Asterion, of the Stars

And then they named me, they called me Asterion. But they were fools for naming me anything at all.

Do you trust Samson?

He appears a most untrustworthy sort, and yet his word is all we have as to the origins of Consort Asterion.

As Samson tells it, he scouted toward the mountain with King Shade's kin in tow, searching for a pack with which to trade old blood for new. Such a task the ailing King entrusted to him in a bid to bring hope to Eidolon. As the twilight of his life and reign reached its end, Shade was desperate to forge alliances and see his pack's future secure before it was too late.

The King died before Samson's return, on the night of the Eclipse, when absolute darkness befell the world. It was a difficult time for the pack, even with the coronation of Nemesis. Many believed her too young, too naive, and too foolhardy to take the place of her stalwart father.

Yet hope came; a most curious hope. Samson returned, his alabaster fur covered in drying blood and fresh cuts. And in his shadow trailed a strange, tall beast with mismatched eyes and a coat that shimmered with the deep blue-black of the heavens.

"I watched a star fall from the very firmament,' Samson informed them. "On the night of the Eclipse, I followed the trail of the blazing star, and discovered a crater. Many came, many strangers, and all crowded around this bruise in the earth. The light was blinding, but as we approached it diminished, until there was nothing but a heap of fur and bones. There stood Asterion."

None could believe their ears, and yet there he stood, his eyes so strange and deep, his body thrumming with the unfathomable energy of the overhead abyss. They would have been fools not to believe Samson, and so they took Asterion eagerly into their fold, their hearts still aching and their futures still uncertain in the wake of the King's death.

Nemesis, seeing the excitement that Asterion and Samson had brought with them, encouraged it further. She took Samson as her second-in-command, defying her father's wish to appoint her sister, Sombra — a steady, balanced influence to temper Nemesis' bright flame, as Shade had once been to his brother, Wight.

Hurt and mistrustful of Samson, who was now well-placed to manipulate her younger sister, Sombra sought to find the truth from Asterion's own mouth. To her great disappointment, he would not speak. Would not, could not — she could not say. But the fact remained that Asterion was mute, and Samson's word reigned.

For his part, Asterion is a gentle, reclusive beast. Never speaking, never asking, only observing, his glinting eyes full of untold wisdom and knowledge.

Is he truly of the stars? Is his wisdom the wisdom of an immortal, infinite being; a neutral god of the heavens?

Samson would have you believe so.

Do you trust Samson?