Valaya

Valaya is one of the three great ancestor-gods of the Dwarfen Mountain Holds, the revered mother-goddess of protection, the hearth, and the home. Where Grungni is honoured as the god of mining and craft, and Grimnir as the god of war, Valaya is the guardian and the keeper, she who wards the dwarf people against all that would do them harm.

In the elder days, the dwarfs believe, Valaya raised the first defences of the holds and set wards against the creatures of Chaos and the corruptions of magic. To this day her runes are graven upon the gates and vaults of the strongholds, and it is said that where her protective sigils are cut, no daemon may pass and no sorcery may take hold. She is likewise the patron of dwarfen kingship and the guardian of the ancestral bloodlines.

Valaya is honoured, too, as the mistress of the hearth and the brewer of the first ale, and no dwarf feast nor funeral is complete without a draught raised in her name. Her priestesses tend the sacred flames of the holds and preserve the histories and lineages that the deep-memoried dwarfs hold so dear.

To a dwindling and beleaguered people, Valaya is the warmth of the hearth against the cold of the deep places, the ward that keeps the darkness beyond the gate, and the ancestral mother who watches, patient and stern, over her stubborn children.