Sifland Mythology

Three worlds constitute the mythological landscape of the Nordic peoples dwelling within Sifland, the frozen ice-land which rests beneath the Troxian Mountains of southern Andar. First and foremost is the spiritual universe - a vast diffusion of power within space, lying behind the manifestations of things. The mental universe is the servant of spirit and the lord over matter. The material world is the mortal world, the plan of creation in which all that lives must die, all that is born must fade away, the great and the small, the good and the bad, must all be swallowed up in the twilight of the gods.

### **All-Father Tey'Kor-Akx**

Over the whole vast mystery of the southern peoples broods the eternal All-Father, formless and nameless, without boundary or limitation, simply forever there within the Void. It is forever observing, never interfering. Always permitting, never denying. Its eternal silence confounds both the gods and mortals alike, for even the greatest of mortals and mortal immortals cannot know the All-Father, cannot know his will. Upon their axes and their spears they may bear the runes of sacred wisdom, but they know not the mystery of the beginning and the end, of the tremendous ring that must go on producing worlds of itself and returning them to itself unto everlasting. This is the mystery of All-Father, named amongst many wise-men and fabled sages however inadequately as Tey'Kor-Akx. Man cannot know him, but can nevertheless suspect deep within himself that he is himself known and watched and measured against the scales of eternity.

### **The Birth of Aethras and the Gods**

In the nature and being and time of the All-Father Tey'Kor-Akx, which itself goes on and on and on forever, it is told that at one time there was a vast abyss the depths of which no man mortal or immortal can ever touch, its substance beyond all understanding. Like a strange cosmic ice-chasm, it cut deep into the below-ness of things, of time and eternity, of nothing and all. This abyss was bounded upon one side by great cliffs of fire, and on the other side by great cliffs of solid ice. Between them the heat and cold formed a vast mist within the abyss, which itself hung within the infinite nature of All-Father Tey'Kor-Akx. The fire and the ice of its sides belonged to he and he alone, for he is the master over the light and the darkness, over the hot and the cold, over the good and the evil. His domain is polarisation within space and time. Upon the vast cliffs of the abyss stood great giants of the polar elements - monsters carved from solid glaciers in the north and behemoths of liquid flame in the south. These giants before all other giants hurled fire and ice into the great cleft of the deep, and in its chasm they mingled to create strange frosty mists which swirled through the ages until they gradually changed shape and coalesced into the body of an immense being which filled up all of space like a vast embryo of the cosmic realm. This being composed of heat and cold, life and death was named Aethras, and its vast oddly sparkling body of light formed the world of endless tundra forests in which its children, the eternal trolls, are said to have lived in the time before time itself. Then, wandering from the frozen tundra forests came the horned mother goddess Nyshor, who planted herself in the earth and grew into a magnificent tree, a tree which in turn sprouted from its greatness three younger gods.

### **Tes'Syk and the Creation of Earth**

The most important of these young gods was known as Tes'Syk the Troll-Feller, and with the aid of his brothers who were also born of the sacred tree of Nyshor he turned upon Aethras and slew him and his children by hewing the pines which were his body and the life-blood of the trolls of old. Once this was done, Tes'Syk set about working to use the timbers and the corpse of Aethras to build a home for the new gods who were now to rule in the primordial being's stead. The skull of Aethras was used to raise up and form the dome of Heaven, and the earth was formed from the first troll's carcass. As the gigantic cosmic body began to fester and to rot, numerous tiny lived were spawned from its decay and putrefaction. These beings populated the earth which the gods had fashioned and grew into species, tribes and races of beings beneath the deities. In this great world formed from the corpse of Aethras the gods claimed his bones and formed a barrier about the edge of all lands so that men could not fall off of the disc of creation. They then further guarded this perimeter against eternal darkness by stationing the enormous frost dragon Aipaloovik at the boundaries of all the seas It is said that the gigantic beast chewed eternally at its own tail in order to better protect mortals from treading into shadows of Oblivion forever. Aipaloovik would occasionally get angry, and twist and writhe within the oceans and the earth, causing earthquakes and storms of many dreadful varieties.

### **Yiggsildra and the Mountain of the Gods**

Having fashioned all of these things out of the body of slaughtered Aethras, Tes'Syk then decided that it was time to fashion order out of chaos. And so in honour of the tree that birthed him he planted the roots of another greater still within the deepest parts of the ocean's depths so that they might drink of the waters of creation. They did so and the tree, which Tes'Syk and the other gods named Yggsildra the Tree of Life, grew to be so large that it rose far into the heavens, and the disc of creation rested at its centre. In the midst of the earth, a great mountain arose which came to be the Mountain of the Gods. Here, Tes'Syk built with the aid of the elements and powers of creation a great palace of timber in which he ruled with the aid of twelve others who sat with him in council. From this palace at the apex of the world he observed all that transpired in the world of mortals, sending forth messenger birds to all corners of space which brought him messages. He then constructed a vast and magnificent hall whose walls and columns were the shields and spears of great champions among men, in which the sanctified and honourable dead would be invited to partake in glorious feasts, brawls and tests of divine will in the afterlife.

### **Hell and the Underworld**

Yiggsildra's roots extended down far below the world of men, deep into the darkened earth and unlighted waters which lie untouched by the Sun's rays. In this underworld, the primal darkness of Hell, all was frozen in place and far colder even than the frigidity of the surface of the earth. Here nevertheless the rotting of the body of Aethras never ceased, and despite the extreme iciness of the underworld this decay could not be stopped. Within this darkest of realms Oblivion the Adversary placed a great host of shapeless and gelatinous creatures of horrifying aspect, dreadful beasts which swam in the blackest depths of the ocean where Yiggsildra's roots touched the base of the world. These tentacled suckering horrors were placed under the rule of Kharybdis the Aphotic Ruler, whose task it was to gradually oversee the vampirism of the roots of the Tree of Life whereby its life force should be killed and its beneficence destroyed forever. Also placed within the underworld was the great leviathan Anguta, who guarded the pool of memory.

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