who were the first mushers or the first to do the run of the dawn? is there a story of the first team to make the journey and why 🤔 the church grims of aurellan sled trails? so cool tho love mushers and aurellan is peak 🔥
The First Mushers Of Aurellan And The Birth Of The Run Of The Dawn
Long before the towers of Aurellan pierced the clouds, before sky ferries traced luminous arcs between the islands, before the Dawn feather’s doctrine was carved into marble and glass, there was ice, hunger, and silence.
The old chronicles do not call them mushers.
They call them the Ground Bound, or the Ones Who Ran While the Sky Was Closed.
In the earliest recorded age of Aurellan, a winter fell so violent it is still spoken of only in fragments, The Sky Severing. Storms raged without pause for weeks. Snow buried entire settlements. Birds froze mid flight and fell like omens. The aurora burned red, and the priests declared the heavens impassable.
The two great Aurellan islands were cut off from one another.
On the northern island, the Dawn feather’s high shrine lay dark, its sacred fire failing. On the southern island, grain stores were locked behind ice, and sickness spread through the low halls. Messages sent by bird never arrived. Fires dwindled. Panic rose.
It is said the temples argued.
The nobles waited.
And the sky refused them all.
And so, a small group stepped forward, not knights, not priests, but hunters, herders, and ice walkers who had learned to live close to the ground.
They brought with them dogs.
The oldest surviving names vary by telling, but the most accepted canon speaks of Eiran Frostbound, a tracker priest cast out of the upper temples for refusing to abandon the ground born ways, and Thyra of the Low Pass, a woman who bred snow hounds from the last great wolf lines of the north said to be those that raised King Skaen of Skaegir.
Their team was not large, just six dogs, thick coated and sharp eyed, bred for endurance rather than speed. They fashioned a sled from whale bones and pine, bound together with rawhide and prayer cords torn from a ruined shrine.
They did not believe they would survive.
But they believed someone had to try.
The crossing between the islands had frozen, not smooth and clear, but cracked, groaning, layered with storm blown snow that hid death beneath beauty. Eiran is said to have carved the Dawn feather’s symbol into each dog’s collar with shaking hands, not as ownership, but as invocation.
And then they ran.
The crossing took three days.
The storms blinded them. The ice split behind them. One dog was lost to a fissure, its name, Bright Tooth, is still recited in musher rites. Another was injured and carried upon the sled rather than abandoned. Eiran walked the entire way, bleeding through his boots, refusing the sled even when his legs began to fail.
When they reached the far island, Thyra collapsed at the gates of the shrine, half dead, her hands frozen into the reins.
But the fire was lit.
The grain was moved.
The sick were warned and treated.
And the islands spoke again.
The priests called it a miracle.
The mushers called it survival.
The people called it The First Run of Dawn, the moment the sun rose again not from the sky, but from the ice.
After the crossing, the church could not deny what had happened. The Dawn feather had not closed the heavens to punish Aurellan, he had closed them to remind them that the ground still mattered.
The dogs were declared to be touched by endurance, creatures who could walk paths humans could not and return without corruption. The collars Eiran carved became the basis of the modern dawn talismans worn by sled teams today.
And yet, reverence came with fear.
For if the dogs could walk where death waited, then surely something walked with them.
During the rites honoring the first run, it is said one dog did not rest.
Bright Tooth’s body had never been recovered. On the night of the consecration, witnesses claimed a black coated hound stood at the edge of the torchlight, larger than life, eyes pale as frost, breath steaming though no lungs moved.
It did not threaten.
It did not approach.
It simply watched.
The priests declared it an omen,
A Grim of the Path, a guardian spirit bound to the trails walked in devotion.
Thus were born the Church Grims of Aurellan, spectral hounds said to appear on sacred sled routes, especially during storms. They do not guide. They do not warn. They test.
To see a Church Grim and continue forward is to prove devotion greater than fear. To turn back is not shameful, it is said the Grim shows itself only when the trail ahead will take a life.
Mushers still leave offerings at trail markers, bone, tallow, prayer thread. Not to command the Grims, but to acknowledge them.
The Church teaches that the Grims are the Dawn feather’s eyes upon the ice.
Mushers believe something older walks there too.
Every Run of the Dawn since then is not a race alone, it is a reenactment.
The starting prayer names Eiran and Thyra.
The dogs are touched with frost water and ash.
One empty harness is carried at the rear of the procession, for Bright Tooth and all who did not return.
And when the teams vanish into the white, the priests look skyward while the people look to the ice.
Because Aurellan learned its oldest lesson that winter,
When the heavens close, salvation runs on four legs.
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