VEYLBORN

Collected accounts of the luminous visitors called Veylborn: their appearances, the help attributed to them, and the questions they leave behind. These notes preserve what travellers, healers and keepers of libraries have witnessed, together with the traditions by which Aethorians try to understand them.

Concerning the Veil and Its Visitors

Across Aethoria, people speak of figures who appear in light, answer a need, and fade before their listeners have finished asking questions. We call them Veylborn. A healer may welcome one as an old companion, a sailor offer thanks, and a scholar spend the next month deciding whether the encounter was recorded correctly.

The name recalls the Veil, the unseen boundary that tradition places between our world and theirs. Some describe a country beyond it; others a spiritual presence within the land. I use the word here as our inherited name for a mystery. The accounts offer glimpses, voices and effects upon the world, while leaving the country of their origin concealed.

Appearance and the Difficulty of Looking

Witnesses commonly describe pale, golden, blue or greenish light taking a roughly human shape. The outline may sharpen for a moment, lose an arm or its lower half, and gather together again. Some figures drift above the ground; others appear beside a listener without any visible passage across the intervening space.

The resemblance to a person can be striking, yet attempts to examine the figure closely often end in confusion. Eyes seem to look through the observer, gestures continue toward an empty corner, and a voice may remain after the shape has faded. An incomplete view is easily mistaken for a complete description.

Crystals, Trees and Places of Encounter

Many reports associate appearances with charged crystals, aethoria trees, ancient shrines and the workings of old towers. Healers in the Virielia Bloomlands speak of the attraction of Veylborn to plants and crystals. In Luminary Prime, the Library of the Astryx Arcanum preserves traditions of visitors among its guarded collections and great living tree.

Kefar’s crystals and the installations in the Alfadin Mountains likewise draw the attention of those collecting such accounts. A crystal may brighten, vibrate or lose its charge near an appearance. These observations suggest that available power matters, though an abundance of it can accompany distress as readily as a clearer presence.

Rintaron relates that Gertina appears when help is needed and energy is available, and that she speaks of borrowing rather than creating power. At Alfadin, an excessive pulse disturbed her. Among overgrown plants elsewhere, her light has accompanied striking changes in roots and leaves. Such accounts deserve comparison before we settle upon a single explanation.

Speech, Attention and Memory

A Veylborn may understand an ordinary request and answer with words that leave every listener bewildered. Sentences break apart, voices change pitch, and familiar terms arrive in unfamiliar combinations. Reports from tower chambers also describe a voice and a gesture arriving out of step with one another.

Some witnesses believe these visitors perceive events beyond the present moment. Others suspect that we hear only fragments of a longer conversation. A remark that seems prophetic may be a warning drawn from signs we missed; a seemingly irrelevant answer may belong to a question the speaker thought we had asked. I record the words as carefully as the circumstances allow.

Companionship and Invocation

Lasting companionship is possible. Rintaron has travelled with Gertina for years, and knows habits that a passing observer would overlook. Such familiarity offers no simple rule for commanding an appearance. Even an old companion can become distant, distressed or unable to remain visible.

Invocations are taught in several traditions. Their success varies: a call may go unanswered in training and receive a sudden response in danger. During one reported appeal to Dorlita, a blue crystal cracked and dissolved into light before a woman appeared. The incident gives reason to handle such attempts with care.

Assistance and Its Limits

The named visitors are remembered for useful acts: guiding a healer, quieting frightened beasts, attending plants, preserving a text or helping a traveller find something lost. These associations give our entries their familiar titles. They are the work by which a visitor is known among us, rather than a complete account of that visitor’s nature.

Library tradition sometimes names Master Minz among the enduring keepers associated with the Veylborn. Accounts of long service, unusual appearance and a visitor’s resemblance to a mortal should be preserved with their circumstances. A name repeated through generations may carry more than one interpretation.

Fading and Return

The loss of an appearance troubles those who have come to depend upon it. A figure may flicker, break into sparks or vanish during a disturbance, then be reported again at a distant site. The disappearance alone tells us little about the visitor’s fate.

For future scholars, I recommend recording the light of nearby crystals, changes in plants or animals, the visitor’s exact words, and the length of the encounter. A carefully kept account may become useful long after its writer has ceased trying to explain everything in it.

“Write what you witnessed; leave room for what you could not see.”

Named Visitors and Their Traditions

Te-an Poranti Tracia Deppyoa Despirita Oriona Alumina Dorlita Lyrelle Bisite Librus Florentia Gertina Heroa Larki Daemos

Te'an

A humming visitor associated with gentle suspension

Te’an is remembered for a soft hum heard as bodies or small objects rise from the ground. Those who describe the experience speak of lightness and a steady upward movement, often gentler than the sudden lifts produced by a hurried mage.

One witness’s phrase, “forgiven by gravity,” has found its way into several retellings. It captures the feeling better than it explains the cause. Observers would do well to note nearby crystals and whether the humming begins before the object moves.

Poranti

A healer’s guide to plants, tools and remedies

Poranti is remembered in healer traditions as a guide to the plants, tools and materials needed to preserve life. His name is associated with help offered at a desperate moment: a useful herb noticed, a remedy found, or the right implement placed within reach.

Those who seek his help describe brief gestures and quiet guidance rather than elaborate explanations. Attention is drawn to something easily overlooked, and the healer is left to gather, prepare and use it. An account of his assistance is best preserved with the remedy and the need that brought it to hand.

Tracia

A visitor remembered in sailors’ accounts of easing storms

Sailors invoke Tracia when violent weather threatens their passage. Their accounts associate a pale appearance with winds easing, troubled air settling and a storm losing some of its force.

The grateful crew usually remembers the relief more clearly than the sequence. A useful record would distinguish the moment of the appearance from the first change in wind or water. The tradition remains dear to those whose safety depends upon both.

Deppyoa

A visitor associated with lava, crystals and warnings of imbalance

Deppyoa is associated with blue lava and the disturbances surrounding volcanic flows. Travellers at Ruodoon described a translucent man appearing among the branches of an aethoria tree, where he spoke of the crystal beneath it receiving excessive energy.

He warned of an imbalance between the earth, the crystal and its former caretakers. His explanation contained terms that the listeners could repeat more readily than understand. Before their questions were settled, he vanished among the branches, and further calls brought no answer.

Such warnings have strengthened his reputation among those who study volcanic lands. Whether he foresees a disturbance or recognises its early signs, his attention seems directed toward movements beneath our feet that ordinary observers struggle to detect.

Despirita

A visitor remembered through colour, images and painted memory

Town and village traditions describe Despirita as an artist whose appearance accompanies vivid colours and images of remembered scenes. Murals attributed to her are treasured for the people and events they bring before later generations.

Some viewers recognise a place or discover a path in her imagery; others find only a powerful sense of remembrance. A librarian should preserve the image together with the accounts of those who recognised it, for familiarity and interpretation are easily confused.

Oriona

A name associated with the keeping of celestial records

Oriona is named in traditions concerning star records and their preservation. Keepers of the Astryx Arcanum associate her with the comparison of celestial positions and the ordering of old observations.

Seafarers, farmers and scholars have practical reasons to value an accurate sky record. The care attributed to Oriona belongs to this work. What she herself sees in the heavens remains a question best approached through the marks and observations left behind.

Alumina

A quiet adviser in the preparation of herbs and potions

Herbal brewers and potion-makers speak of Alumina appearing beside a difficult mixture. The assistance described is often small and precise: attention drawn to an ingredient, a pause before a dangerous addition, or a correction to the amount being used.

Such accounts have given her a reputation for balance and care. A preparation should still be tested and its proportions recorded; gratitude for an unexpected adviser is most useful when it leaves the next brewer a reliable recipe.

Dorlita

A luminous visitor whose presence calms frightened beasts

Dorlita is invoked by those seeking to quiet frightened or enraged animals. A recent account from the Solaryn lands describes her answering Blena’s appeal during a swarm of distressed scalebacks. A blue crystal cracked, released vapour and dissolved into light as a woman appeared.

She spoke softly in a language the witnesses could not identify. Nearby crystals vibrated, and her luminous hand passed close over a creature’s scales. Its head lowered, its tail became still, and the tension left its limbs.

Her form then loosened into pale gusts of light that moved through the streets. Other scalebacks slowed as the light passed, and soon she was gone. Those who say she speaks to beasts may have chosen a fitting description, though the beasts’ understanding of her words remains beyond ours.

Lyrelle

A scarcely seen visitor associated with water, leaves and song

Lyrelle is often remembered as a melody before she is remembered as a figure. Witnesses describe leaves stirring and water sounding over pebbles as though the two had joined in a single song. Her outline can be difficult to distinguish from the movement around her.

The accounts speak of beasts settling and angry listeners becoming quiet. Whether the calm follows her presence, the music, or some influence neither listener nor writer recognises, those who have heard it describe a welcome easing of the world’s agitation.

Bisite

A visitor remembered for timely warnings of danger

Bisite is credited with warnings given shortly before danger becomes apparent. Those helped by him sometimes say he sees a little way ahead of the rest of us, and the expression has become part of his reputation.

The warnings may concern signs too slight for ordinary attention, or something our senses fail to receive. Accounts offer no dependable means of choosing between those explanations. Requests for easy wealth seem to bring little satisfaction; the remembered interventions chiefly concern escaping harm.

Librus

A visitor associated with old scripts and guarded collections

Librus is named by keepers who work with ancient scripts, difficult symbols and damaged texts. Assistance attributed to him has helped preserve readings that might otherwise have been lost, and Master Minz is said to consult him in the Library of the Astryx Arcanum.

Accounts also associate his name with the guarded books of a Dark Tower in the Mechanum Ascendancy. These reports travel less freely than library traditions in Luminary Prime. I preserve the association as it is told, while leaving the tower’s keepers to speak for their own collections.

Florentia

A visitor remembered for tending small and wounded creatures

Florentia is associated with patient care for injured animals and even the smallest insects. Accounts describe her attending a damaged limb or remaining beside a wounded creature while its condition improves.

Her shape is said to become unusually clear during such care, then fade soon afterwards. Some keepers of the tradition place the earliest healing accounts after the Great Sundering. That dating has encouraged guesses about her age, though the first surviving account can tell us more about our records than about the beginning of her life.

Gertina

A healer’s companion associated with roots, leaves and troubled growth

Gertina is known among gardeners, arborists and earth mages for her attention to living plants. Rintaron, a travelling healer, has kept her company for years and describes receiving guidance when help is needed and crystals are available. Her visits remain unpredictable even to him.

At Alfadin Tower she flickered in obvious distress, repeatedly urging that excessive power be stopped. At the Helios Spire she appeared among the machinery and overgrown plants, sometimes showing only part of her body. Her words broke into fragments while sparks passed between her hands and nearby leaves.

Accounts from the Medics’ Gardens describe her light accompanying changes in roots and vines. Harmful growth loosened, leaves folded inward and water began to flow through the garden channels again. She also formed luminous images of seeds for the observers to examine.

One explanation she offered has particularly troubled those who heard it: a sphere passing through a flat world would appear first as a point, then a widening and shrinking circle. I record the comparison as an image she chose for their benefit. Its relation to her incomplete appearance remains difficult to grasp.

Her continuing attention to plants, people and questions gives those who know her reason to welcome her return. An absent limb, an unexpected disappearance or a broken sentence should be recorded carefully before the observer decides what any of them means.

Heroa

An elusive adviser associated with tools, weapons and old caches

Heroa is named in accounts from vaults, caves and stored collections of tools or weapons. Those who seek his help describe attention being drawn to an implement particularly suited to the work before them.

Calls for assistance receive uneven answers. The tradition holds that he responds more readily to a serious need than to the desire for a fine possession. Whatever prompts his attention, a useful record should name the task and the tool together.

Larki

An elder-looking visitor associated with recovering lost possessions

Larki is usually described as resembling an older Aethorian. Accounts credit her with helping to recover heirlooms, documents and other lost possessions, sometimes from places far beyond the owner’s search.

The assistance is most often reported soon after a loss. This has encouraged the custom of calling within the first few days, while the circumstances are still fresh. Scholars’ satchels feature rather prominently in the collected tales, which may tell us something about scholars as well as about Larki.

Daemos

A visitor associated with the disappearance and return of objects

Daemos with Zelnard — Daemos helps young Zelnard find a key

Daemos is remembered in accounts of an object disappearing from one place and being recovered in another. Requests described in these traditions name both the place where the item was left and the place where it is needed.

Witnesses generally describe the departure or the arrival, leaving the journey itself unseen. Some imagine that Daemos carries the object beyond the Veil; others speak of a hidden path. The account is best kept with the item’s identity, the two locations and the people present, so that a later reader can distinguish what was witnessed from what was supposed.

The Scholar’s Saying

Write what you witnessed; leave room for what you could not see. A name, a place, a change in the light, and a few carefully remembered words may outlast the grandest explanation of them.