Khyrrsz

A Neanderthal god of blizzards and battles

Khyrrsz is a member of The Seven Wonders.

Not every religion comes from recorded history. Long before homo sapiens, a tribe on their way to being human conceived of a deity who would give them strength over their greatest threats - the cold, and their warlike neighbors. Do gods come from believers, or do they simply wait to be found? Who can say. Khyrrsz doesn’t care about the distinction. They only know that they were once worshiped, and now seek to protect their worshipers again.

Khyrrsz is massive, fluctuating between 7 and 12 feet tall depending on how much power they’re using at the moment. They wield the Blizzard Blade, a roughly serrated weapon made of ice. They can command the weather and temperature in their vicinity.

There might be as much as 1.5% of Neanderthal DNA in modern humans. That’s a slender thread indeed on which to find new worshipers, but Khyrrsz hasn’t stopped looking. Somewhere out there, they believe, there will be people like the old tribe, people who need a god. Until they find such people, the god will smash their way through anything that looks tough enough for a proper fight, heedless of the niceties of modern society or laws. Such things do not matter to a prehuman god.

Playing Khyrrsz

Khyrrsz is a Stone Age deity. Their motivation is to find and protect a new tribe, although they’ll probably find that challenging in the modern day. They like fighting and protecting their new friends, but there’s a core of sadness to them. They’re far from their familiar era, forgotten by everyone now living, and bereft of purpose.

They’re somewhere between Storm, Thor, and Vandal Savage in terms of inspiration.

Plots

Stop Khyrrsz from going on a rampage
Deal with Khyrrsz’s manipulation of the local weather
Interfere with a dark ritual involving Khyrrsz

Dialogue

“Y’ ah llll mgr’luh uh’e l’ uln ya yaor”
“Rrargrg!”
<indistinct grunting and bone-chewing noises>
“Kukukuku…”

Comic Book Panels

Khyrrsz roars and raises their Blizzard Blade, bringing down numerous lightning strikes on assembled heroes or vulnerable bits of city.

Khyrrsz summons a sphere of cold into their outstretched hand. Around them, everything begins to freeze over. Ice forms on the ground, and snow swirls in the skies and blocks line of sight.

A hero attacks Khyrrsz, who blocks it with their massive Blizzard Blade. The god laughs mockingly and holds up a hand, making a “come get me” gesture with their fingers.

Variations

Modernity

Khyrrsz isn’t dim-witted, just very alien. As a divine being from a distant geological epoch, they may not understand things we take for granted - law, society, or even language. Their actions could be not only primitive and violent, but almost incomprehensible - for example, they might decide to destroy statues, thinking of them as idols to rival gods, or they might bring cold to a temperate or tropical area because that’s how they remember it in the old days.
On the other hand, Khyrrsz could be brought up to speed on modern ways. While they might be contemptuous of how people do things today, they might at least grasp the idea of “illegal”. While they might look down on modern rhetoric and disdain such dishonorable things as lies, they might speak modern languages through some divine means.

Malevolence

What does it mean to be a “god of blizzards and battles”? Khyrrsz might exist to protect their worshipers from such things. Or they might represent such things, and try to bring them about, and the tribe that was appeasing this deity with sacrifices and prayers is no longer around to do so.
Khyrrsz is looking for descendants or successors of their tribe in the modern day. Do they want to re-establish the old system, or avenge themselves on the innocent heirs of a long-lost religion?

Divinity

Khyrrsz could be a genuine deity (whatever that means in your world), whether created through faith or summoned from some divine realm by it.
Could Khyrrsz be an alien, a psychic construct, or something else of sufficient power to play at being a god without actually being one? Certainly. They themselves may not know what they really are, and revealing the truth might change all of their goals.