Vassar, The Empty Throne

The Empty Throne, It-Bled-Stars, Skin-of-Dreams, The Heir of Night, Swirling-Shadow, Lord of the Dreaming

Only Vassar—the Swirling-Shadow, the Skin-of-Dreams—stood against the creation of the world. "What you propose would be to impose shape upon us," it told its fellows, "But look upon me. I am unbound, my form unhindered by law or dictum. Is this not perfection?" But they would not heed.

— from The World-Weary, as told in the Borregan Lothok

And so descended the breath of Vassar into the body mortal. The mortal flesh cracked and shook, glittering darkness seeping from within. But the body held. The cracks sealed as they continued to overflow. The air around the once-mortal body fell to the ground. Moments bucked and bent. The Shadow had taken its Living Throne.

— from The Living Throne, as told in the Borregan Lothok

The least plentiful, and most dangerous, is the flesh of Vassar. It is well remembered how Vassar descended upon the world as the Enthroned Shadow, seeking to unmake the Architect's grand design. Its nature is subversion, its essence is contradiction. That is why the place where its flesh is most readily found is in the Dreaming, where we sojourn in sleep. But when found in the waking world, we find that it readily and gleefully subverts what were thought to be natural laws. But even these blemishes upon the Architect's grand design, untethered as they are from Vassar's will, follow patterns that we can learn.

— from The Body Divine, by Alkeptoros

Divine Domains

Rebellion, Change, Darkness, Dreams, Theft, Journeys, Enlightenment

Holy Books & Codes

The Borregan Lothok, or Words of the Empty Throne is a collection of teachings passed on by Vassar, stories featuring Vassar—predominantly, but not universally, from before and during the era of the War of Shadow—as well as commentaries on these things by religious leaders and Vassar's chosen lieutenants.

Physical Description

General Physical Condition

Physical form is not something generally conducive to Vassar's nature. It is known that Vassar's physical manifestation from before the War of Shadow was inconstant.

Mental characteristics

Personal history

In the Void of Dawn, there were Four: Kogrun, Mallat, Pennak, and Vassar. When Kogrun proposed that they create the world from themselves, it swayed Mallat and Pennak, but Vassar was staunchly opposed to the project. It is the nature of Vassar to sway, to shift, and to whorl, and nailing Vassar's essence down into a specific shape was contrary to that very essence. Even motion, as devised by Mallat, or glory, as devised by Pennak, were too restrictive. Bending flesh towards creation had too many rules.
Vassar watched its compatriots wither and decay as the shaped themselves into the world, and it endeavored to dissuade them, but to no avail. When the strain of the Creation became too much, and Kogrun, Mallat, and Pennak grew silent and still, Vassar knew loss. Vassar called upon Velir, the assistant Kogrun made from its own flesh and breath, and they mourned and commiserated for the first time ever.
The ages passed, and Vassar and Velir grew distant from one another. Velir was born of Kogrun, and was made for the express purpose of the Creation, and so was dedicated to preserving the world as it was. Vassar, however, once it had processed its grief, saw great opportunity in the world, if only it could be allowed to ebb and flow, to change. If only the rules could be broken.
This disagreement would only grow, and fester. As life sprang up in the world, Vassar would reach in, speaking to the mortals in their sleep. It nudged them, cajoled them, threatened them, and bought them over to support it. Vassar found particular success in convincing those who sought to subvert the societal order—the poor and the downtrodden, the criminal and desperate—in supporting it, finding a reflection of its own desire to subvert the natural order.
Having amassed support from the legions of the hungry, and having elevated a select few by imbuing them with a fragment of its essence, Vassar struck, divesting its breath of life into the body of a carefully chosen mortal, incarnating as the Enthroned Shadow. The Enthroned Shadow waged war across the world, unweaving the threads of reality everywhere it conquered. With the full power of one of the greatest Powers known to have existed, not even the mighty Velir and the other Great Powers could stand against it. With precious few exceptions, Shadow overran the world.
But where power could not prevail, cunning would. The remains of Aztarnak the Devourer—a Great Power which had been composed of Kogrun, Mallat and Pennak in equal measure—were shaped into a mighty weapon in the heart Kogrun's Worldforge, and renamed Aztarnak-of-Order. With this mighty weapon, the blood of the Enthtoned Shadow was shed upon the vaulting heavens, and Velir used the Worldforge to warp Vassar's divine form and wrap it around the world. This caused the Shadow great pain, which in turn allowed it to be slain by Aztarnak-of-Order. Vassar's breath of life was dragged into Maelstrom of Souls by the mortal soul to which it had bound itself, and the Maelstrom rent it asunder.
And Vassar slept. Not truly still or silent—such would be against the nature of that which remained of it—but bereft of the guiding intelligence which had driven it before. It was now one of the World-Weary.

Failures & Embarrassments

When Vassar attempted to seize control of the World through conquest, it was cast back and all but unmade as it stood on the cusp of victory.

Morality & Philosophy

It is in Vassar's very nature to ebb and to flow, to whorl and to change, following no fixed shape or definite pattern. And Vassar is arrogant. It sees rigidity and structure as anethema and ultimate evil, and sees flexibility and change as ultimate good.

Personality Characteristics

Motivation

Vassar's nature is found in opposition, both to the status quo, and to order and structure. In the Dawn, Vassar sought and failed to preserve the amorphous ambiguity of the Void, and after being bounf inexorably to the world in the Battle of the Stars, Vassar became enmeshed in the subversive elements of society—from theft, to murder, to rebellion, to spycraft.

Divine Classification

World-Weary

Religions

• Hand of Shadow
• Temple of Ash

Church/Cult

Hand of Shadow

Birthplace

The Void of Dawn