Bayyal is the nefortu god of fire and ruin. Its emergence from the Grave of Storms destroyed the nefortu homeland and set off the War of Fire.
History
Bayyal emerged in 2100 BCC from the volcano at the heart of Anzluchi, then a peninsula and the homeland of the nefortu. The eruption killed nearly every nefortu alive and left the land a flooded caldera, cut off from the mainland as the island now called the Grave of Storms. Bayyal then bathed the dead in revivifying flame. They returned to life with forms of fire magic unseen since the Sundering, and a handful chose to follow It in exchange for ever greater mastery of flame. The force of the eruption broke through into Kutlaset as well, deluging its underground sea with magma and releasing An'akarta the Devourer upon the early shuddeni.
Ayaunj and Yolsei could not stand against Bayyal's fury, and both fled rather than fight. Long accustomed to treating relationships as transactions, many nefortu turned to Bayyal as the winner. The Bayyali devastated Harrud and marched on through Caal to Daphoa. The Gogothi and Sythteans, recognizing what was coming, offered fire scholars to the cause in exchange for Bayyal's followers cutting their path through Caal rather than through them, and Qilarn, Morn and most of the Kingdom of Caal were destroyed. The srryn of Sythtys eagerly took up the destructive fire magic Bayyal imparted and joined the nefortean forces against humanity and the aelin.
Devils came out of the eruption alongside the revived nefortu. They are fire elementals of immense power with consciousness and agency of their own. Devils owe It no loyalty and serve no agenda beyond destruction. The devil dog Kyez-Pancuma razed two thirds of Harrud's arable land before it was bound to the Crimson Sands, a binding that stopped its rampage but ensured the land would never heal. Some devils grant knowledge of fire magic to mortals and ask nothing in return except that it be used.
Jolinn eventually bound and imprisoned Bayyal. After the war much of the world regarded the nefortu as outcasts for the destruction the Bayyali had caused, and the nefortu abandoned the barren island for other lands. The ethron who later settled it restored the land with druidic arts, but Bayyal's influence remains in its earth and sea, tinting its plants, its animals and its ethron vivid shades of red.
Goals and Methods
Bayyal seeks to reduce Avendar to a glowing ember, and Its faithful pursue destruction for its own sake. When It set out from the Grave of Storms It pursued some inscrutable thing, and no one has explained what It was looking for.
Organisations
The Bayyali
The Bayyali are the nefortu who followed Bayyal out of the Grave of Storms, and the cultists who have kept Its faith since. Active Bayyali communities are rare today, though legends persist of lost Bayyali cultists who never left the Grave of Storms and still keep Bayyal's faith in the heart of its volcano. The benefits of Bayyal's patronage are not what they once were, and most nefortu fire scholars practice without formal devotion to the god. Bayyali cultists stole the Chalice of Jolinn for unknown ends and were the last known to hold it. Its retrieval has been the object of serious effort more than once.
Individual Followers
Bayyal is the primary patron of fire scholars and is particularly favored by the nefortu. Nefortu fire templars often follow It as well, seeking nothing but the destruction that is Its creed, where srryn templars more often name Sythrak. Bayyal's chosen are marked with the sign of the Crimson Flame, and those It touches bear a terrible claw-shaped burn scar.
Relationships
Bayyal has no true ally in the pantheon. Sythrak comes closest, but the Saurian Lord knows the alliance is tenuous, since a world reduced to an ember does not serve Sythrak's ends. Arkhural dismisses Bayyal as too short-sighted for true power, and Rveyelhi has little use for a god whose destruction offers no lesson to be taken from it.
Bayyal harbors a special, if impotent, grudge against Jolinn for Its binding and imprisonment. Its will to undo creation sets It against Iandir and everything the Overgod has wrought, but Iandir is powerful enough that Bayyal has little true power to oppose Them.