Yaw'nagrah

The Queen of the Forest appears to be a literal primaeval forest in the Spring Realm

Eternal of Spring

Sobriquets

Most commonly, Yaw'nagrah is called the Green Mother or the Queen of the Forest.

As with many eternals, Yaw'nagrah has a number of other names both within the Empire and beyond. She may be called Rootwinder, Old Bloodbark, the Verdant Queen, the Lady of the Woods, Lady of Bark and Bramble, the One who Sways and Stands, Thorncreeper, Treecaller, and Woodwyf. In her more benevolent guises she may be called Cornwalker, Midwife, or Wheatweaver. The Druj sometimes call her the Green Hand and Nest of Thorns, while among the Thule she is called the Plentiful.

Appearance

Like Llofir, Yaw'nagrah is immense. She appears to be a primaeval forest of immense size that spreads across an area of the Spring Realm roughly the size of Varushka, although it is possible that this estimation is out by several magnitudes. She rarely speaks directly to magicians, but spawns handmaidens from her body that take the form of human-shaped tree creatures who work to make her guests more at home.

Some magicians describe these handmaidens as being close to human in looks, often with briar trappings, rather than animate tree creatures but it is not clear if these are a different kind of creature (possibly heralds), or the result of some exposure to hallucinogenic pollen.

Concerns

Yaw'nagrah is concerned with life, in infinite diversity and infinite combinations. Her forest is fecund, but she is a creature without compassion; she favours no form of life over any other. Discussions with her handmaidens have suggested that she may consider all forms of life other than plants and perhaps insects to be an aberration, a temporary infestation on the mortal world that will eventually disappear. Until then, however, she revels in seeing how life expresses itself in uncountable different ways. Her touch is known to change and alter life to create new shapes, new expressions of the life force. She is a creature of chaos, and while she is sometimes savage she prefers to promote life and growth - often without any consideration as to how that will effect other living creatures.

While she is not specifically malicious, she is also entirely without mercy and her concerns are often quite alien to mortals. Her interests in the Empire appear to generally be quite limited, beyond her somewhat detached interest in all living things. Some magicians have noted, however, that she appears to look favourably on those who bring her gifts of plants she has not encountered before, or who bring children into the presence of her handmaidens. For the most part, though, she is known to view the Empire as an enemy of growth and change - that its stranglehold on the natural world demonstrates that it does not understand the true state of the world. Ultimately, Yaw'nagrah would prefer humans and orcs to live more like animals than civilised folks, to abandon their farms and towns and roads and embrace the chaos of the wild like any other animals.

In recent years it has become apparent that Yaw'nagrah favours the spread of the vallorn. While she is by no means responsible for the doom that destroyed Terunael, she seems to see its uncontrollable growth and transformative energies as preferable to the stagnation of the Empire. She was placed under the enmity of the Imperial Conclave in late 380YE, apparently due to evidence regarding an attempt to rouse the Therunin vallorn that lead to the destruction of the steading of Return. She would later support the treacherous Heirs of Terunael in their efforts to awaken all the vallorn. While they were ultimately defeated, Yaw'nagrah was unrepentant.

Yaw'nagrah is occasionally called Mother of Briars or Barkspawner and some old stories tentatively link her with the foundation of the briar lineage. Her handmaidens have never offered conclusive proof one way or another, and according to many magicians appear not to understand the question - although it cannot be denied that Yaw'nagrah and her handmaidens respond more favourably to those with briar lineage than to other humans. She is also believed to favour orcs over humans - on occasion her handmaidens have spoken of the fact that orcs are more "aware of themselves" - although what that means is not clear.

She is strongly associated with the rune Bravash.

Boons

Magicians seek out Yaw'nagrah because she has powerful abilities related to fertility in all forms. She has been known to help those who could not otherwise conceive offspring to do so, although these offspring may show odd signs of the magic that gave them life. She is also able to help magicians to restore fertility to blighted crops or beasts, as well as to encourage fecundity over large areas - potentially to a dangerous degree. There is some circumstantial evidence that she helped Imperial magicians to create the Thunderous Tread of the Trees ritual, providing access to the spirits required to rouse the trees, and is known to offer boons to support its performance. She is likely responsible for the facility the orcs of the Mallum demonstrate with this powerful curse.

Concerned as she is with growth and life, she can also offer boons to those who grow and harvest living things - owners of farms, forests and occasionally herb gardens as well. Such boons are almost always influenced by the powerful resonance of chaos that runs through her being. While a farm or a forest may become fecund, it often produces unexpected crops. Strangely coloured fruit, odd flowers, herd animals with peculiar additional qualities. These products are generally no less wholesome than any other, but their strangeness can be pronounced and make people cautious about consuming them.

Donahorti

Among her bounty, her most common gifts take the form of the donahorti, a cornucopia of magically infused fruits of the forest. The Primal Forest is a wellspring of wonderful plants and beasts, and those that dwell in the vast demesne of the Great Gardener are said to be the most magical and variable of all. Taking the form of juice, fruit, sap, bark, or other natural substances, these boons are often referred to as donahorti. The term comes from the old Asavean name for the boons of Yaw'nagrah used by scholars of Spring Magic - the donahorti mirabilis, or the Marvellous Gifts of the Garden. The donahorti are similar to potions in some regards, and generally used in the same way.These boons come in a myriad of different shapes and flavours, but they always take the form of natural substances - fruit, juice, sap, flakes of moss, shavings of bark, shredded leaves and so on. Some of the more common donahorti include:

• Milksap: a milky white liquid with an intensely sweet, floral scent that provides similar benefits to warm honey when smeared on the face and palms, but has unpleasent effects on anyone who accidentally drinks it.
• Glomsbark: shavings of bark and moss that can be used to empower many Spring enchantments, providing both a little mana toward their casting but also empowering a magician familiar with Spring lore to work such enchantments more easily.
• Ornsap: a dark red juice with the consistency of blood that provides a great boost to physical stamina and fortitude.
• Mornsalve: a thick light-green sap that treats many ailments of the body.
• Thornsting: a vicious waxy honey-like substance that inflames violence and grants combat prowess.
• Queensleaf: oddly shaped leaves that when crushed and the juice applied to the wrists and throat grants magical healers a reserve of inner power.
• Sallamoss: a kind of moss that heartens the body and is particularly effective when used by briars (and in sufficient quantity can sometimes cause someone to take on briar lineage).
• Magepetals: which come in a variety of forms and various colours, each variety providing additional facility when performing certain kinds of Spring ritual depending on their shade
• Sunfoil: a unique flowering herb that possesses all the qualities of those herbs familiar to herbalists and apothecaries.

There are also many kinds of other donahorti which are rarer or less easily identifiable. Regardless, all these boons come from Yaw'nagrah. Any ritual magic devised to deal with them (such as prompting their growth in a farm, or trying to make more of them with an effect like Churning Cauldron of Bravash) would require her direct support.