Tears of Tyar

Gwanath (g-WAH-nah-th) and Gwanu (g-WAH-new) are two figures heavily associated with death and their story is nearly universal among all elves, as they represent the foundational concept of death.

The twins were born of Nylva, though the story of their paternal origin has been lost to time, or was never made known to the mortal races at all. Despite their mother’s evil, the twins never took such a dark path. In fact, they distanced themselves from her evil ways almost entirely. When Vilsya reached out, offering them a place in the heavens with the rest of the pantheon, the twins also shunned her light and goodness. Upon seeing not only the neutrality of the twins, but the balance they struck between Gwanath’s preference for an orderly, lawful existence and Gwanu’s somewhat more chaotic, flexible existence, the pantheon granted them domain over the dead.

For most of Tyar’s existence, the twins were a force apart from the rest of their pantheon, rarely meddling in political affairs and avoiding working directly with their kin. They presided over the line between life and death, and it was from them that most other gods had to retrieve the souls of those they wished to be resurrected. Because this usually involves a bargain, it is not always successful, and occasionally the twins would bar the way in to the afterlife to that other god, refusing them the ability to retrieve their desired souls.

Nylva managed to free herself from the Shadowfel, lashing out at the other gods with a rare, powerful, and dangerous power born of blood manipulation and sacrifice, the twins finally abandoned their neutral stance and took a stand against their mother, meeting her blood magic with their own. Though they refused to end her existence as Haelmir wished them to, they used her blood to bind her to the Shadowfel, tethering her to the plane to ensure she could not escape again. This was called The Binding.

After the The Binding, Gwanath once more took up her post at the gates to the realm of the dead, while Gwanu returned to collecting and ferrying souls from the world of the living to his sister. The twins often provide counsel to the other gods, presenting as close to an unbiased view and judgement they can on issues they are unable to resolve amongst themselves.

Despite the binding of Nylva, the twins are not hated by most dark elves. While other elves tend to think she was bound as punishment, the dark elves believe the twins did it to save Nylva from the other gods.

In depictions, the twins are a pair of androgynous, placid looking elves and can only be told apart by studying the images closely. They are always seen as a pair, though are rarely in physical contact with each other. Dark elf imagery of the elves often depict them as dark skinned like their mother, while surface elves tend to give their skin a ghostly white pallor.