The Binding of Mortality

Sil’vat brought into existence many of the mortal races of the world. Dwarves, Elves, Humans, Halflings, Gnomes, Orcs, Tabaxi, Firbolgs, and all manner of people in between came into the world, born of her will.
As time progressed, none of these races came to meet death. For they learned, they adapted, and they progressed outwards from their origins to encompass all parts of Naria. They did this because they could form communities, and work to protect one another from dangerous beasts, and cure one another of illness, and teach one another’s children of the dangers of the world. Layoya, feeling robbed of her charge by the tenacity of the living, took her frustrations to Keris one night. “They are appointed to leave the worlds of the living and enter into the union of death,” she exclaimed, “but they instead will pull their brethren from my embrace, and I must return empty-handed and alone!”
“I, too, resent them for this,” marked Keris. “Their communities build and build, and nothing is left to return to nature, for they maintain their abodes against all the fury of the elements! If they are allowed to continue, the whole of the world will be naught but their structures!”
And so, in secret, Layoya and Keris hatched a plan to force the living beings to return to Layoya in time. Each of them drew a line on their forearms with a knife, and let their blood spill into the rivers, and to seed rain-clouds over the settlements of the world. They then cleaned their arms with rags, and wrapped the knife in the rags too, which Layoya took to hide.
As the people of the world woke the next morning, and drank of the rain and the rivers to quench their thirst, they found that those amongst them who had lived the longest felt suddenly frail. Within a short time, only the youngest of the world’s races survived, as those longest-lived left their withering bodies to join Layoya's embrace.
When this happened, Sil’vat became furious with Layoya, and claimed that Layoya had stolen her creations from her. Layoya felt dismay upon seeing Sil’vat so upset, and so revealed the existence of the sacred knife that she and Keris used to impose mortality upon the new races of the world.
“Know that if any of your creations needs to escape the limits of time and mortality,” Layoya comforted, “You may send them to me, and I will slice into them, such that the blood of mine inside them that brings them back to me may leave their bodies, and their bodies may walk the world unbound by the agony of time.” Sil’vat, at this, hugged her dear friend, comforted by the knowledge that time need not destroy all her creations.
Thus, the Knife of Mortality remained in Layoya's control, and across the many stories of the world, the great heroes would beg more time of Layoya, who would deem them either worthy or wanting of their goal to escape the fate she and Keris decreed for them.

Related People

• Keris
• Layoya
• Sil’vat

Related Items

• Knife of Mortality