Lore Drop: The Tempest Touch of the Va'Orodin

Setting: Io (all ages)

Legacies carry weight in the expansive timeline of Io.  A name can be earned, or stolen, or bound, or lost, and all carry a legacy of rich history and meaning.  Much like the etymology of language, a name's path and purpose can change given their circumstances; heroes become villains, tyrants become priests, and thieves become nobles.
  Yet these developments benefit most from a structured timeline.  Instances and events of momentous growth and change powered by the metaphorical jet engine of past transgressions.  There is a line to follow in this madness.  

But.

What if the line were broken?  What if your name, your legacy, was taken from you; displaced somehow?  Without the benefit of a past to learn from, what new future does a creature forge?
  In today's Lore Drop, on November's theme of Legacy Names, let's take a look at one of the most curious of NPCs - the Va'Orodin.

The Storm-Touched

Temporal imbalance in magic and arcanum is a running theme across every Age of Io, but in no other age was it felt more than at the turn of the 4th Age.  The event that triggered the turn was the manipulation of an Ancient called the Riftskin - a terrifying creature made up of an endless cloud of indestructible, semi-sentient spikes - who tore through both the Infinite Battlefields of Acheron and the Plane of Water, flooding the Material Plane with volatile surges of magic and gigantic aquatic beasts.  The event would usher in an age of steampunk piracy and expand the world and its industry, laying the groundwork for the sky ships of Cloudsinger...and their eventual fall.
  But this surge of the untapped Aether sent ripples across the Feywild and Shadowfell, their oceans and tides rising to match their Material parallel, and with them, a torrent of storm fronts buffeted the once forgotten continents at the edges of the world.  These storms, though, were special.  Echoes of the tears - tattered remnants of the veils between worlds - these screaming tempests were gateways to other planes of existence, and, for some, a path across time.  
  The Loremasters of Io-Shar began documenting reports of expeditions to the far continents whose fleets were set upon by these temporal storms.  Entire sections of ships struck by strange purple lightning; but the wood, cannons, and occupants were not destroyed...they were taken.  Chunks of cities missing.  Mountains and forests with impossible, gaping holes in their geography, only to be discovered hundreds of years later in Elysium or Pandemonium.
  Collected in their archives were also minute entries, many tens to hundreds of years apart, of individuals seemingly displaced by these storms.  Their stories are always the same; a thunderclap, a vision in the clouds, a flash, and now they are here.  Most do not remember their past lives, but carry knowledge of past ages and their history, general and specific, and when asked their names, they can repeat them, save for one curious addition: first names are recalled perfectly, but each surname is precisely the same - "Va'Orodin."
  Originally believed to an ancient, shared lineage across multiple races, the Loremasters of Empyr - the 5th Age - derived through their studies alongside the tribes of Air Elementals and the Skyborn Aarakocran that this name carried great power.  In fact, its utterance was once a word of power among the Auran people.  Roughly, it translates to "Storm-Touched."

Entities Out Of Time

In every Age of Io, a Va'Orodin has crossed the paths of the dozens of heroes ignited by furious purpose, but few gave their names.  Of the ones that did, even fewer stuck around.  
  Io-Shar: Ja'Naya Va'Orodin was discovered by a pirate crew under the leadership of a stalwart lizardfolk (Ricin) and a grumpy elf (Grim).  Ja'Naya was fiercely loyal to Captain Grim, devoting her life to his cause of vengeance and dominance over the flooded world.  An adept cleric of some ancient neutral angel, Ja'Naya entered hailed from Io-Sooth, the 2nd Age, and carried with her a terrible sacrifice.  The first keeper of the legendary Sunraker Gauntlet, she was surprised to find that when she would remove the item from her arm, her skin and muscle came with it.  At some point in her past life, she willingly or unwillingly traded the flesh of her right arm for a legendary item.  Whatever the case, though, the Gauntlet would leave her body at her passing nearly 20 years later, and serve the Valenwood family for nearly 100 years before passing into Loremaster care.
  Io-Ren / Io-Shar: Once a cleric of Istus, the deity of fate and chance, Straiga Va'Orodin was undeterred by his displacement.  An adept tactician and pole arm master, this red trifling would find rewarding work among others like him - the lost and forgotten.  He found this home through the mercenary band known as the Knight Owls, and would rise through its ranks to command his own team in the 4th Age (Knight Owls - Season 3).
   Io-Shar (Feywild): Yasha Va'Orodin is a creature of subtle, athletic frame, and stalwart reserve.  She is one of the Gatekeepers of the nexus city of Astrazalian.  Where and when she came from, no one really knows, but she holds great respect for the Fey Court, especially Lady Winter Sarissa.  Perhaps we'll see more of her...perhaps not.

Stormsinger

In the sky battles of Cloudsinger, during the 5th Age known as Empyr, the Va'Orodin of this age would find a dread purpose to follow.  Once called The Smoking Banners, a coup within the ranks of this pirate legion would repurpose its resources to chase the temporal storms that ravaged the surface of the Material Plane.  These "Stormsingers" would ride the dark lightning currents and attempt to harness the tears between worlds, trying to shift planes with their ships.  Some sought conquest, while others yearned for the astral frontier.  Many...just wanted to go home.  And many, failed and died.
  But one, a charismatic swashbuckler named Gideon Briarios (Va'Orodin), with his fleet of Singing Hammers, found the gateway to Elysium this way.  In fact, it was the event that ushered in the 5th Age, when he broke the coveted Seal Of Heaven, and ignited the dormant World Engines in the First Cities of Io-Temm (the 1st Age).  It was this event that lifted the old civilizations into the clouds and awakened the dragon lords to reclaim the sky.  It is his song that the bards sing when they sing of Stormsingers, and it his banner they rally behind.

Flames Of A Second Chance

And what say the Raven Queen, the one who holds memory and time and antiquity aloft to the thousands of souls that pass her bastion in the planes of shadow?  Or the Angels of the Sunrake?  Or the Valkyrum of the Evernight?  Powerful overlords and dissonant factions pull a curious lens over those in ages without belonging, so what purpose awaits creatures like this?

Well.

This old Loremaster is pulled to consider instead the Equation of Potential.  As long-lived as I am, I know not everything, nor did my past lives, but if you'll humor a fellow ancient for a moment, we may yet find common ground.  There are many across the Ages whose actions have sent ripples unknown; great things, terrible things, powerful things.  All without knowledge of the future.  Yet, we know there to be entities whose intelligence and memory are ageless; the mere concept of our mortality is a single drop in the river of their understanding.  Perhaps, say, they drop a pebble into that river.  Each ripple is a lifetime, and three lifetimes over, a ripple shifts a stone ever so slightly, and the river flows a different direction.  Such a tiny act can have a tremendous impact.  And if that pebble had free will?  Yes, I think we understand each other.
  So are the Storm-Touched spilled by design of some great entity, or are their fateful tempests random?  This one knows not.  Only time will tell.

Safe travels, Stormsinger.
-Loremaster Arteza Rainmaker