Melusine

Introduction

“This world still deserves tomorrow… please, for your friends, stand. BELIEVE.”

The first Eidolon to weave mana, Melusine is the Eidolon who found a balance between Death and Creation. She is considered the Mother to the world of Rhyst, a gentle figure in legend who still must keep to her nature as a harbinger of endings. Melusine is a blue and silver dragon and found her domain within the depths of Rhyst’s oceans long ago.

Background

As Zahhak’s flames flickered within the darkness of the Infinite Void, Melusine caught sight of something reflecting their light. As she approached, she discovered the elements of water and mana, for within the realm of the Eidolons’ birth they were one and the same. Melusine was the first to approach it and the first to weave it into a thin stream of glimmering, sparking magic. In her amazement, she found the fundamentals of creation lying within the pools that she had stumbled upon. In this regard, there are many who count Melusine as the founder of magic as we know it.

Enthralled by her discovery, Melusine barely noticed that she and had Zahhak had inadvertently sparked the beginnings of disagreement between the other of their kind, and soon, the light and the mana that offered up previously unknown knowledge and power turned into the causes of war. Even if by accident did she involve herself, Melusine knew that there was no world in which this element should be lost and forgotten again, and so she gave herself to the cause of rebellion.

By the war’s conclusion, Melusine and Oberon had collected most of the liquid elements of the cosmos nearer Rhyst and the Faewild. Though they had worked together to force the Void’s Eidolons into a drought, it was here where the philosophies of the Fae and Rhyst first diverged. Oberon believed in limitless potential, while Melusine desired a more careful approach, one that could ensure true perfection in the eyes of the cosmos. Their fight split the oceans they had stolen away, and vitae rained down across the Faewild while water filled the deep basins of Rhyst, forever splitting the single element of mana into two.

Though the two aquatic Eidolons would never reconcile, Melusine discovered that the waters that fell upon Rhyst were exactly what she had desired. Through their low concentration of mana, she was able to create not brilliant and fantastical wonders of the instant, but instead she could sow the seeds of something far more beautiful. While the other Eidolons had mourned those who had died in the fighting, Melusine recognized the finality of such a thing as a notion that surpassed even the most brilliant visages that could be found within the universe. Through the natural element of water alone, she could create the ephemeral, and soon, her contributions to Rhyst became part of its foundations.

Melusine contributed the ideal of Death to the Cycle of Souls and bid the likes of Samsara to act in her stead as a guardian and agent of this very notion. The Blue Dragon did not see death as something to mourn, but rather something respectful and even gentle. As the other Eidolons of Virtue laid out their plans, Melusine assisted in the framework of mortality itself, both by crafting what she might of the natural world and its inhabitants and by ensuring that within Rhyst, nothing would last forever.

She soon settled into the deepest oceans of the world where she was known to oceanic people and by what spirits survived around her. The blue dragon flight gained a reputation for commonly being more aquatic than their cousins despite wings that allowed them to take to the skies. Melusine remained there until a time came where she surfaced and met mortals that she came to know as Zahhak did the people of the Dessica, and aquatic Draconians began to spread throughout the world from the islands she visited, and stories of the Viruna Trench were spoken often by the sailors who had come into contact with the people there.

It was upon an atoll in one of the far seas where an infernal presence had slowly corrupted a tribe of mariners over the course of several generations. Sacrificial pacts were done in secret, and though the Blue Dragon often brought blessings of good will to these people, she could not contend with the dark ambitions that brought promises of eternal glory into their mortal hearts. The entire ring that formed their home was utilized to bind Melusine when they called for the Dragon to meet with them, and similar to her equals upon Rhyst, she was snared in a trap crafted by men, but designed by devils.

After her rescue from the Emerald Moon where she and the other Dragons were imprisoned that she urged Zahhak to consider an end to the Convergence. As one who originally supported the notion of planar balance being established through widespread resetting of the natural world, she came to believe that mankind did not deserve a wrath that they could not truly prepare for, and that places like Sol and Highshield had already proven that mortals had surpassed the initial intentions of the Dragons.

With the Last Convergence’s state made permanent, Melusine departed again for her waters, but not before flooding the atoll that housed her captors. Though she is the slowest to anger among the Dragons, there was still some level of justice to be meted out, and many have said that Eschen, Samsara, and Melous came together to cast the land into the deepest depths of the sea.

Trivia

• Though water as an element lacks the potency of vitae, Melusine’s presence is said to cause it to glow with empowered mana

• The Apheiron of Water is suffused with Melusine's influence, and so it is incredibly cold to the touch. By pressing your ear against it, should it not freeze off, it's said that one can hear the ocean.

• Despite Melusine's more gentle nature, she is no stranger to a number of enemies, though her greatest rival will always be Oberon himself. Content with her water, she's all too aware of how reliant magic is on mana itself, and though she doesn't necessarily covet the vitae of the Faewild, she thinks of it often, cautiously planning for the day that Oberon makes some larger attempt at seizing control of Rhyst or the rest of the cosmos

• There is no shortage of port cities or island nations that see Melusine as a patron to their people, and in her active state she does indeed deliver clear and present blessings to those who appeal to her

Credit

Tattles https://forum.verdict.dev/showthread.php?tid=3131