Vulkoor

Sovereign of Betrayal and Bloodshed.

Lore pending

This page carries Vulkoor’s strictures and little else. The wider lore of his faith — his shrines, his rites, his clergy, his place among the Sovereigns — has not been written yet. What is here is complete and canon; it is simply not the whole page.

Vulkoor is the guest who was welcome.

An enemy is cheap. Anyone can kill an enemy, and Vulkoor has never once been impressed by it. What he wants is the friend — and he wants the friendship first, real and honestly come by, because a betrayal is worth exactly what was betrayed and not a copper more.

His followers are charming, and they are charming in earnest. The diplomacy is real, the bribe is paid, the romance is not pretended. None of it is any protection at all. They catch the eye and hold it, take a man’s will out of his hands, and leave nothing on him that any priest can find. What they cannot charm they poison, and what they cannot poison they curse — and the oldest of them need nothing but a look to do it. In the oldest carvings he has a scorpion’s shape, and his priests have never given up the venom.

Vulkoor’s traditions all tell the same story, and they tell it on his day. Three of the first powers swore to meet Death at dawn. When the dawn came the eldest was elsewhere, carrying something heavy out of the Citadel of the Dead while his brother and sisters bought him the hours with their soldiers’ lives. Others tell it as an accusation. Vulkoor’s followers tell it as it deserves: he was not afraid, and he was not clever. He wanted it. The oath was simply what it cost, and he paid the oath and kept the weapon, and of the four of them he is the only one who came away with anything.

A lie that profits you is business. Vulkoor is owed the other kind.

No one is a follower of Vulkoor until she has something to wear. The novice is given no symbol and taught no prayer. She is sent to make a friend.

His clergy stand openly at Sovereign Square, and Sair has never had much trouble finding a use for them. An army is expensive. A cousin is not.

Traditions that teach him: the Archaist.

His worship day is Zol, market day, when the whole city trusts somebody. He shares Zol with Kolkorn, and takes the better half of it. A promise to pay is still a promise, and the day the city is thickest with them is the day Vulkoor’s followers go out walking.

The dwarves and the gnomes do not name him. Where a Sairan says Vulkoor, they say Dolazur, Sovereign of Cunning and Conquest — and on the same morning of the same day they tell the same story about the same theft, and get the reason wrong. The two brew the same poisons and curse with the same glance, and there are scholars who will point out that Zol is one of only two days in the week carrying two dark faces where every other carries a single. There are as many who will tell you that is what comes of letting a dwarf teach you theology.

Strictures

Archaist

• A follower of Vulkoor must always carry, visible upon her person, a gift given her freely and in friendship — by a friend she has since betrayed.
• A follower of Vulkoor must tell one lie each day to someone who trusts her, and it must gain her nothing.
• On Zol, Vulkoor’s holy day, a follower of Vulkoor must tell the theft — the oath, the dawn, the empty place in the line, and what the eldest carried out of the Citadel while the others died for him. She must tell it to a friend, and she must tell it with pride.
• A follower of Vulkoor must never refuse friendship, hospitality, or love offered her in earnest.
• A follower of Vulkoor must never declare an enmity. She may not warn a man, nor break with him openly, nor let him learn from her that he has lost her.

What is owed

The token is not a trophy. It is worn where it can be seen, and among those who know the sign it is read exactly: this was given to me, and I am still wearing it. A follower who has been read has not broken the code. She has been recognized, which is a different misfortune.

A friend is a friend. What Vulkoor forbids is the counterfeit. A follower may not hold herself apart from the people she means to sell, telling herself the affection was a device — it must be honestly won and honestly meant, or the betrayal is worth nothing and the token is a lie.

The telling is the whole of the liturgy. There is no hymn and no altar. She sits with someone who trusts her and tells him, with warmth, the story of a man who let his family die for a weapon and was right to. What he makes of it is his affair. Most men laugh. Some go quiet and change the subject, and she marks the day.

Nothing is owed to an enemy. Vulkoor’s law binds a follower to those who trust her and to no one else. A monster in a ruin has offered her no friendship, and she may kill it at her leisure and by any means she likes.

She may not refuse, but she need not hurry. Friendship offered in earnest must be taken up; nothing says when the account falls due. Some of his followers carry a friendship for thirty years. Vulkoor is patient, being in no danger himself.