Title: The Stillborn Season
Domains: Stagnation, Barrenness
Creators: Vorthar and Zoroth
Pantheon: The Nyx
Description
Thryr, the God of Endless Winter, is the frost that refuses to thaw, the silence of snow that muffles all growth, and the hunger that gnaws when harvests fail to come. Born from Vorthar, the Dark Weaver’s desire to halt the natural order and Zoroth, the Hollow Prince’s understanding of barren voids, Thryr is known as The Stillborn Season, a deity who embodies winter not as part of nature’s cycle, but as its cruel end.
He appears as a figure forever trapped within a shell of ice that never melts, his form visible through the frozen surface like a corpse preserved in crystal. His breath creates clouds that never dissipate, and where he walks, the ground hardens into permafrost that kills the roots of even the hardiest plants. His eyes are the pale blue of winter skies that promise snow but no warmth, and his crown is wrought from icicles that grow longer with each passing moment but never fall.
Around him, the air grows not just cold, but still—devoid of the movement that brings change, renewal, or hope. His presence turns winter from a season of rest into a season of waiting that never ends.
His voice is the crack of ice under pressure, the whistle of wind through barren branches, and the silence that follows when even the winter birds have fled.
Followers
Thryr’s followers are those who have lost faith in renewal and find comfort in the certainty of unchanging cold. The Frost Bound are farmers whose lands have failed year after year, rulers whose kingdoms face eternal winters, and refugees from places where spring simply stopped coming.
His most devoted servants are the Barren Wardens—individuals who tend to places where nothing grows, maintaining the sterile perfection of endless winter. They include caretakers of frozen wastelands, scholars who study failed civilizations, and hermits who have retreated from the world’s cycles of change.
Unlike other dark gods, many of Thryr’s followers worship him not out of malice but from exhaustion—those who have grown weary of hoping for spring, for growth, for things to get better. They find a cold peace in accepting that some winters never end.
Rituals and Offerings
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The Harvest That Never Was: Performed during what should be planting season, followers bury seeds in frozen ground while reciting the names of crops that will never grow, honoring the beauty of unfulfilled potential.
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The Stillness Ceremony: Devotees gather in the coldest places they can find and remain motionless for hours, mimicking the stagnation Thryr represents. The ritual ends only when at least one participant shows signs of frostbite.
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Offerings: Seeds preserved in ice so they can never sprout, the last embers of fires that will not be rekindled, tools meant for spring planting that rust unused, and the preserved breath of the dying spoken into vessels that are then sealed and frozen.
Sigils and Symbols
Thryr’s symbol is a bare tree encased in ice, with roots and branches that mirror each other in perfect, sterile symmetry. Sometimes it appears as a clock with hands frozen at winter’s deepest hour, or as a seed trapped forever in a crystal of ice. His sigils are carved into surfaces that remain perpetually cold—carved into glacier faces, etched into the windows of abandoned homes, or worked into patterns of frost that never melt.
Additional Details
The Ever-Cold, those touched by Thryr’s influence, find that their body temperature runs lower than normal and they can survive in harsh winter conditions that would kill others. However, they also become unable to truly feel warmth—even standing by the hottest fire brings them no comfort, and they often develop an aversion to change of any kind.
Thryr teaches that the natural cycles of growth and decay are false promises—that the only honest season is winter, which makes no pretense about the harshness of existence. To him, spring is a lie that gives false hope, summer is an illusion of prosperity that always ends, and autumn is merely the world’s admission that winter was always waiting.
He whispers to the despairing that their suffering has a purpose in its permanence, to the hungry that wanting less is easier than achieving more, and to the hopeful that disappointment is inevitable—so why not embrace the certainty of winter’s truth?
His greatest victory is not the blizzard that kills in a single night, but the gradual resignation of those who stop lighting fires, stop planting seeds, and stop believing that winter will ever end.