Imperial Astrologian Lharithlyn, Scion of the Heavens
Imperial Astrologian Lharithlyn is the Scion of the Heavens. Born Syrune Lharithlyn to a single mother in the heart of the Vorgarian Empire, her birth was accompanied by a nearly imperceptible flickering of the stars above. The years of her youth were not easy ones; her mother struggled to provide food and shelter for the young child. Syrune was frequently plagued by teases and rumors regarding her mother's indiscretion and her own status as a bastard child.
Regardless, Syrune's childhood was a happy one thanks to the compassion and love her mother showed her. They may not have had the nicest clothes or the most delicious food, but they were together and that was enough. Many a night was spent listening to the tales her mother would spin about her absent father. Tales of an otherworldly man with eyes like the night sky and long raven tresses that trailed wisps of stardust as they were bandied about by the wind, a man who had wooed her in the span of a single evening and was gone just as quickly.
Her mother said that he would occasionally visit, only for a single night and only once every few years. Syrune never met him, though he did leave a gift for her once - a thick tome bound in dark purple leather that glimmered ever so slightly when viewed at the correct angle. It was a treatise on the celestial bodies above Edras - a startlingly exhaustive work of astronomy, astrology, theology, and all the points where they met. Syrune treasured that book like nothing else in her life - always having it close at hand, always studying its arcane writings.
As the years passed, Syrune's love of the heavens above and the celestial bodies that rested within them only grew. She seemed to have an uncanny understanding of science, philosophy, and theology as they related to the stars and their movements. Despite her low birth and difficult upbringing, she excelled academically and was granted entry to school and school, slowly climbing her way into the highest ranks of academia - the Imperial Academy of Vorgaria.
It was there that Syrune truly blossomed into the woman that she would become. She graduated at the top of her class and within three years had been named the Imperial Astrologian of the Vorgarian Empire. She advised kings and generals on all manner of inquiries, assisting them in choosing the best times and courses of actions to undertake based on the movements and ministrations of the stars above, reading the fortunes and futures of the powerful and important, and even overseeing great projects of magical artifice.
Some of the greatest artifacts and treasures ever made by mortal hands were crafted during the time of the Vorgarian Empire, in some cases even rivalling the works of the First Age. As the secret to biothaumaturgy had yet to be discovered, unlocking the manipulations of arcane magicks by culled Soulborn, magical works were generally divine in nature, requiring the miracles and assistance of the Brisingelion. But this process could be slow and taxing, relying on the whims of the deities and their followers.
Frustrated and hungry for conquest, various groups within the empire began exploring alternative methods for the working of magic into physical artifice. Inevitably, this unwise path led some of them to the eldritch powers of the Far Realms - those cold and uncaring things that rest in the merciless stars beyond the heavens. They summoned them and bound them to great forges that their occult forces might be channeled towards the creation of weapons of war and domination.
While most historical records of what happened have either been destroyed or lost to time, it is said that their hubris nearly led to the fall of Edras itself. They had bound a terrible thing from beyond the stars called Tawil at'Umr to a spellforge deep in Thal Boldihr, but despite their best attempts were unable to keep it contained. The eldritch abomination escaped its imprisonment and within moments all of Thal Boldihr was alight with the cacophony of madness and annihilation.
Fearful of what they had unleashed, the Vorgarian generals ordered the mountain collapsed and the entrances sealed for all time. While this did contain the hordes of 'things' that the unfortunate Soulborn within had become, it did little to stop Tawil at'Umr. Upon escaping from the tomb of Thal Boldihr it attempted to simply travel back into the stars from which it came. Rather than being greeted by the cold of the void, it was met with the divine barrier known as the Celestial Canopy.
Trapped again, Tawil at'Umr became an occult ritual high above Edras - if it could not return home, then it would bring home to it. It twisted reality, pulling at the threads of existence itself to rewrite the Celestial Canopy itself - transmogrifying it from a cage into a beacon. A beacon that would call to it all those eldritch things that slept beyond the stars. Little by little the Celestial Canopy darkened as Tawil at'Umr corrupted its essence and structure.
Days passed, then weeks. Attempt after attempt failed to reverse the contamination of the Celestial Canopy; many brave heroes of the era lost their lives in hopeless assaults against Tawil at'Umr. When all seemed lost and the Edrasian sun was but a faint glow in a dull, grey sky, Imperial Astrologian Lharithlyn came to King Glorimnuri IV with a proposal. She would construct a ritual to summon another great old one from the Far Realms - Ammutseba, the Devourer of Stars.
Although she knew virtually nothing about this entity, she did manage to find a short description of it within the tome her father had left her. It was described as an enormous dark mass with long, grasping tentacles which it used to ensnare and consume falling stars. The plan would be to summon Ammutseba and then lead it to the edge of the Celestial Canopy where Tawil at'Umr was conducting its profane work in the hopes that it would feast upon the other star being. Once the one had consumed or at least weakened the other, both would be trapped within a divine prison constructed with the help of the Scion of the Forge and tossed into the depths of the Upside Down forever.
Astonishingly, the proposal was successful. The Devourer of Stars was pulled from the Far Realms into Edras after a weeklong ritual that supposedly cost the lives of over a thousand acolytes and sages and left Syrune's physical essence rapidly unravelling. As her skin, muscles, and then bones began to disintegrate, her soul burst forth from the husk of her physical form like an exploding star. Rather than passing on into the afterlife, her soul instead coalesced into a vaguely humanoid form - save that instead of physical structure it was built from the void of heavens, filled with distant swirling galaxies and shooting stars. She was still alive, somewhere between the material and the astral, and now imbued with cosmic powers whose origin was unclear.
All seemed to be proceeding well when the massive form of the creature turned away from the Celestial Canopy and began making its way towards Vorgaria, drawn to Syrune Lharithlyn like a moth to a flame. The only option left was for the Imperial Astrologian to use her newfound abilities to fly to the Celestial Canopy and lead Ammutseba directly to Tawil at'Umr. Once there, Syrune and the two abominations waged a battle of such titanic proportions that the skies of Edras were torn asunder and the continent beneath shook with tremors. When the chaos settled, Tawil at'Umr had been devoured and Ammutseba was gravely wounded. With the last of her remaining strength, Syrune triggered the celestial monstrance constructed by the Scion of the Forge, forever imprisoning the abominations within its depths.
Her work done and her tenuous hold on the material plane fading with each passing moment, Lharithlyn was taken up into Sanctum and invited to become a Scion by Lesu, Princess of Starlight.
Ammutseba now sleeps beneath Edras, Tawil at'Umr forever digesting within its gullet, but never dying. It hibernates under the ruined city of some long-dead civilization deep in central Autvegr. There, it is worshiped as a god by a race of albino duergar that long ago delved far too deep into the Upside Down.
D&D 5e Rules
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Domains: Light
Favored Weapons: Thrown Blades
Pathfinder 2e Rules
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Domains: Star, Sun, Knowledge, Magic
Alternate Domains: Void
Follower Alignments: CG, NG, LG
Favored Weapons: Meteor Hammer
Cleric Spells: 1st: magic missile, 4th: blink, 6th: blanket of stars
Divine Ability: Intelligence or Wisdom
Divine Font: Heal
Divine Skill: Occultism
Divine Classification
Scion of the Heavens
Alignment
Neutral Good
Current Location
Species
Realm
Age
1896
Children
Gender
Female
Belief/Deity
Lesu, Princess of Starlight
Aligned Organization
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