Samyassa

One of the more curious powers that wanders, unknown to most, the wild places of the Land of Three Empires is Samyassa, the Fallen Angel.  It is unknown exactly what his story is, and he tells very little of it to the few he will speak with.  But what little lore that is said about him suggests that he was the leader of an entire host of Watchers, who lived in a City of Gold in heaven (see the Unmoving Watchers post on the A to Z tab.)

Supposedly, he lusted after mortal women many eons ago.  Descending from heaven with 200 of the Watchers, he spent his time in riotous living with them.  Seduced by their beauty, these Watchers taught the early humans the basics of civilization: weapon-making, building-making... and magic.  It was this last, in particular, that threatened the City of Gold and its angelic inhabitants, as well as all of the other civilizations of non-humans in the Near Realms.

War threatened the City of Gold, as other Near Realms found themselves suddenly potentially threatened by humanity, and angels were revealed to be the source of the threat.  Although Samyassa and his fallen Watchers were renegades, and not representative of the angels overall, the entire City of Gold was blamed for the affair, and the angels went to war against the sylphs and genies of the City of Silver.

As a result of this, Samyassa remains an exile, and there is, in fact, a death warrant on his head if he were to encounter any angel today.

However, that is not the only story of Samyassa and his origin.  Some scholars, in fact, dispute that the Cities of Gold, Silver and Brass are actual places at all.  According to these scholars, Samyassa is instead an exile from Kadath, the dark city that overlooks the sinister Plateau of Leng.  The Great Ones of Kadath are beings like Samyassa himself, sometimes called angels by the ignorant.  Designed to protect The Gate from encroachment of things from the Realms Beyond, Kadath is their stewardship and also their prison.

Samyassa's exile from Kadath, in this theory, is mysterious, although notions of temptation of human women remain strong as a character trait associated with Samyassa regardless of anyone's interpretation of him.  Some darkly whisper that Kefte Taraan, of the Heresiarchy of the Twelve, is the original woman who tempted him to abandon his duty, and that if it can be found at all, it is with her. (They fail to mention that finding Kefte Taraan is just as difficult a prospect as finding Samyassa, since the Heresiarchy are at least semi-legendary themselves.)

The scholar Bertran Montcado of the Universitat in Terassa favors this second interpretation, and even claims to have seen Samyassa--from a distance--while on an archeological dig in the Untash grasslands.  He has theorized that Kefte Taraan, despite her Hamazi-sounding name, might originally have been a princess of Kinzassál.