Within the swirling Mist (IC) > Tales Around the Campfire

Valachani Fables:

(1/5) > >>

Silas Rotleaf:
Part one: The Origin and Our Creation:
The acolyte Moarnekone cleared his throat.
In Vaasi he copied the grandiose introduction that is the most popular style of Valachani storytelling in their oral tradition.
"Listen to me, for I have a story to tell!"
"...In the beginning, before we knew our place and who our neighbors were in the mists there was just the jungle. Our ancestors belonged to unnamed tribes. They were darkskinned and resourceful woodsmen.
Then in 320 came invaders, the Vaasi. Not the Vaasi of Nova Vaasa as you know them today, but nevertheless a light skinned horde of Vaasi speaking raiders came in force through the mists. They pillaged, exploited and ravaged our ancestors' lands mercilessly.

The land itself was crying out to the fey and spirits. Medicine men and wise women did not know what to do.  Strip mining, clear cutting, over hunting and fishing were destroying the wilderness on an unprecedented scale. The Vaasi brought with them a horrible disease none of the tribesmen had any defense against for they had not had any previous exposure to it. It is estimated that nine in every ten aborigines at this time died.  The spirit of the wood was very upset and felt He could not take this anymore. He held a council, for the endless war between the natives and invaders was physically and magically hurting Him. It caused Him intolerable pain but the bodily corporeal pain and even the mental pain was nothing compared to The Provider's knowing of the pain of the extinction the two warring peoples were racing toward.  Anyway, this council was with His wisest animal spirits who were His companions. Brother Panther, being the wiliest of them devised a ritual that he assured Yutow would work and get the two sides to peaceably coexist without damaging the forests any further."

"Brothers, sisters, do you know what that unprecedented plan was?" The young priest gripped both sides of his rough hewn wooden podium for dramatic emphasis. Then he continued his sermon.

"... Yutow offered Himself up to the two armies and gave of Himself in the ultimate sacrifice. The most pure expression of supplication.  To make the warring peoples come to understand one another fundamentally, to force them to get along He merged them into a single people.

This changed things. Nothing in our forests following The Pacification would ever be the same again. It was unorthodox and altered the flow of how things would have played out were they left unfettered.  Assimilation would have been inevitable anyway but what Yutow did accelerated the time in which it happened. Without the bloodshed of lengthy colonial occupation He made the two cultures into one which was homogeneously both and yet distinct from its parent seeds.

Yutow's act of martyrdom saved the jungle but also irrevocably changed Him.  He could no longer walk among the land as one of us. He had ascended and was now Yutow the Peacebringer. He chose a self-imposed exile on the moon for this act. He is steward over all of us both the living on this world and the dead in our lunar based afterlife."

"The disease the invaders brought we think is what became the White Fever, also." His bile yellow eyes glinted at mention of the unnatural epidemic, clearly not a mirthful twinkle.

Silas Rotleaf:
Part Two: A Legacy of Tyranny:I often say that our Baron is much like Barovia's Count in that they are each both very great and terrible at the same time. Also times the rulers are ever seen in public are likewise few and far between.

So long as the villages hold the semi-annual bridal lottery and everybody pays their taxes, for the most part the Baron is content to leave us alone.  Having to sacrifice a maiden to him in such a way is not something we like but he is a serial monogamist.  Something bad always happens to his wives. Some die of the white fever while in Castle Pantara. Some... "Fall down stairs". Some run away driven to madness for reasons which are never really elaborated on. Some are murdered. An unsettling number end up torn apart by jungle creatures as the end they meet.

The Black Leopards, his militia army are headed by a sadistic elf named Lady Adeline. Her estate is called the Red Maze... The remains of those whom she is displeased with or found various reasons to have done away with form decoration and give the grisly site its name.

Baron Ulrik Von Kharkov II hates wizards. One killed his father, the much loved Baron Ulrik Von Kharkov I. We like our barony not because he is an especially kind ruler but because their predecessor who ruled before males of the Kharkov family came into power was much worse.

A cursed item made by the mad wizard Felkovic magically slew Ulrik I. This cat statuette is perhaps the only thing his son Ulrik II fears. The Black Leopard militia continually scours Valachan in search of it that it may finally be destroyed but the artifact remains elusive.

Though Felkovic is dead, his ghost still haunts the blasted ruin of his tower and likewise the Cat of Felkovic still haunts Von Kharkov. It holds some terrible sway over his family and was deliberately designed to be their undoing. Being somewhat paranoid because of how such an object of horrendous power is still at large unaccounted for does explain some of our Baron's obsession.

Some of the Black Leopards are actual werecreatures. That is why the priesthood is encouraged to all have at least one silver weapon and to wear some silver accessories on their person.

In addition to the State militia, noble families also have their own private militias. All work together to take up the same familiar rallying cry when told by our ruler something must be done in our nation's interest however.

Corruption:The State of things is mandated from above and as such is not to be questioned yes.
In general commoners are to defer to nobles in most matters by default...
And yet, a nobleman is not always the most noble of man in his or her behavior.
So it is that their authority may be challenged and the peasants may tear them apart if they become made dissatisfied enough. This is the law of the jungle and like a swarm of ants the remaining nobles lay claim to the deposed ones remaining holdings.  Yutow turns His back on those who displease Him and can withdraw His protection which is what enforces their divine right to rule; Out with the old unfit and in with the new! Occasionally there are times the land demands a tithe in blood.

Therefore destroying the inept and incompetent nobles is not a crime when it succeeds. It is always a crime when a rebellion fails though.

Priests serve as adjudicators and magistrates who mediate disputes between the peasants, militia, nobles, and to an extent our ruler and his lieutenant.
The nobles have their own council on which Baron Kharkov and Lady Adeline hold the chiefest of seats.  The most prominent of noble families rule villages and townships as their mayors.

Silas Rotleaf:
Part Three: Red In Tooth and Claw:

The bilious eyed Yutow cleric stood at the lectern addressing his audience.
"Many are the dangers of the jungle, but you all knew that.  There are both the seen and the unseen."
Here he paused for dramatic emphasis.

"Though each township and village's militia men hack back the underbrush with their machetes, the wildlife both plant and animal is not about to let us for any moment forget that it is in true control of this land.
It takes a constant effort by our woodsmen just to keep it at bay so that it does not swallow up our settlements. Nature in the Valachan jungle is an omnipresent, feeling and observing, calculating thing. It cat-and-mouses with us and we are the mice, make you no mistake in this despite how much we bare our teeth and try to convince ourselves otherwise."
The priest eyed his congregation, took in a breath, then while blowing threw the contents of a bottle of feydust in the air for a visual effect.

"There are things far more ancient among us out here than man or elf and they remember the sins of our ancestors. The deforestation which occurred during events leading to The Pacification is still fresh in their fey minds. Most of their ways of thinking, indeed their overall mindset, it is all far too alien for us mortals to try and comprehend."
As the remnants of the illusory green flame swirled around him dying down the priest looked his congregation in the eyes and continued in his sermon with a renewed vigor to his sense of purpose.

"I do not tell you young braves, and you elders, you hunters, gatherers, fishers, trappers and woodcutters, you farmers and weavers, you carpenters, wives and husbands, children and youths all of this to panic you. That is not my intended purpose. Our shamans, medicine men and wise women perform our rituals and ceremonies to appease the malevolent and more mischievous fey to the best of our ability. It is why we urge you to leave out for them offerings in glades and your barns: the small carved trinkets, the bowls of honeyed milk and of drikke (mixed milk/animal blood porridge)."

The priest clapped his hands together.
"In Yutow there is strength and love! Through His great sacrifice He bridges our differences!"
After a bit of hemming and hawing the audience shot back their practiced refrain.
Chorus: "He died for us, that we might live in greater harmony!"
"That we will come to understand ourselves and each other greater... And our relationship with the land! My brothers and sisters, Yutow cares for us all. He watches over us and He tests us."
"Mighty is the Peacebringer and compassionate in His wisdom! Jao!!"

Silas Rotleaf:
Part Four: Parable of Suffering:
"There are certain things we share universally in common. All peoples; Human, elf, dwarf, halfling, gnome, and whatever else possesses an intelligence to it, be it rudimentary to the very advanced. Regardless of the differences in our lifespans..."
The cat eyes priest cleared his throat.
"Pain and suffering doesn't stop at the barriers created by having difference in race or in our languages. It is of a thing more primal than societies than all these supposed advances which from "civilization" out of decadence has wrought.

Pain is not nice but in a way it is kind. It lets us know when we are reaching our physical and mental limits. It is your body warning you that to continue an exertion will result in greater injury. It is your mind saying you have had near enough but also that you are not dead... And yet perhaps ghosts do also feel pain. Though they lack a physical body these psychical things can also be creatures of emotion. Far stronger and more concentrated emotions at times than are found in living things. It is both more pure and more corrupt for them; it is what they are [it can be argued] made of."

The Moarnekone pounds his fists on the wooden lectern, grabbing the attention of his congregation.
"Faithful of Yutow, as you know, when we perform our duties to our Lord Above dutifully we are rewarded and those who do not are doomed to miserable repeating lives in an endless cycle of horrible reincarnation.  Those who are good to Him are deemed worthy in the hereafter of graduating into a higher form of being as an immortal animal spirit, one of his loyal servants in the lunar court and these eldritch forests. However, there are of course worse things even than being reincarnated to suffer again in order to learn the jungle's often violently brutal lessons in harshness."
The cleric furrowed his pierced brows.

"Those who are especially unlucky, I am speaking of those blasted and damned souls which are unable to move on and let go of their spent, even rotting bodies when it is past overdue, these become the corporeal undead.  The kindest service one may render them is a mercy killing. They yearn for the life they either eschewed or which has been wrenched from them by the foulest black arts. It is something they may never have as an undead thing and they probably know this on some level for why they are so typically relentless in their attacks against the truly living."

There is a golden fire swirling in the priest's eyes as he continues his impassioned sermon.
"Yes, zombies and so often ghosts are the cursed remnants of that which once lived, but what of things which were never alive in the sense that you and I are... Or were so very long ago that it is beyond the reckoning of any peoples' ancestral keen?  Well, they do feel some things but whether they perceive pain in the same sense that you or I or a haunting spirit would, this is more difficult to say.  There are of course things which displease spirits and primordials [he means elementals]. You and I know what happens when fey and their ilk which straddle a position between the worlds of the living and the spirits are upset. Many bad things and curses."

He expounds to the parishioners.
"The wight with its profound hatred of all things with vitality, it guards and stalks crypts, ancient cemeteries and burial places of old forgotten by us but not forgotten by them.... The Vraykolaka which gleefully in darkness spreads disease and trouble while dining on body parts and juices of people and animals... Do not mistake their miserable state of being for something to have hesitation about, if you pity them as I have said before the best thing which can be done for undead is to make them into true dead by destroying them that they might finally stop being stuck in their dark and awful form. They are not circumventing the cycle of reincarnation by being neither living nor dead. The unliving are stuck, unable to progress. In order to move on as Yutow intended, they have to be slain properly. Bodily ones at least, and those of the meaner spectral variety which cause the living much trouble."

He raises his eyebrows.
"Understand though that this is no light nor easy undertaking. Monsters are a most cunning enemy. Those which think and are crafty and clever in their vileness love using fear, our fears to manipulate us. They are remarkably resilient and infest places even the wiliest of hunters may not immediately think to look. Those monsters which are thinking undead are exceptionally dangerous alone and even more when in groups. As are werecreatures."

The priest crosses his arms and continues.
"Werecreatures though in many ways more admirable than the undead are just as much a threat to us.  They who infect peoples with a physical change are a perverse mockery of the animal spirits which serve the Peacebringer.  They cannot bring anything other than downfall, demise and misery. A werecreature is any being capable of taking on the form of a man, an animal and a third shape that is a transition between the two. The "infection" is most typically spread through their bite and there is no known reliable cure for the affliction of lycanthropy despite many peoples in many places throughout the core having all tried to find and to even make one.

Some are born with this condition. They are a bit different. The ones which attack and prey on settlements are the ones to be hunted with most typically silver.  Some of these "lycans" though are not like the others.  I have heard legend and rumor of ones that try to live amongst themselves and not spread their affliction onto us. These "moon children" who can control their transformation to a remarkable degree must yet still always struggle with their problem of having a savage feral beast inside and even when helpful cannot be trusted.  There is always a part of them they are at war in opposition with, their beastly side and when it wins out over their man side which it will... It is merely a question of when, not of if, they will not be able to help themselves in either slaughtering you, devouring you or turning you into another of their number."

Uncrossing his arms the Moarnekone pounds a fist on the lectern.
"Undeath and lycanthropy are forms of suffering which turn people into actual monsters.  However the undead and werecreatures are not the only confounding dangers which the jungle hides.  There are still other things that would cause you harm such as wicked fey that appear as scantily clad gorgeous men or women bathing who will tempt you to join them in their frolicking in the river waters only to drown you with glee.  There is another type that appears as a preternaturally wellbred horse which seems friendly and coaxes lone travelers at the edge of a treacherous fiord where there is no bridge.  When you take the bait and accept its unspoken offer the creature wades partway through with you on its back, bucks to toss you off and then it eats you! What troubled sort of mind and heart is in a being which takes a nearly timeless existence and fills their time devising ways to doom mortals it views as lesser creatures? This we cannot say, they are inscrutable. Copper may stop some of them."

He frowns.
"Though man, beasts, monsters, spirits and even plants may suffer, never forget that monsters will unflinchingly kill you. Like predators, they can preferentially go after the weak and sick, the very young who are highly impressionable and those who are old and infirm alike.  Like a parasite, they work their way in, compromising the health of a society as they sustain themselves, ultimately killing their host but in a very drawn out and awful, insidious way. Then it is to seek their next victims, that they may continue the torture of spreading their unnatural misery around."

The Cat eyes raises his voice.
"Remember though, the good thing about pain is it shows you, it is an indicator that something is wrong."

Silas Rotleaf:
Part Five: Mystic Jungle and Eldritch Forests.
Valachan is a living and breathing thing. The river rapids, its pulse. The land, its body. Its soul is Yutow the Peacebringer, the dead god who still watches from the moon.

Our jungle home has its own wants and needs and it will take them, given the opportunity. It is a savage and sentient thing that will go out of its way to deal with people who displease it. The hapless upsetter of things will find his path interrupted by tree roots that trip becoming much more numerous, vines that snare and the uneasy experience of hearing disconcerting howls and chirps of uncountable hordes of animals both small and large all around, many if not all of which are quite dangerous. This is all punctuated by the buzzing and clicking of industrious vermin from beneath, many more of which carry disease when not outright poisonous.

Just because you go the trail where the road stops and there aren't people doesn't mean you are at any point truly alone.  That is why it is so important for Valachani to have wilderness lore.  Without our woodsmen, our cities would fall being swallowed back up and reclaimed in short order by the aggressive woodlands.

The jungle all too easily reminds us of our weakness. Humans and elves are interlopers in the domain which has been so much longer held by nigh immortal fey and spirits. They have the advantage having dwelt much longer in the home which is their home which we have simply built on top of to make our own huts.

We Moarnekone interpret Yutow's will. It is we whom He gives power of command over plants and beasts. It is a sliver of His control of wilderness.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page