Gryphon Mother

**The Gryphon Mother** is the ruling deity of Ankou. She is the origin of all sentient life and the source of all magic, and her powers far outweigh any other living creature on the planet.

## Appearance

### True Form

The Gryphon Mother is quite a large figure, standing over twenty feet tall, with a wingspan of nearly thirty feet. Her eyes are solid white, with an eerie glow around them. She takes the form of a gryphon, with a long tail and large wings. Her beak curves down, and her mouth is not visible unless it is open. She has long, graceful feathers running down the back of head and onto her neck, and near the tip of her tail.

Her fur and feathers are a soft gradient of greens and blues and violets, while her beak and front talons are yellow-green. She has simple white markings on her face, neck, and the underside of her wings.

### Shapeshifting

Despite her immortality, the Mother is able to die. When she does, she spends one day in Eternity before being reincarnated as a different animal. She is born with all of her memories, but without her magic. Once she reaches one year of age in her current form, she is able to take her True Form, and all her magic and power returns. While she is in a mortal form, she is subject to starvation, sickness, injury, and all of the other elements of mortality that she is immune to in her True Form. This system is a willing choice on her part, in order that she may never forget what it is like to be powerless, to remind her to use her power fairly and justly. If she lives one hundred years in one reincarnation (not counting the five-hundred-year spans during The Beginning and The End), she surrenders her form to enter Eternity and begin the cycle anew. After a death, her body remains on Ankou for as long as her spirit is in Eternity, dissolving into magical energy just before she reforms.

The reincarnations are always different species, but are instantly recognizable as her. She retains her coloring, markings, and feathers around her head, as well as her glowing white eyes.

## Personality

Despite her near-limitless power and control over the planet, the Mother genuinely cares for her creatures. She does not take vengeance upon those who have wronged her, or abandon those who have turned against her. She rarely speaks, but when she does, it is in a quiet tone that resonates with power but radiates kindness. She is not very expressive, which often leads creatures to think that she is unemotional.

She becomes more reserved after The Beast turns away; she is hesitant to form personal bonds with any of her creatures, as she is afraid to ruin them the way she feared she ruined Kefara. She carries within her a deep loneliness; the burden of being a deity weighs heavily on her soul.

## History

### The Before

The Mother existed before she appeared on Ankou, but nothing is known about her life during this time. As such, her birth date is recorded in history as the day she arrived on the planet.

### The Beginning

The Mother came to Ankou on Spring 1, Year Zero. She first touched the planet in the middle of a large plain, which would eventually become the location of Mother's City. Her magic gave sentience to the creatures already living on the planet. She served as a teacher and a guide to the newly-aware creatures, helping them to navigate the planet and form their own civilizations. She created the first phoenixes, soon followed by the gryphons and dragons, and then all of the other magical species.

Near the beginning of y408, she met a young fox named Kefara. Although the Mother loved all her creatures and treated them with respect and kindness, she found herself particularly drawn to Kefara, who was in turn drawn to her - not because of her powers or her status, but because of her kindness and her personality. The two formed a deep bond that would eventually become romantic love. When Kefara began to grow older, the Mother sought a way to keep the two of them together. She proposed a plan to Kefara that would make her immortal, so that the two of them need never be separated, and they could live together for the rest of Ankou's existence. Kefara agreed wholeheartedly, wanting nothing more than to spend eternity with the Mother.

In y419, she granted Kefara immortality and a high level of magic, which marked her as the second-most powerful creature in all of Ankou. Kefara's eyes turned a blank white, and as the years went by she began to display other mutation-like effects of the heavy magic - she grew far larger than an average fox would, and antlers began to sprout from her head. Her eyes glowed like the Mother's did.

In total, the Mother spent five hundred years in her True Form, guiding her creatures. On Spring 1, y500, she informed the nearby creatures that she would return in True Form five hundred years before the end of Ankou, before flying off to let her form peacefully pass away in solitude. This action marks the end of the Beginning and the start of the Age of Kingdoms.

### Age of Kingdoms

The Mother's first reincarnation was as a lynx, born in the forests of Lyndoreth. After a year, she resumed her True Form, and continued watching over her creatures. Unlike in the Beginning, she chose to watch over her world from a distance, mainly letting them run themselves.

Her final incarnation in the Age of Kingdoms was as a phoenix, a powerfully magical being hatched during a time when tension between magical and natural creatures was coming to a head. The natural side believed this to be an intentional move on the part of the magical, in preparation for a war. When the Mother was roughly three seasons into her phoenix form, King Wyrrik was killed, and the Age of War began.

### Age of War

The Mother began the Age of War in her phoenix form, but it did not last long. When she was three and a half seasons old, just half a season before she would take her True Form, she was ambushed and killed by a group of natural soldiers.

Throughout this era, the natural soldiers fought to track her down and kill her as often as possible. They viewed her as a threat to their side, and an unfair advantage to the magical side, despite the fact that the Mother refused to participate in the war at all.

In y2213, she reincarnated in the form of a wolf, born to a pair of natural soldiers. They recognized her immediately and killed her on the spot, making it her shortest time spent in one life.

In y2296, she was born into the form of a deer, in the center of a natural stronghold. Instead of killing her, the natural soldiers held her hostage for the year that she remained in a mortal form, locked up in a tiny cage hanging above the center of the stronghold, given just enough food and water to keep her alive. On the day before she would have taken her True Form, she was released from her cage and executed.

### Age of Harmony

In y4279, the Mother was reincarnated into the form of a gryff. This sparked concern and debate from many Ankouvians, as it placed her in a naturally-born form very similar to her True Form. As they knew, when the Mother is born into her True Form, it means Ankou's civilization is coming to an end. However, it was determined that the gryff's lack of wings sufficiently sets it apart from her True Form; this identification was proved to be correct when the Mother took her True Form a year later.

In y5834, the Mother found The Beast deep in the wilderness, in the northern part of Ankou's main continent.

### The End

On Spring 1, y9500, the Gryphon Mother was born into her True Form. The news spread quickly; some creatures prepare for the end, while others refuse to believe that the end is coming, and still others ignore this information entirely.

In the final hours of Winter 100, y9999, the Mother returned to the center of Mother's City, in the exact place where she first touched the ground ten thousand years ago, and announced to the entirety of Ankou that the end has come. She told her creatures that she loves them, and that she is proud of them. Then she spread her wings so that they covered the whole planet, in one last loving embrace.

At the moment y10000 began, all magic vanished from Ankou, with the soul of every creature whisked instantly and painlessly to Eternity, including the Mother herself.

In the end, all that remained was an empty planet.

## Relationships

### Kefara / The Beast

The Mother and Kefara have had a long and complicated history. They met when the Mother was still young, still new to the prospect of overseeing an entire world. When the Mother granted Kefara immortality, it sealed the bond between them, intertwining their fates forever.

## Image Gallery

examples of other forms (fox, deer, galaxy dragon)with The Beast