Greatsaint Bafko

Bafko Ximizhledot, predominantly known as Greatsaint Bafko, Archmage Bafko, First Mage Bafko, is one of the earliest humans, her mother being Ximizhle Herself. Since she was young, Bafko showed promise in magic, a first amongst humans. Ximizhle recognized this and groomed Bafko to become a role model magician for other Ximi. For the most part, Ximizhle didn't want to straight out teach Bafko about magic, but instead wanted her to find out on her own, leading to a lot of frustration. Nevertheless, Bafko became a great magician and a patron saint of magics.

Her main usage of magic was that of frost spells. As this was very early into research of magic, no one really knew the dangers associated, and Bafko too it to the extreme. Most of her body became severely frostbitten, her skin turned blueish to even dark purple, and ice crystals formed across her body. In turn, Bafko ripped out her own heart and froze it within the staff that she always carried around. She sealed the hole in her chest with see through ice. This way, the effects of frostbite on her body became near irrelevant. She wouldn't wear shoes unless absolutely necessary, saying she "can't feel the cold anyway". In a way, she was both alive and dead at the same time. While Ximizhle was greatly worried and disagreeing with the path Bafko had taken, She did not stop her.

Bafko would shapeshift the icy part of her staff into other objects, such as hammer, axes, blades, keys, and even heads to use as puppets to entertain children. Bafko's great power had the opposite effect of what Ximizhle wanted, and she was often ostracized by adults who were afraid of her and disgusted by her odd looks. In fact, she spent most of her free time with children, giving rise to rumours of her making up for the childhood she never had or even that she was a pedophile. It is only after Bafko's disappearance that she became an idol.

At some point, Bafko discovered what she called Tower of Eternity, but people started calling it Bafko's Enigma instead. At that time, anyone who ventured in would not return. Bafko was the first to break the tradition and tell tales of the inside, which she claimed was labyrinthine and ever shifting.

She went in two times, came back from the third one obsessed with the Enigma, and went in the fourth time, never to return.

Across the years, many rumours about Bafko spread, some even claiming she never existed to begin with, that she was just a legendary character constructed from commoners merging multiple stories together. Others said she built Bafko's Enigma, and some went as far as to claim that Bafko was a memetic construct spread by the eponymous labyrinth as a means to entice people to go inside so that it could devour their souls. Nevertheless, in the canon of Ximi folklore, Bafko was very much a real person, and is considered the Patron saint of Magicians.

Speaking of Ximi folklore, it is believed that at first human souls did not go anywhere when their bodies died. Instead, they were forever stuck on Ximizhlum as shadows. Thus whenever a light source creates a shadow of an object, that shadow is believed to be the remains of a Ximi soul. As such, the souls of dead Ximi are everywhere, and theatrical performance that use shadow effects are considered highly taboo.

Folklore says that as more and more humans died, their souls had nowhere to go, and the accumulated screams of the souls now merely an effect of a light source, would become louder and louder, to the point where it started annoying the Divinities. Thus the Gods decided to take action by creating a space in the heavens where all human souls would go (though this did not work retrospectively). They then created two servants, Vesna and Morna, who would handle the souls and move them to their proper resting place in the heavens. Vesna would take care of souls that died during the warmer months of the year, whereas Morna would look after the colder months' deceased. Finally, the Gods took a recently murdered Ximi girl, who had not even reached puberty before her death, and forcibly turned her into a divine servant. Her name was Ilsa, and she would forever be the ferryman of all dead, taking them across the sea of death to the afterlife, where Vesna and Morna would process them.

However, one story told by someone who claimed to be a good friend of Bafko says otherwise. According to them, Bafko was aware of what happens to the deceased; she knew they would forever suffer in the world, unable to move, chained as shadows. Having technically already passed through the border of life and death, Bafko could see and hear the screams of the forlorn souls. She ventured into the Enigma several times to find a solution, believing she'd find it therein, and on her last expedition, she succeeded. Within, Bafko integrated her body and soul into the very labyrinth itself, which tore her flesh apart and moved her organs across the entire shifting structure. Her body became essentially just an empty husk. However, Bafko expected this, and her heart, which was still within the staff, was unaffected by the labyrinth's power. As long as her heart lay unconquered, she could control the Enigma.

With power unimaginable, Bafko enforced a pact upon the Gods, creating a sort of "paradise" where the souls of Ximi would go after their deaths, so that they no longer had to suffer on the mortal world. While the story claims that Bafko "enforced" this upon the Gods, the decision to accept still lay with them. All of the Divinities ignored her, all but Lyublya and Helgya, who accepted, thus making it official.

Souls of the dead would no longer be stuck upon Ximizhlum as unmoving statues, but would  exist happily alongside the Divinities. Furthermore, the claim says that there is no Vesna or Morna, that instead these are projections created by the Gods to ease the dead into accepting their passing. In reality, it says, Vesna and Morna are both Bafko, that she is the one moving them across worlds. Interestingly enough, the story has no mention of a ferryman called Ilsa, suggesting that Ilsa's story was added to the tradition long after Bafko's death.

As one might imagine, the tale of Bafko being the true ferryman of the dead and the implication that a mere mortal could subjugate gods to do their bidding is considered highest heresy and extremely taboo, and even talking about it could land one in jail or crucified.

So, then, how does death work on Ximizhlum? Does Ilsa the Ferryman take souls of the deceased to the Divine Servants Vesna and Morna, who then introduce the fallen to their wonderful afterlife? Or is every deceased moved by a single woman, who is both alive and dead, forever stuck to a throne in a cold structure, wherein which her body is continuously torn apart?