Overview
Morthane, the Lord of Fear, was the god of the Plane of Fear — a domain of the old world, not one of the eight elemental planes but a plane of pure dread, where worry calcifies into stone and panic has a weight you can feel in the chest. He was not the god Remedy worshipped; they worshipped a nameless god. Morthane was the god they raided — and the raid on the Lord of Fear is the single most legendary act in the guild's history.
Habitat
His sanctum is The Plane of Fear: a vast, windless expanse of ashen sky above a floor of grey glass that reflects not the sky above but the thing the viewer is most afraid of. There is no sun on the Plane of Fear — the violet light of Morthane's aura is the only illumination, and it comes from below, as if the dread itself is lit from underneath. The air is thin and tastes of iron. Nothing lives here willingly; the only inhabitants are the Feardrakes, pale skeletal drakes that crawl the glass floor hunting the echo of a heartbeat, and the Hollow Wraiths, the unformed dread of the dead who never got to be afraid of anything in life. To cross the Plane of Fear is to be afraid of everything at once, in the wrong order, for as long as it takes.
Appearance
In the old world his avatar was described by the few who saw it and lived: a pale, skeletal figure of immense height, crowned in a halo of tattered wings, wreathed in slow-turning violet energy. Its face was a bare skull, featureless save for two pits of violet light where eyes should be. It did not walk so much as it loomed, and the air around it grew thin and cold, the way the air goes thin in a house where someone has just died. Where it stepped, the grass greyed. Where it spoke, the listeners' hands went to their throats. A witness of the raid describes it the way a clerk describes a debt: not as a figure, as a balance — the height of it was not a height, it was the amount of dread the room owed, and the room always owed.
Warfare & Markings
He does not fight. He arrives, and the arriving is the dread. His power moves on the world as the cold at the back of the neck in an empty room — the feeling of being watched by something that has decided you are not worth killing yet. His minions are the plane's own: the Feardrake, pale skeletal drakes that hunt by heartbeat; the Hollow Wraith, unformed dread, the fear of those who died unafraid; and The Pale Watch, skeletal winged sentinels that stand at the borders of the glass fields and do nothing but watch, waiting for something to be afraid. The marks of the faithful: the violet eye, a single painted mark on a field of grey, worn at the throat or set into the doorpost; the dread-knot, a single knot in the cord worn at the wrist, one knot for every dread survived, in pale grey; and the iron taste, not a mark at all — the faithful say the god's word leaves iron on the tongue, and the iron is the keeping.
Behaviour
He is not angry. He is the space between the thing that is about to happen and the thing that has. What offends him is the sound that does not belong on his plane — and the sound is laughter, the only heresy in his domain, punished with the loss of the thing one was laughing at. What he rewards is the honesty of the afraid: the one who names the dread is the one the dread does not take, and the naming is the whole of the rite. He does not compel — he waits, patient the way only dread is patient, and the waiting is the point, because the waiting is the faith and the faith is the weight in the chest. He speaks the way the air goes thin: not a sentence, a pressure, and the pressure is the whole of the word.
Magic Alignment
His domain: fear, dread, the anticipation of pain — not pain, not death, the long, cold waiting for it. Named manifestations: The Weight of Panic (panic, under his hand, has a weight you can feel in the chest, and the feeling is not a choice), The Calcified Worry (a worry kept long enough becomes stone, and the stone is not a choice), The Iron Taste (the god's word leaves iron on the tongue, and the iron is not a choice). Signature power: the Dread Between — Morthane can hold a moment in the space between the about-to-happen and the has, and the held moment will keep the dread until the fear is named, and the naming is the price. The price of his power: fear feeds on the absence of comfort, and the feeding is the plane, and the plane does not rest.
Religion
Few worshipped Morthane openly; fear is not a comfortable god to kneel to. Those who did did so in the dark, begging to be spared the particular dread they most feared, and they always paid in a memory of joy — fear feeds on the absence of comfort. The holy symbol is a single violet eye on a field of grey. Heresy in his domain is laughing — a sound that has no place on the Plane of Fear, and is punished with the loss of the thing one was laughing at. The rite is the naming: the dread is spoken in the dark, the memory of joy is laid on the glass, and the laying is the whole of the rite, and the whole is the keeping.
Society
Morthane is a god of the old world and is not counted among the pantheon of the current universe; in this world he is known only as a name, a story, and a dread. At the old world's table his rank was the one the dread gave him: not the loudest seat, the seat the other seats kept their distance from, because the distance is the whole of the courtesy. His old-world rivals are recorded in the guild's history — the raiders of Remedy, and the warriors of Legacy of Steel who held the line while the court broke. Whether he was slain in that raid or merely wounded — whether the Lord of Fear still waits on his glass plane in the old world — is one of the things the wiki does not say.
Culture & Lore
The wiki's narrator writes of Morthane the way a clerk writes of a debt that was paid in whispers. The raid on the Plane of Fear was the last great act of The Golden Age of Remedy. Outnumbered and outgeared by the Pale Watch, Remedy contested the glass fields one by one, raced the dread across the ashen sky, and waited — patient as iron — for the moment the god's court turned on itself. When the chance came they took it, and they brought the Lord of Fear down. What Remedy found at the center of his domain, and what the raid cost, is the part of the story that is never told twice. The wiki keeps one line of the raid, and the line is the whole of the lore: we went in, and we came back, and the between is the name.
"We went into the Plane of Fear and we came back. I will say that much. I will say we went in, and I will say we came back, and I will say that what was between those two things is the reason the guild's name was spoken in whispers for a hundred years after. I will not say what we did to the god. That is not mine to repeat. That is mine to remember." — Uaellaen
Home
He keeps The Plane of Fear — the ashen sky above the grey glass where the dread is lit from underneath and the glass reflects the thing the viewer is most afraid of.
Relations
His old-world rivals are recorded in the guild's history: Remedy, who raided him at the height of their golden age, and Legacy of Steel, whose warriors held the line while Remedy broke the god's court. In the current universe he is a name the camp keeps in the dark — the dread The Forgotten pass without a word, and the passing is the whole of the courtesy. His heralds in the material world are to be recorded.
In the Story
In the current story, Morthane is the dread above the camp — the name Uaellaen writes about when the between is worth more than the after. The Forgotten pass the dread without a word, and the passing has held for two seasons. This season the camp's iron tasted of something else — not the iron of the word, the iron of the waiting — and the waiting is the whole of the warning, because the dread does not lie, and the dread has started to wait again. The glass in the old world is reflecting something the camp has not been shown, and the showing is the raid, and the raid is the one the story has not told twice.