Niðrerir

His name is pronounced roughly NIH-thre-rir — the ð (eth) is a soft, voiced “th” as in “this,” and the stress falls on the first syllable, as in Old Norse. In IPA: /ˈnɪðrɛrɪr/.

The name is a modern coinage: a portmanteau of two names from Norse myth. Níðhǫggr is the serpent that gnaws the root of Yggdrasil and chews the corpses of oath-breakers; Óðrerir is the vessel that held the Mead of Poetry, its name read roughly as “stirrer of inspiration.” The serpent’s head joins the mead-vessel’s tail — Nið + rerir — preserving Óðrerir’s ending intact. The fusion binds the devourer of the faithless to the wellspring of eloquence: the judgment and the voice in a single word.

Niðrerir is an adventurer in Land of Song: a Celeste warlock, and a wandering mercenary. Among the Celeste’une he is a sheiah — a sage, teacher, master, or captain. What he is beyond that — where he comes from, and what he carries — he keeps to himself; those who travel with him learn it, if at all, in their own time.

He came ashore on Tyre with the others of the crossing. The wreck took his Celeste cloak, and without it he cannot fly; at the Moon and Phoenix he took a traveling cloak in its place.