Frozen Oracle

**Gender** | Female

## The Oracle of Snowy Peaks

The Snowy Peaks are a cold, unwelcoming place that only few Keepers ever explore. But ever since the Monster Sanctuary was created, there have been stories and rumors of a ghostly figure being seen at night around the frozen lake of Snowy Peaks. Over time, the story became that there was an oracle hiding in an underground cave underneath the frozen lake. Additionally, a legend about the oracle's backstory spread around the Monster Sanctuary. It's most likely a campfire story that took on a life of its own, and yet it's strangely compelling.

This story is tied to the history of the Akhlut, the Monster that is a mix of wolf and whale. As already told, the shamans of the Old World learned to link their spirits with the Akhlut. At first, this miracle brought many boons to the human tribes living along the icy northern coasts. The attacks of the Akhlut on humans ceased entirely and the shamans gained new insights and powers. They became able to peer into the underworld and talk to the spirits of the deceased, but their control of the Akhlut also helped the hunters when they chased down walruses, deer, and other animals.

But eventually, the nature of the shamans changed. They became weary, distrustful and critical of their people, especially as the tribes became more and more greedy and wasteful. With their help, nothing could stand in the way of the tribes, allowing them to bring death to all of the animals of their surroundings. In turn, the shamans were feared by their own people, and it was said that they became feral like the Akhlut.

In one of those tribes, there was a shaman who had linked her spirit with an Akhlut decades ago. An epiphany overcame her and she held a speech to her tribespeople. She said that the Akhlut had begun to prey on humans for a reason: The humans had threatened the Akhlut's source of food by hunting down whales and seals in large numbers. Humans had meddled with the course of nature and the Akhlut were sent by nature to punish them and restore balance. The right choice would have been to cease or slow down their hunting, but instead the humans perverted nature itself by using the Akhlut only for their own purposes.

And so her tribespeople only came to be convinced that she was mad and dangerous. She was proclaimed to be a traitor to her own people, but she wouldn't let them imprison or silence her. She and her Akhlut fought back, but they were overwhelmed by the hunters that she had sought to stop. It is told that the Akhlut used to be impervious to human weapons, but on that day, an arrow pierced the eye of the shaman's Akhlut and killed it.

After seeing her loyal beast lose its life, the shaman surrendered. In the following night, it was decided that she would be put to the ocean and drowned, because her spirit belonged to the sea. In the centuries that followed, the shamans abolished the practice of linking their spirits with the Akhlut and the Akhlut were hunted to extinction in the Old World. In the Monster Sanctuary, the Akhlut are one of the rarest Monsters.

The oracle of Snowy Peaks is said to be the immortal spirit of that shaman who spoke up against her tribe. She is reportedly accompanied by the spirit of the Akhlut that had died protecting her.