Lashnar, Bull of Fury, Lore and Guile is a Apocryphal Lunar Patron or Maslunim.
Overview[]
<<No, no, my sons and daughters. We will make the enemy bare his throat to us. Then we will strike and hear the sweet sounds of his fear and the lamentations of his fellows. I have a plan.>>
Lashnar's palace is built inside a mountain shrouded in darkness and surrounded by desert. The highest peak is often crowned by the crescent moon. The palace's vast room and halls take the form of a great chthonic maze that realigns itself based on his wishes. Its massive halls and corridors are always wider than they are tall, giving visitors the feeling of crushing weight suspended above them. The walls and squat arches seem sculpted out of the starry sky. No fires burn there, yet the stars in the walls give off enough light to eek out its gothic splendor.
Lashnar sometimes appears to Uratha in the form of a wolf-muzzled minotaur whose horns, teeth and claws are made of lapis lazuli. Many times he eschews physical form almost entirely, appearing as a mouth of gleaming blue fangs floating in a darkened tunnel. Whenever Lashnar appears, lights dim, the air grows still and the smells of musk and desert dust fill the air.
Lashnar hates Helions; any who call the sun their friend are his enemies. Despite his overweening hatred of the sun, he is a creature of wisdom - especially forgotten things, ornate plans and puzzles. He enjoys spinning riddles of great complexity stratagems built around their foibles. But, his riddles always have an answer, and his traps can be defeated, though not easily. He has no patience for those who leap to conclusions (especially correct ones) or defeat his machinations by "cheating." Those poor creatures invite his rather gruesome wrath.
His brood includes Ralunim (the Full Moon Choir), Ithalunim (the Crescent Moon Choir), Irralunim (the New Moon Choir), conceptuals (beasts, riddles, secrets), emotionals (fury), bull-spirits, spirits of darkness and Earth elementals. He may also be tied to spirits of greed and wrath.
Lashnar would be a good patron for crusades to recover some bit of lost lore or a powerful stolen artifact. He may also inspire a crusade as means to some other goal, or perhaps as a ruse to cover some other action. Lashnar may also be persuaded to sponsor a crusade by a more powerful lunar spirit wishing to act in secret.
And then there are the Baal-Hadad (see p. 215). These creatures' relationship with Lashnar is one of his greatest secrets. This story seems as labyrinthine as Lashnar himself. Some say that these shapeshifters are his children, stolen from him by the Helions - others say that he lost the Baal-Hadad to the Sun in some intrigue against Helios. Or, that Lashnar is an exiled Helion, expelled for his forbidden love of the Moon, his children stripped from him as punishment. Perhaps his children sinned against their father, and he drove them to Helios. The question is whether he hates them enough to launch a crusade against them. He, after all, knows the secret of their reproduction, a secret guaranteed to drive many Forsaken to the brink of genocide.
Chiminage: Rings or jewelry of lapis lazuli, pieces of esoteric knowledge; the sacrifice of a Helion always attracts his attention and earns his favor (good luck with that)
References[]
- WTF: The War Against the Pure, p. 128-129