Sorin

Eternal of Winter

Sobriquets

Most commonly, Sorin is called the Hungry Wolf.

He is also known as the Tomb King, the Empty One and sometimes as Devourer-of-Hope. among the Icewalkers of Wintermark he is called the Hunger-Crow.

He is occasionally called Father of Draughir or Master of Whelps although these names have more to do with his association with cruel strength and mastery over suffering than with any biological connection to the Draughir.

Appearance

This Winter Eternal appears as a deathly pale, emaciated man dressed in tattered funereal finery, often with a furred mantle and often in the Highborn stye. He usually wears a crown of fingerbones, or carries a rod made from bones wired together with weltsilver and tipped with dragonbone - the trappings of a heathen king. These trappings are reflected in his demeanour - he expects to be treated as if he were a royal sovereign and has little patience for familiarity or disrespect.

He inhabits a sand-choked wasteland, sometimes called the Silent Kingdom. He rules this empty demesne from a palace of black basalt and polished bone that stands at the heart of a nameless necropolis city. His realm is scattered with tombs, mausoleums, burial mounds and memorial stones from all know nations of the world, and many more beside.

Concerns

Sorin is an Eternal of hunger and thirst. He represents physical lack of sustenance, but is much more interested in the way that privation and suffering build strength. He is cruel, but not needlessly so - he does not encourage others to be cruel for the sake of it, but to allow them to survive and gain strength. If he were asked, he would say that he is cruel, because the world is cruel.

He is fascinated by terrible choices and no-win situations. Deep moral and ethical dilemmas, and their resolution, are as interesting to him as more straightforward challenges. He constantly asks whether the ends justify the means, probing those he deals with to expose any hypocricy. He never judges, however; he simply forces people to confront their own failings and weakness whenever he can. Sorin is not above manufacturing situations where individuals or groups will be forced to make difficult decisions. He is sometimes seen as a dark mirror of the Summer Eternal Barien, an idea that he finds amusing (up to a point).

The Wolf of Winter has no patience for opinions or beliefs. He deals in hard facts as gathered through actual sitautions. One of the most dangerous things for a mortal to do when dealing with Sorin is to put forward a belief about themselves that has not been tested - the Tomb King sometimes sees it as an open invitation to create a situation where their belief will be tested, almost invariably with terrible, tragic results. "People believe that they can withstand adversity, but until they are confronted with it, belief is all it is. Until you are tested, you cannot know for sure that the morality you profess is true, only that you believe it to be true. Belief blinds more people than it enlightens; it binds more people than it liberates."

He is strongly associated with the rune Naeve and, paradoxically, occasionally with Verys, the rune of strength.

Boons

The hungry wolf fosters and encourages strength, but only the strength that comes from abandoning weakness. He encourages the ambitious to embrace expediency in pursuit of their goals.

"You cannot eat hope, nor drink it, nor shelter in it from the gaze of the noonday sun, nor warm yourself with it when the night is dark and the snow falls. You cannot strangle a murderer with pride, nor free yourself from shackles of despair with love, nor defend your walls with mercy, nor find your way across the wasteland with compassion."