Kaela
Eternal of Winter
Sobriquets
Most commonly, Kaela is called the Lady of the Grim Host after the army of undying warriors she commands.
She is also known as the Sorrowful One, sometimes as End-of-Strength, sometimes as The Lady of Oblivion. among the Icewalkers of Wintermark she is called the Cold-Hearted; the Urizen stargazers refer to her as Dark-Between-The-Stars and say she despises and fears the Net of the Heavens; the Navarr call her Queen of Silence and say that she despises music and dance; and in The Marches she is called The Black Dog or (in whispers) The Black Bitch.
Appearance
This Winter Eternal appears either as a pale-skinned woman dressed in black armour, usually with a helmet crowned with the antlers of an elk and bearing a greataxe, or as an ancient crone dressed in dark-green and black with jewelry made from finger-bones. Traditionally she has appeared dressed as a Varushkan wise-one or boyar, but in recent decades she has taken to attire reminiscent of The Brass Coast or The League.
Kaela is never encountered alone; she is always accompanied by the warriors of her grim legion and by her undying attendants.
Concerns
Kaela exemplifies weakness, despair, old-age, senility and desperation. She takes no joy in these things, but presents them as simple, unquestionable facts. Everything fails. Everything dies. Everything falls apart. In the end, entropy wins.
It is not a matter of whether things will collapse, merely a matter of when. She respects those who strive to hold back the end ... as long as they accept that the end is inevitable, that there is no hope. Likewise she appreciates those who work to open the eyes of others to the essential futility of existence ... as long as they accept that their own actions are largely meaningless as well, in the long term. Optimists and priests alike tend to incur her cold wrath.
In Wintermark she is strongly associated with the rune Kyrop.
Boons
Kaela's gifts are sorrow, despair and weakness; very few people want them for themselves. She can also offer wisdom, but always at a price - usually blindness or crippling infirmity. Some scholars say this is proof that she is connected to The Thrice-cursed Court; others point out that what she offers is wisdom, not power and that while the two appear similar, in the Winter Realm they are poles apart.
Her greatest boon, and the one she is most often approached to provide, is release from the fear of death (for at least as long as Creation endures). She can take someone who is not dead, even if they hover on the very brink of death, and bring them to her hopeless Realm to live on for eternity as one of her undying warriors. Sometimes she allows magicians to invoke her grim legion to fight alongside living warriors, but this return to the mortal Realm is always short-lived, and is a cruel reminder of the light, life, colour and joy that can never be experienced in the domain of Kaela.
Kaela prefers to take warriors over civillians, but anyone who has fought and striven in life who wishes to avoid death at any cost may find a place in her sorrowful court. Very rarely, she will bring forth a specific member of her legions to speak to mortals, provided they can be invoked by name and is among the legion. It is entirely at her whim if she chooses to do so. She can even be prevailed upon to allow one of her legion to die, but she will certainly charge a high price for this 'gift'.
Many priests despise Kaela; they fear that she is trapping human souls, removing them from the cycle of reincarnation. The Imperial Synod has prevailed on the Imperial Conclave several times to declare her an enemy of the Empire. Some theologians speculate that the undying legions do not have souls at all; that the human dies, and their soul moves on to the Labyrinth, and that the grim warriors are merely memories of themselves, little more than husks animated by a particularly strong animus. Speculation is likely to continue, as Kaela herself has no interest in answering questions about souls; she is generally dismissive when challenged.
"But never forget that it is fleeting.
"Even if you manage to avoid violence, accident, pestilence ... even then you will age; you will decline; you will grow weak and infirm; your vision will dim, you will begin to forget; and then you will die. So will everyone you know and so will all your children down through all the ages until Creation itself gutters ... and goes out like a candle.
"So by all means, return to your home and raise your family, and strive to build a better world, and fight terrible wars for what you know is right and true; it gives one real hope for the whole future of Creation ... except, of course, we both know it has none."