometimes a little bit of ash.  His mother finds this incredibly cute.

The trolls now worship the two spirits with one religion.  As the fury of the eruption was centered on the new spirit’s “egg”, it all but wiped out the priest class that had for so long controlled the local trolls.  A new class of priests rose in their place, but these priests are far more humble and serve the purposes of their goddess, not that she requires more than a few sacrifices every year.  Should hubris grow in any of these priests, the volcano goddess herself will demand that priest as the next sacrifice.