The oldest known Risen is Persephone, whose tale is occasionally whispered in the Shadowlands. She has not been seen since before Charon's disappearance, but no wraiths have heard anything of her being destroyed or consumed by Oblivion. She may still be in the world, on one side of the Shroud or the other. But that hasn't stopped anyone from searching for her for over a hundred years, with no success.
A Meeting With Persephone[]
A Tale Once Heard Among the Sandmen[]
In the lands of the Quick they tell the tale thus: Many long years ago, Persephone, daughter of Demeter (goddess of agriculture), was kidnapped by Hades (god of the underworld and the dead), who had seen her and fallen in love with her. He took her away to live in his kingdom as his queen. There she was offered food and drink, but she neither ate nor drank — until, out of politeness, she ate six seeds of a pomegranate. For each seed she ate, she was condemned to spend one month of every year in the land of the dead. During this time, her mother would mourn, and the land would become cold and barren. At the end of the six months, Persephone would return to her mother and the living world. Demeter, in her joy, would cause the climate to warm and the plants to grow and bloom again.
On the surface, it is a simple tale of despair, triumph, compromise and of course, the origin of the seasons. But what of the other half of the story, its Shadow? A sinister version of the tale also exists. In it, Hades was no god but a powerful wraith, who fell in love with a living girl named Persephone, and arranged for her untimely demise so that he could have her company in death. Demeter was no goddess, but a talented mage instead. The “pomegranate” was theoretically a relic, whose exact nature has long since been forgotten. This same relic supposedly helped to provide Persephone with the power necessary to drag herself back into the land of the Quick.
A Love Story?[]
A part of Persephone fell in love with Hades, and she crossed back and forth between the realms of living and dead as her love waxed and waned. She would flee from Hades when his possessiveness and jealousy became too confining for her, and return when her loneliness overpowered her. Most of the dead say that she eventually went mad, ultimately succumbing to the same dark power that had enabled her to return from the dead again and again.
According to the lore of the Shadowlands, Persephone was the first of the Risen. No one knows exactly how she discovered the way back to the Skinlands, only that her urgent need to escape her captor and return to her mother drove her to try until she succeeded. There is much speculation, of course, and no one has yet answered the question as to why she’s supposedly still at it. After all, Demeter must have died millennia ago.
Most people say that the knowledge Persephone obtained in the Shadowlands and subsequently shared with her mother the sorceress enabled Demeter to use her magic to help Persephone open the way. Others wonder about the nature of the so-called pomegranate. There’s no way to know, really, just how much of the myth is fact and how much is allegory. The relic could have been anything.
Still, there are other wraiths who reject these theories. They insist instead that it was Hades himself who sent his queen back. Out of his love for Persephone and his guilt over having caused her grief and loss, he in his great knowledge and wisdom showed her how to open the way. This strikes as a little too sentimental for most wraiths, but it makes some people happy to believe it.
Some denizens of the land of the dead say that Persephone still passes between the Shadowlands and the Skinlands every six months like clockwork. Many insist that they have seen or even spoken with her. While some of these reports are obvious hoaxes, a lot of the stories are strangely similar.
Fate[]
The oldest of the Risen, Persephone tries to flee into the Skinlands when she receives warnings of the incipient Maelstrom. Her Shadow delays her crossing just long enough, however, and she ends up crossing the Shroud at the precise moment the Maelstrom hits. Some form of resonance ensues, and wraiths by the thousands are blown across the Shroud into the Skinlands. Some possess bodies that are not their own, some return to their own rotting cadavers, and some are simply lost. Chaos, and other, less pleasant things, ensue.
References[]
- WTO: The Risen, p. 19-21
- WTO: Ends of Empire, p. 149