Raest, a Jaghut Tyrant (GotM, Dramatis Personae)

'Struggling in his mother’s wake, it was Raest’s first lesson in power. In

the hunt for domination that would shape his life, he saw the many ways

of the wind – its subtle sculpting of stone over hundreds and then

thousands of years, and its raging gales that flattened forests – and found

closest to his heart the violent power of the wind’s banshee fury.

Raest’s mother had been the first to flee his deliberate shaping of

power. She’d denied him to his face, proclaiming the Sundering of Blood

and thus cutting him free. That the ritual had broken her he disregarded.

It was unimportant. He who would dominate must learn early that those

resisting his command should be destroyed. Failure was her price, not

his.

While the Jaghut feared community, pronouncing society to be the

birthplace of tyranny – of the flesh and the spirit – and citing their own

bloody history as proof, Raest discovered a hunger for it. The power he

commanded insisted upon subjects. Strength was ever relative, and he

could not dominate without the company of the dominated.

At first he sought to subjugate other Jaghut, but more often than not

they either escaped him or he was forced to kill them. Such contests held

only momentary satisfaction. Raest gathered beasts around him, bending

nature to his will. But nature withered and died in bondage, and so

found an escape he could not control. In his anger he laid waste to the

land, driving into extinction countless species. The earth resisted him,

and its power was immense. Yet it was directionless and could not overwhelm

Raest in its ageless tide. His was a focused power, precise in its

destruction and pervasive in its effect.

Then into his path came the first of the Imass, creatures who struggled

against his will, defying slavery and yet living on. Creatures of boundless,

pitiful hope. For Raest, he had found in them the glory

of domination, for with each Imass that broke he took another. Their

link with nature was minimal, for the Imass themselves played the game

of tyranny over their lands. They could not defeat him.

He fashioned an empire of sorts, bereft of cities yet plagued with the

endless dramas of society, its pathetic victories and inevitable failures.

The community of enslaved Imass thrived in this quagmire of pettiness.

They even managed to convince themselves that they possessed freedom,

a will of their own that could shape destiny. They elected champions.

They tore down their champions once failure draped its shroud over

them. They ran in endless circles and called it growth, emergence, knowledge.

While over them all, a presence invisible to their eyes, Raest flexed

his will. His greatest joy came when his slaves proclaimed him god –

though they knew him not – and constructed temples to serve him and

organized priesthoods whose activities mimicked Raest’s tyranny with

such cosmic irony that the Jaghut could only shake his head.

It should have been an empire to last for millennia, and its day of

dying should have been by his own hand, when he at last tired of it.

Raest had never imagined that other Jaghut would find his activities

abhorrent, that they would risk themselves and their own power on

behalf of these short-lived, small-minded Imass. Yet what astonished

Raest more than anything else was that when the Jaghut came they came

in numbers, in community. A community whose sole purpose of

existence was to destroy his empire, to imprison him.

He had been unprepared.

The lesson was learned, and no matter what the world had become

since that time, Raest was ready for it. His limbs creaked at first, throbbing

with dull aches bridged by sharp pangs. The effort of digging

himself from the frozen earth had incapacitated him for a time, but

finally he felt ready to walk the tunnel that opened out into a new land.

Preparation. Already he’d initiated his first moves. He sensed that others

had come to him, had freed the path of Omtose Phellack wards and seals.

Perhaps his worshippers remained, fanatics who had sought his release for

generations, and even now awaited him beyond the barrow.

The missing Finnest would be his first priority. Much of his power had

been stored within the seed, stripped from him and stored there by the

Jaghut betrayers. It had not been carried far, and there was nothing that

could prevent his recovering it. Omtose Phellack no longer existed in the

land above – he could feel its absence like an airless void. Nothing could

oppose him now.

Preparation. Raest’s withered, cracked face twisted into a savage grin,

his lower tusks splitting desiccated skin. The powerful must gather other

power, subjugate it to their own will, then direct it unerringly. His moves

had already begun.

He sloshed through the slush now covering the barrow’s muddy floor.

Before him rose the slanted wall that marked the tomb’s barrier. Beyond

the lime-streaked earth waited a world to be enslaved. Raest gestured

and the barrier exploded outward. Bright sunlight flared in the clouds of

steam rolling around him, and he felt waves of cold, ancient air sweeping

past him.

The Jaghut Tyrant walked into the light.'

(GotM, UK Trade, p.435-6)

'Raest spread his arms wide and unleashed his Warren. His flesh split as power flowed into him. His arms shed skin like ash. He both felt and heard hills crack all around

him, the snapping of stone, the sundering of crags. To all sides the horizons blurred as dust curtained skyward.'(GotM, UK Trade, p.438)