Daz

North of Castle Tarengael (16.16) is a somewhat swampy stretch of river (18.14) inhabited by a clan of degenerate villagers known as the Daz. They are among the last remnants of a race that dwelled in these lands before the formation of Thring. It is said that the older they grow, the more the Daz take on a curiously flat appearance. Their necks fuse into their shoulders, they grow gills, and a poisonous stinger emerges painfully from their tailbone. Those who live to a great age will eventually leap into the water and never be heard from again, having transformed into river-mantas. To the most erudite of sages, it is clear that the Daz share some sort of connection to the manta-people of the Inverted Temple (20.20).

More than once the Dukes of Thring have attempted to drive the Daz away from lands so close to Castle Tarengael, but the villagers have always proved tenacious. At one time, almost a century ago now, they were successfully resettled further upriver. Soon after, the waters around Castle Tarengael began to swarm with vile water snakes, whose population had grown out of control without the Daz and the river-mantas to prey upon them. The Duke reluctantly allowed the degenerates to return to their ancestral dwelling-place.

Though it is rarely spoken of in Thring, the truth is that the Daz and other pre-Thringish tribes were the originators of the tradition now known as paladinhood. In their ancient tongue it is called palladhyu, and represents a marriage between a eunuch warrior and the goddess Melgerez, The Sleeper in the Riverbed. The eunuch would apparently swim down to the bottom of the river, holding his breath to prove his worth, where Melgerez would attach a squamous sign of her devotion to the place where his manhood had been. Thereafter, the palladhyu would posess supernatural powers including the ability to paralyze with a glance.

Ulthar the Loved took this savage tradition and turned it into the modern concept of the paladin; the grotesque union with Melgerez was replaced by the chaste marriage to the Green Lady. Nevertheless, today’s paladins ultimately draw on the same source of ancient pagan power that is bound into the land of Thring.

Hooks:

• What’s the connection between the manta-people and the Daz? Are they both different degenerations of the same antediluvian race?
• What happens to the Daz when they disappear into the river? Is there an Innsmouth-style colony beneath the waters?
• Where were the Daz temporarily resettled, and what’s there now?
• Are there any palladhyu still around today?
• Who or what was Melgerez? Was she really a goddess or some sort of lake-dwelling abomination?

Connections

• The Daz scratched a chalk horse into the grass north of here (18.13).