Night Mother

The Night Mother is an ancient deity who controls the balance of the night and day. A title more than an individual, this role was reprised by Black Annie after Margeurite died again during the failed resurrection. She is now an ally of Goldband.

Background
In another age, when the seas’ tides washed different shores, there lived a maiden named Marguerite. She was beautiful, the flower of her people, and she dwelt happily in sun-drenched woodlands. But her simple people could not dwell in the blissful peace that was their way forever. Cruel creatures crept beneath the strong sun, and grew stronger, and hungry, as they grew.

One day, upon the edges of the forest, strangers appeared, offering gifts and friendship to Marguerite’s people. They were like unto her people, and yet different, with strange eyes and an odd, sibilant tongue. Nonetheless, the simple woodlanders were delighted to count one more people to whom they could speak.

As the years passed uncounted, the strangers friendship became more and more demanding. Not only trade in wine and fruit and timber, but now they demanded visitations. The strangers demanded that the woodlanders send representatives, beautiful girls and sturdy boys, to pay homage to the mighty sun in stone temples in distant lands. None of these visitors ever returned to their homes.

The strangers would not take no for an answer, and soon blood was shed. But the strangers were many, and powerful, and when roused to anger became all the stranger. Fangs and scales and forked tongues they showed in anger, and so the woodlanders were reduced in war, and put under the yoke.

But Marguerite’s people made poor slaves, and they fled and lived wild in the woods whenever they could. Secret enclaves grew up in the tree tops and hollow hills. In these secret homes, Marguerite dwelt among her people and lived a grim life.

One night, Marguerite was out upon a tryst, to meet her love, but he did not meet her in their secret grove. She wept, and was disconsolate. The next day, she asked among her people for him, where he was. He was gone, the people said, taken by the ravenous strangers.

And so, the grief-stricken Marguerite withdrew into herself, and into the dark caves beneath the hollow hills, delving deep. She emerged only by night, when the strangers dared not tread abroad, and bent her mind always to the darkness, and how it might be brought against her enemies.

Soon she was known not just for her beauty, but for her might, for she became the foremost sorceress among her people, passing freely between the realms of light and dark, air and earth. She led fell warriors and cruel mages in war, and everywhere she went, darkness followed like the great black shadow of her hate. She dreamt sable dreams, and brooded upon the abyss.

The strangers grew wary, and walked in her woods only rarely, and then only in great numbers. Yet they still came, capturing those they could and making cruel demands when they stumbled upon a settlement.

Finally, an army of the strangers marched to the heart of the woods, and there found the greatest enclave of the woodlanders, and made a slaughter there. The leaves of gold and green and orange were all turned red that day at Autumn Hall, and the last free princes of the wood fell.

With no other leader left, her people turned to Marguerite. And so she forged her peaceable woodland people into a weapon. She sought new magics, dark and cruel, to use against the sun-loving strangers, and cast a great net of shadow upon the woodlands. She sought new allies, raising up the young peoples of the earth to love war. Ever further she spread her net of darkness. She brought forth twisted and dark minions forth from below and outside.

Her war came like thunder in the mountains and wind on the plain. The seas frothed and raged beneath a black sky. Rivers ran from darkened springs to darkened shores. The strangers withered without the mighty sun to succor them, and when they were weak, she struck, riding deep into their jungles and deserts upon fell beasts, at the head of armies.

Thus there was victory. And darkness. And peace. The woodlanders returned to their darkling woods to wash off the blood of their wars. But the earth was awoken in this long dark. Unkind beasts and nameless monsters crawled from the depths to terrorize the world. The young peoples of the earth had been raised on blood and they could not return to a peace they had never known. And so the woodlanders were troubled, and beset.

But what could be done? Marguerite had herself grown dark and twisted, with no interest in the peaceful pursuits of her youth. And yet she could not be cast aside, for she was now the mistress of her people, and the mightiest among them. Many among her people missed the sun, and the twilight, and tired of the endless night.

Discontent grew, and yet nothing could be done. The young peoples turned to the worship of their mistress. The creatures she had brought forth heeded her word, and her acolytes carved her commands in the stone.

Hope sprang forth only from treachery. The world plunged deeper and deeper into darkness, and Marguerite’s dominion grew. Darkness was her thought, and her body, and her will. Only the jealousy of her acolytes saved the world from endless night, when her closest coven turned against her, and brought her low with a simple sleeping draught, and bound her.

Yet oft evil will shall evil mar, and the coven fell to in-fighting. In this small gap, the woodlanders chose hope, and scattered those among them most steeped in darkness to the winds. Their darkness undone, the sun dawned upon the world for the first time in centuries.

Marguerite was yet mighty even slumbering, and she would not forever sleep. With bonds of root and stone and sky, she was sealed away by her people, in the valley of her birth, among the woodlands of her people, at the spring of a river that flowed ever icily. Many of her worshippers among the young peoples would not relent, and so they too were bound here, in a shadow realm, trapped between the world of light and the world of darkness. Over this liminal valley, the woodlanders set a dragon, to guard the tomb and the worshippers, sealed away in their prison. And there she has lain ever since, the Mother of Night, sleeping in her tomb, dreaming of the last twilight and the night beyond.