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The Gods of Fury: Storm Lord Talos, Umberlee (Sea), Auril the Frostmaiden, Malar (Great Beast).
Spoken to Our Party as the long, long journey of the ancient dragon turtle Tuanati Ki'iato A'Tuan Ko'ilohiki began, following the events of C. Bane of the Kraken and Put Evil to Bed.
Facing into Fury
A vision and prophesy of Carol Anne Montarthas, a powerful arch-wizard of Divination magics.
You may wonder what may have caused - or even allowed - certain deities to so freely move in this world, when most reside in their centers of power in the Outer Realms.
When I step outside this time and place, I can sometimes perceive the matters of the powerful beings we call gods or deities or elders or primordials or ... other things. Though we feel at the mercy of their power, many of these beings behave as often as children as they might our parents - or creators. They are jealous, and vain, and prideful, and greedy - at least among each other, even while they act aloof and mysterious to us.
Some of the most simple of these gods compose a group that scholars of this world have labeled "the Gods of Fury". This is surely a very accurate name, as the centers of their power are actual forces of nature with terrible destructive power. Even those who would oppose their cults and worshippers, wisely pay respects to these forces to avoid their wrath.
The Destroyer & the Stormborn
At the center of The Gods of Fury is the Storm Lord Talos, among the most powerful of deities. While other worlds have storm gods who are revered (called Thor or Orlanth or otherwise), this world has only known Talos the Destroyer. Some claim he was formed in the first battle between Selûne the Moonmaiden and her malevolent sister Shar the Nightbringer. All that Talos can see, he seeks to destroy. His fury is not unlike that of a toddler, bursting out randomly, but briefly.
For at least a brief time, while worshipped by The Netheril as Kozah, Talos possessed more focus and thus was able to unleash more persistent and directed destruction. As this clarity faded from him with their fall from power, he placed upon a bloodline of his more primitive worshipers a geas to seek out a cosmic artifact that might restore him: the Ruinstone. That blood flows in his champion Fheralai Stormsworn, who you have confronted as leader of the Anchorites of Talos.
Restoration of Leilon's lighthouse, the Tower of Thalivar, set events into motion through the strange entanglements of the Ruinstone. Projecting a great portion of himself into this world of Toril, Talos stepped out upon the Thunder Peaks of Cormyr, and where he first struck a mountaintop, the one we know as Tallon the Tall came to be, granted powers of the Stormborn. This quest for clarity is what drove Talos' campaign to claim the Ruinstone, in hopes to regain his lost focus from which he could once direct his destruction. But with that at an end through your heroics at the A. The Battle of Leilon, the destroyer has now permanently returned to his primitive form.
And the confrontation between the champion Fheralai Stormsworn and the redeemer Tallon the Tall now looms as inevitable.
The Betrayer & the Ancient
Storms upon the sea bearing the force of Umberlee, the Queen of the Depths, the Wavemother, drove destructive fury no less than that of Talos. Any village, town, or city on the coast, any sailor or sea traveler can attest to her malicious delight in the drowning of mortals and the crushing of their boats and buildings beneath her waves. Umberlee's tempests and the storms of Talos overlapped in hurricanes of terrifying devastation.
And yet her petty vanity and jealousy regularly seethed in perceived intrusion by the Storm Lord - and even more so regarding the Frostmaiden. Though the goddess of ice and winter and the sea queen often cooperated in alliance, the enduring cold and motionless sheets of sea ice that tamed her rolling seas tempted anger.
Such base emotions were easily manipulated by an Archfiend to spill over into treachery, following a fit jealousy over magnificent blizzards manifested in passions of Auril and Talos. The Queen of the Depths set into motion the exile of her rival, beginning with encouraging the Queen of Frozen Tears to join the Storm Lord on Toril, then employing schemes far too clever and calculated for Umberlee herself to contrive - an unwitting puppet of the Lord of Lies.
But her brood has gained the attention of a most ancient swimmer of cosmic oceans, one who has placed Oogway on these converging crossroads.
The Exile & the Fires of Stars
Among the wintry lands of this plane, Auril favored what many call the Frozenfar. Appearing in the court of her handmaiden, the Unknown Drottning (queen) Vassavicken, the Frostmaiden claimed the skull-castle of Grimskalle as her own (see Auril's Abode). From this throne floating upon the Sea of Moving Ice, Auril surveyed these lands with great pride and great scrutiny. Two centuries prior, Auril had trapped deep, deep beneath the Reghed Glacier a prize, her own personal treasure, but also a dangerous threat in the fallen city of The Netheril called Ythryn. She delighted in revisiting this secret jewel - but found something there with an unexpected and alarming awareness. Impulsively, defensively, she let loose a catastrophic winter to place the whole region into a deep freeze.
Her attention bolstered enthusiasm and power with the frost druids, as the Children of Auril gained prominence and the White Inquisitor emerged as their leader. And Umberlee, still whispering treacherous notions to Talos, noted the Frostmaiden's court as far more orderly and impressive than the brutish half-orc anchorites forming the Cult of Talos. Triggered, the Storm Lord struck with sheer force of will to bind Auril to these lands.
Now exiled from Winter's Hall, but embodying the essence of isolation and endurance, Auril turned to her ancient fey talents to ensure her own safety from the buried threat and to craft herself a shard of the Land Under Eternal Ice upon this world. This act is the Rime of the Frostmaiden that has brought the Everlasting Winter to Icewind Dale. And she has now sealed this off from not only the sun's light and warmth, but has begun to grow her power to reign over those lands with totality. But she remains flighty, vain, and prideful and underestimates that threat - while the Archfiend continues his painstakingly patient and devious plot.
Heroes (Sewer-side Squad) and Villains (Chardalyn Syndicate) have risen to oppose her, and that story continues to unfold. Though she has barred the warming rays of the sun, the light of the stars still pierce the dark skies of the Frozenfar, with songs of destiny in the tongue of the Aeldyr, blood of Belcoria.
The Savage & the Warden
Last of the Gods of Fury, Malar the Great Beast, the Master of the Hunt, is so vile he is generally hated by all deities other than his few allies: Lolth, Loviatar, and Bane. Malar has reached out across the multiverse to find champions sharing his disdain for The Balance and his thirst for carnage. The Great Beast has torn wounds between worlds, and his acts and haphazard plans have yet to become clear. But in the chosen tools you employed to rescue me, you have set in motion a threat you will yet need to confront - which threaten devastation to lands and creatures beloved to Willow and her patron Mielikki, Lady of the Forest.
Born of Sea and Storms
The creature you call Unknown is ancient, created by the gods as one of their living weapons employed in the Dawn War to wrest Toril by force from its primordial resident powers. You have heard legends of another of these, a creature called the Tarrasque. The kraken was spawned in a vortex of lightning storms of Talos and sea storms of Umberlee. While Talos may view the creature as a leftover minion to command, Umberlee may well view the Kraken as one of her children. She has even given it a name, spoken only among its worshippers: Slarkrethel.
Slarkrethel has collected treasures and creatures in its lair in the sunken city of Ascarle in the dark depths of the Trackless Sea. The very embodiment of long tendrils, the creature's greedy schemes have reached onto the shores of Faerûn through its network of priests, assassins, and wizards known as the Kraken Society.
(Covering the events of Divine Contentions: Leilon, Rime of the Frostmaiden, and more to come...!)
(Next: D. Rolling in the Deep)