Q'nixqala

Q'nixqala (Shaqniq: burning ember) is the late moon goddess of the PiQala'i people. She represented the smaller of the two world's moons. According to legend she was born as an ascending ember of a sacred grove that had caught fire in the heat of a long summer. The ember was carried high up by the winds, froze in the sky and stuck. As she saw the PiQala'i lamenting the loss of their dear forest, she offered them a present - The gift of Q'nixqala - a seedling of a tree, a beacon of hope, which was to become the Sunarmand, a tree so large that all PiQala'i lived under the protection of its boughs. In admiration and gratitude they promised to worship Q'nixqala eternally.

At some point millennia later Q'nixqala descended in the Western Ocean for the last time and the protection of Sunarmand soon faded too. Shocked in dismay, many PiQala'i were brought down by sickness or foes both internal and external. Chaos ensued. A party of PiQala'i sunsailors committed to a searching effort and set sail westward. They travelled for years half the world away only to be beached on the Isle of Melandros. With their ships beyond repair, having met with hopelessness and the desire not to return back to their homeland emptyhanded, they decided to settle on the island permanently. A new calamity followed suit in the form of a curse brought on by the Great Whisperer known as the passing which deformed them to a wretched life-draining state. They became known as the Shaqnim which are now the last surviving descendants of the once proud PiQala'i people.