Duiz

A primeval spirit from the Dustsong Cycle

Duiz, sometimes called the Great Aurochs or Mighty Mammoth, was a spirit-being who, some folk believed, existed from the dawn-days of the Vaporous Realms. Tales of Livyat, the primordial spirit of watery chaos, sometimes depicted Duiz as her mighty, albeit less shrewd, ally.

Legends about Duiz usually described him as elephantine (like a mammoth-beast) or bovine (like an aurochs) in form and gargantuan in proportions. Few stories regarded Duiz as malevolent in the same wise as Livyat, yet he was scarcely less dangerous to human-folk. Accounts of his origins differed as to whether he was a creature of the Wright, of shadow and vapor, or of Livyat herself.

Adherents of the Wright across the epochs vilified Duiz as a confederate of Livyat in her ancient war against the lord of the heaven-realm. The ancestors of the Lost Kingdom’s steppe-folk likewise spoke of the Great Aurochs as the prey to which the divine Hunter gave eternal chase. But many of the Elder World desert-folk clans, like the Wind Hunters, regarded Duiz as a neutral or benign spirit of the wastes.

The alleged whereabouts of Duiz ranged from the wandering wastes in the Elder World to the western peaks of the Fledgling World.