Vyozha of True Fate

The Vyozha of True Fate is a mythical divinatory item which takes the form of a Vyozha deck.

History

The Vyozha of True Fate has its origins in Unexpector cosmology. Lyvianne, Goddess of Misfortune is associated with divinations of all types; as the Lady of Luck, Lyvianne is uniquely connected to the forces of probability, serendipity, and fate. The earliest canonical texts in the Incunabula of the House of the Unexpected state that that the goddess Lyvianne has always possessed a stack of cards or paper seals for use in fortelling the future. Therefore, the first notion of a Vyozha of True Fate likely stemmed from the pre-unification cult of Lyvianne even before Sokalyx the Learned unified the Old Voxelian tribes' belief systems into the Church as it is known today. The inclusion of recognizeable Vyozha tropes, along with semantic change from the infinitive 'a deck' to the definitive 'The Vyozha,' is of more modern origin.

Significance

While the symbols of all the Unexpector deities appear within a standard Vyozha deck, the unique Vyozha of True Fate is considered to be both a manifestation of Lyvianne's power and the symbol of her office within the Celestial Bureaucracy. Depictions of Lyvianne often show he with this deck in her possession, whether actively held in her hand or within an ornate wooden box at her hip, alongside a massive maple leaf. The leaf is said to be able to float in midair and become ridgid enough to act as a table or altar upon which the cards may be played, though more bellicose tales depict her as using this leaf to deflect blows.
When a Servant of Ironies uses a Vyozha deck to perform divinations on the behalf of a member of her congregation, she is doing this to embody the will and power of Lyvianne on the temporal plane. The clarity, surety, and efficaciousness of a Vyozha deck blessed for divination is said to reflect the degree to which Lyvianne has accepted the supplicant's veneration.
The appearance of the Vyozha in the hands of another deity suggests trickery is afoot. Usually, such stories frame the holder as Zevtwill, God of Verbal Irony in disguise, either having stolen the Vyozha or using a regular deck of cards in an attempt to decieve a mortal.

In the beginning, the destinies of the first men were broken by their imprisonment in the cube like the stream of a river lifted from its banks by an immense storm.
When the first men died - by war and waste and storm - Lyvianne created the Vyozha of True Fate of their bones. She read the destinies of the first children into the chaos of the new world, and slew the selfsame chaos with her utterance thus.
By breathing the order of fate into the world, the Lady of Misfortune becalmed the winds and the tides and the upheavals of the land. Death by prolonged means had also entered the world with the same breath - for chaos, and Zevtwill her bridegroom, had issue of their own within the world - but, between birth and death, life could persist thus by Lyvianne's utterance.
Even so, rejoice! O children of man, rejoice - for the yoke of nature has been lightened!

— Excerpt from the Incunabula of the House of the Unexpected.

The Deck's True Nature

Show spoiler

Unbeknownst to the residents of the Manifold Sky setting, the Vyozha of True Fate is very much real.
The Vyozha of True Fate is actually a manifestation of the fully metaphysical Deck of True Fate. The Deck is, in turn, a distillation of probability as it operates within the larger Matrioshka Multiverse. When percieved by embodied blanks within an instance (see Oxo for definitions), the Deck takes on a form appropriate for the setting, including apparent game play mechanics. For example, because the Candledusk Instance (which preceeded the Manifold Sky Instance as part of The Curved Time) was based on what the Creator knew of Earth, the Deck in that instance manifested as the Tarot of True Fate. In another instance, for the pre-Manifold ovinex, the Deck took the form of the Winds of True Fate, as these early ovinex relied on anoxic visions at the peaks of mountaintops as a form of divination. In any of its many forms, the Deck performs the same function: granting the one who called the Deck forth the apparent gift of foresight and prophecy.
While the Creator - and his emanation, The White-Haired Gentleman - is part of the 'firmware' of the Multiverse, he is not per se omniscient across all of space and time. He is also subject to quantum-mechanical rules such as Heisenberg uncertainty, meaning that some events become increasingly difficult to pin down as one places them under more precise scruitiny. As such, even in the Creator's hands, the Vyozha of True Fate can only give firm estimates of what might happen in the future based on past events, with projections becoming more open to change as one attempts to predict events further into the future.

6 of Lyvianne by BCGR_Wurth

Item type

Religious / Ritualistic

Rarity

Whether the Vyozha of True Fate is a unique item or one of a very small set depends on the story in which it appears. Within Church of the Unexpected doctrine, the Vyozha is an item uniquely associated with Lyvianne, Goddess of Misfortune. The film The Mortal Tourney suggests that any deity of the House of the Unexpected pantheon can call one forth.
Knappist lore suggests that any advanced Esotericist can call upon the power of the Vyozha should one have sufficient iparda While Vyozha is not generally associated with either orthodox Esotericist or Forgist thought, Esotericism is somewhat syncretic in nature; deities and artifiacts from other religions are considered by Esotericists to be emanations of higher spiritual truths, albeit distorted by non-Rostrans' lack of perception.

Weight

1 lb.

Raw materials & Components

The Vyozha of True Fate is said to be constructed of razor-thin sheets of bone drawn from the scapulae of the first humans to live within Medial A at the end of The Curved Time.