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 comely humanoids, 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 or spores

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 [{Spring magic#Chaos|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 it's 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 it's 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 ultimated defeated, Yaw'nagrah was unrepentant.

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 allow barren females to conceive; to cause female creatures to become with child without a partner. She is said to be able to provide offspring to childless couples, although these offspring are not always entirely human. 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.

Some tales suggest that the fertility she offers is tainted in some way by her fascination with diversity; that while barren soil may become capable of supporting crops, it is impossible to predict what else may grow from the things she has touched ...