Fragments from the Archives · College of Discernment
Blizzary Golan and the Devourer of Ages
The songs agree upon a victory. They do not agree upon what became of the defeated.
At the close of the Third Age, the Sproutling people faced the Devourer of Ages, an Accreter Queen whose threat passed into their oldest surviving songs. Blizzary Golan, soul-bound to an elemental of Stone, stood against her and defeated her. The victory was remembered as the vanquishing of the Accreter threat.
One festival tradition tells how the Stone King lured the Queen and her brood into a quarry and sealed them beneath earth, stone and crystal. Other accounts speak as though the enemy had been destroyed. The College preserves both claims. Neither the songs nor the later chronicles conclusively establish the Queen’s fate.
The victory made Blizzary a lasting figure of Sproutling identity. His memory is carried through the city’s stonework, its shrines and its royal ceremony. The stories are older than the present crown, and the reverence shown to him does not require that every detail of the songs be literal.
Cinnadew pastries, recipes attributed to Blizzary’s mother, grey-green cloth, chalk spirals and four-step dancing mark the celebration. A staged monster tale and a spiral of saved lamp-bug jars make the ancient victory visible to children. Even in wartime, the festival can be observed while the guards remain at their posts.
Some accounts call the Devourer slain; others speak of imprisonment. The later appearance of Accreters shows that the old belief in their permanent vanquishing was mistaken. It does not, by itself, prove that the Queen escaped, survived unchanged or was ever truly killed. The College’s judgement remains open.
A traditional festival song recorded in Lord Master. The verses recount the people’s fear, Golan’s pact with Stone and the sealing of the Devourer beneath the mountain. Like all songs, it preserves a telling of events rather than proof of their final outcome.
The barley blackened in the fields,
The wells ran thick with clay;
The queen who ate our fathers’ years
Was coming up the way.
Her children stripped the cattle bare,
Her shadow crossed the sun;
The Sproutlings barred their little doors,
But doors could stop not one.
Lay her low, lads, lay her low,
Where the roots of mountains grow!
Earth and stone and crystal bright—
Hold her fast and bar her tight!
Stamp your feet and let her know:
We’re still here above, below!
Now Golan had no golden crown,
No sword to split her hide;
He took his father’s quarry maul
And climbed the mountainside.
He struck three times upon the rock,
And something struck him back.
A voice as deep as winter said,
‘Who knocks upon my back?’
‘I’ve neither gold nor years to spare,
Nor meat to fill your bowl.
But stand beside my people now,
And you shall share my soul.’
The stone put out a granite hand;
He laid his own inside.
The mountain beat beneath his ribs,
And neither stood aside.
Lay her low, lads, lay her low,
Where the roots of mountains grow!
Earth and stone and crystal bright—
Hold her fast and bar her tight!
Stamp your feet and let her know:
We’re still here above, below!
He found her where the river died,
Among the picked-clean bones.
‘Come eat a king!’ cried Golan then,
And pelted her with stones.
She snapped her jaws upon his cloak;
He left it in her teeth,
And ran towards the quarry mouth—
The hollow hill beneath.
She followed with her thousand young;
Their claws uprooted trees.
He stood until her armoured head
Was level with his knees.
‘Now, brother, now!’ cried Golan then.
The quarry split in two.
The queen went down with half the hill;
Her brood went tumbling through.
Lay her low, lads, lay her low,
Where the roots of mountains grow!
Earth and stone and crystal bright—
Hold her fast and bar her tight!
Stamp your feet and let her know:
We’re still here above, below!
They packed the earth about her jaws
And stone across her breast;
They grew the crystal through the cracks
And pinned her claws to rest.
She heaved until the rivers jumped,
She screamed until they boiled;
But stone held fast and crystal gripped
Beneath the weight of soil.
They brought him bread upon a shield,
A crown of barley tied.
‘You’ll need a throne,’ the children said.
‘This rock will do,’ he cried.
And when they asked what kings should have,
He held his empty plate:
‘A second helping, if there’s some.
The crown’ll have to wait.’
Lay her low, lads, lay her low,
Where the roots of mountains grow!
Earth and stone and crystal bright—
Hold her fast and bar her tight!
Stamp your feet and let her know:
We’re still here above, below!
From the Festival of the Stone King, as preserved in Lord Master · S G Cushti