Tales of the Witch-Queen

Despite her dark and secret ways — perhaps because of them — Djara has a great unnumbered brood, both by unnamed consorts and by her own magics. Her children include Sleep and Doom, who serve Yhera herself, and Din and Discord, who serve the Gorgonæ. Angels of death and dooms, nightmares, furies, death guides and guardians, haunts and other frightening spirits — almost all of the inhabitants of the dark and secret parts of the Underworld and the Heavens are her children, according to the Corpus Divinica Düréa, the first codified book of stories about the gods.

Of her children, all but four were born into the Otherworld and claim the Otherworld as their proper domain. Her four children born in the worldly sphere were four daughters: Annaft, who dwells on an isle in the Golden Sea where Ami the Morning Star first comes to call each day; Hemwayne, also called the Sand Queen, who dwells in an oasis of the Ulik Desert and leaves no footprints in the dunes; Memyra, who dwells on a wooded isle of the Panoch Sea, north even of Palatia; and Urgrayne, who dwells upon a lofty crag in the Harath Éduin mountains.

Urgrayne has haunted the world since before human memory. Though she is called the Witch-Queen of the Harath Eduins and makes her residence in those mountains by all report, folktales tell of her presence throughout the Midland steppes and deserts, the mountains of Metea and Vanimoria (where she is called Geteema's midwife), and even into the distant Kessite kindoms (where she is called the Seer of Kings). Amongst the Isliklids who migrated from Kessite lands in the Far West to the Dain Eduins, fighting and then joining the Thessid Empire along the way, she is reportedly called the Pathfinder.

Legends say that Urgrayne and her sisters were active in the courts of Ürüne Düré. In more recent times Urgrayne has been rarely seen, and is more often spoken of in folktales and popular stories in which she is encountered at night by travelers on the road. According to these folktales, Urgrayne appears riding an ornamented sled drawn by a team of black horses, accompanied by armed and armored knights who never speak or show their faces. Some tales say that her bodyguards are merely hollow suits of armor that have been enchanted with the semblance of life; other tales claim that her bodyguards are men who have gazed upon her face and form and become enchanted by the sight of her, leaving their former lives to exist solely on the sustenance of her presence. Several ballads based on such tales — the Erl and the Witch Queen, the Knight of Thorns and the Witch Queen, and the more recent (and some say, historical) Lord Malcolm and the Witch Queen — are popular throughout the region.

Amongst the Highlands Clans, by both legend and local report, are self-proclaimed members of the Witch's Host, who claim some connection to Urgrayne; they claim her blessing is a mark of fortune for their chieftains, captains and priestesses. She is described as their patron and protector, though no clear benefit seems to result from this association. Some claim she directs their actions in secret, but no evidence of this has ever been found. The warlords who fought Dauban Hess' legions long ago and the leaders of the Highland companies that fought the Empire at the Black Day Battle were all from the Witch's Host, according to popular lore.

Even less certain is her influence upon practitioners of magic throughout the Middle Kingdoms. The Divine King order of Agall, dedicated to their hero-patron's hatred of unlicensed practitioners of the magical arts, have long held that Urgrayne is the titular and actual head of a vast network of evil-doers. They have blamed her and her agents as the frequent cause of disease, pestilence, drought, rebellion, and sedition throughout the Middle Kingdoms.