Raid Shadow Legends Lore: The Story of Blizaar the Howler
Blizaar the Howler is a beast created out of loss and bitterness, so it is fitting that he is associated with the darkest days of winter’s depths.
The Icecrushers are an Ogryn tribe living high in the Redspike Mountains. For centuries, they conducted a midwinter festival that involved the lighting of fires, the giving of gifts, and the cooking of a great feast. Yet one of their number, a young Ogryn named Grunch, never partook in the festive spirit, and after ruining the great feast one year, he was banished. He took to a life of crime and betrayal, as he hired out his services as a thief throughout the kingdom of Frostheim.
One of his employers was a Dark Elf sorceress named Lyrax. She herself had been banished from among her kind, forced to leave Durham Forest after the elemental magics she practiced brought on a punishing early winter. While traveling the Redspikes she encountered Grunch. Thinking he would be perfect as a dumb, brutish assistant, she took him on as her servant. But while Grunch served Lyrax well initially, in truth he was never the simple Ogryn Lyrax thought he was.
Grunch merely acted the dumb ally until he had an opportunity to steal a number of Lyrax’s valuable arcane scrolls. The Dark Elf flew in a wild fit of rage, furious at having been misled by what she considered to be an inferior being, and swore she would hunt down and punish Grunch. She realized she knew little of the Ogryn, for Grunch had concealed much of his past, but she had at least ascertained his tribe of origin — the Icecrushers.
Lyrax stepped out onto the mountainside close to her lair, disdaining the icy blizzard filling the air that night. Using all of her cryomantic abilities, she crafted a golem-like being of snow and ice, each delicate movement of her long, pale fingers singing the rime. She created a beast akin to an Ogryn, but bulkier, with a gaping maw filled with ice-fangs. She used the howling wind to give it breath, and gave it a heart made from the black stone of the mountain. Lastly, Lyrax created a jagged ice ax for the brute to wield. Thus was born the great snogryn, Blizaar the Howler.
The Dark Elf imbued Blizaar with the cruelty and love of violence so many Dark Elves possessed, before giving him a simple and singular purpose. He was to hunt down and destroy Grunch, and he was to start his search among the Icecrushers. Blizaar advanced into the storm, the shifting snow he lumbered through drawn by his arcane connection to the elements to add itself to his bulk and strength.
Lyrax had created a powerful being, but in her haste and anger she had failed to kindle enough intelligence in the snogryn’s mind. The beast had only a dim understanding of its instructions, and quickly confused Grunch for the Icecrushers as a whole. He arrived among the tribe not long after Grunch himself had taken his revenge on them, stealing that season’s feast and gifts before disappearing. The luckless Icecrushers were just coming to terms with the theft when Blizaar the Howler descended on them like an avalanche.
The snogryn tore through the tribe with pure elemental fury, wrecking homesteads, stores, and hacking down any who got in his path. The Icecrushers’ attempts to halt the beast failed whenever Blizaar’s body was wounded, the surrounding snow and ice regenerated him.
The Icecrushers were devastated. Only when their village was in ruins did Blizaar depart, returning to Lyrax. When she saw him, he was draped in bells, antlers, wreaths, bones, and skulls, a combination of grisly trophies as well as decorations that had wrapped around him on his rampage. He even carried a door, resembling a shield. From the blood staining his snow-form and from the crackling, splitting sounds that sounded like sick laughter, the Dark Elf assumed he had been successful. Considering that vengeance had been taken, she sought to unbind the golem, first relinquishing control of him to ensure any harm he suffered was not transferred to her, then opening the clouds overhead, causing sunlight to spear down upon Blizaar in the belief that he would melt in it.
Blizaar howled in pain, but to Lyrax’s horror, the light was not enough to dissolve his form. Her will, while she had created Blizaar, had been too cold, too bitter, and it continued to animate the snogryn in defiance of the sun’s heat.
Realizing his creator was seeking to destroy him, Blizaar snatched Lyrax and plunged his razor-ice teeth into her neck and shoulder, the crushing bite ripping her apart. He then ate her flesh, which froze within his grave-cold form. Freed from Lyrax’s bindings, the snogryn then set out across Frostheim. The devastation he wreaked on the Icecrushers brought him great joy and satisfaction. He sought to repeat the destruction on an ever-greater scale, descending on towns and settlements like the wrath of the harshest Frostheim winter made manifest.
This Blizaar the Howler Lore is originally posted by Plarium ingame.