AN: And here's a new public commission
Once, the worlds of man and spirit were far less separate. Before the lords of the forest turned to the north, before the temples were fractured and humbled, the people of the Emerald Seas worked much more closely with their spirit neighbors. It was common, in those long ago days for spirits to manifest themselves at their festivals, not merely for the lords, but the people as well. Once the powers to communicate and bargain with spirits were far more widely spread among the many priesthoods, whose power existed separately from the warriors and chiefs who would become lords and magistrates.
In those days, there were those who were called the Spirit Seekers. Initiates from many temples followed this path. They were the trailblazers, those with too much wanderlust in their hearts to spend their days conducting rituals and bargains in already settled land. Many were simply young men and women, unable to yet settle, but among some grew old under the title, their desires never fading.
It was the role of these Seekers to travel the deadly paths of beasts and spirits, and walk the most ancient groves. It was their role to speak and treat with the beings who had never accepted human kinship nor dealmaking. They acted to keep the malice of the old growth and the star tainted from rising to the point of the unstoppable flood. And, where they were most successful, their role gave way to new settlement, where old and hoary spirits could be made amenable to human worship.
It was a deadly path, for the spirits of the world are unpredictable and often unkind, yet it was an honored one, providing a path for those who could not live well performing more toilsome tasks. Yet it was an honorable path, and happy would be the people when a Spirit Seeker came home, to spin tales of their travels and bargains, like the King of old come again. Of the new paths available to the people, who yet wandered, and the new resources available to the people who tilled.
But the lords grew cruel and proud as the Horned Lords withdrew. Control, was their demand. They began to call the wanderers thieves and bandits. Many were put to the sword for daring wander the same roads that they had taken for generations, made criminal by inked paper and men who had never walked them. The northern men came to the people who tilled and demanded their grain for protection, protection we did not need.
The northern men came south in ever growing number, unmindful of pacts and bargains, and began to make their own with fire and axe. Some among the Seekers confronted them in this, and were at best ignored, and at worst cast in chains for defiance of the lords.
Then the lords of the forest realized that the Horned Lords had vanished and all restraint left them.
Order. Control. This was the beat laid out by their wardrums. This was the song of the fires that burned the groves and our temples. This was the demand of their priests who said that our rituals were wrong, though they had worked for a thousand generations and more. This was the crack of the whip as the last of the wanders were collared and sent to toil under the earth for the metals that the north men loved.
It was in this time that the Spirit Seekers turned to war. The voices of those who had long sought peace instead rose in wrath and with blood and spirit stirred the forest to wakefulness. How the north men fled when millennial groves tore apart their carts and wagons, and the rivers drowned their cruel soldiers! For a time, the people who remained found reprieve, guarded by those who sought.
But the Xi rose, and with them came the dragon men, who ruled them in the cursed lands of farthest north. These came in gleaming mail, with weapons far beyond the Xi and the north men. With terrible weapons and more terrible spirits at their call. The golden eyed serpents took the rivers, and the laughing killers shattered grove and hill under their staves.
And all the while the dragon men and the Xi marched south, ever south, and one by one the Seekers died. Let it nod be said that they did not exact their blood price! That they did not die heroes one and all!
For many decades, whole generations we did resist them, fighting for every hill and grove. But the north men were too many and too strong. The will of some among the peoples wills grew weak. The traitor tribes turned against us, and all was lost. The dragon men and their kin went back to the lands beyond, and only the cruel Xi remained.
Their priests replaced ours, their rituals replaced ours, and no more did the spirits come among the people. Only the lords and their chosen priests could speak to the spirits they said. All else would bring misfortune. Misfortune for them. Of the Spirit Seekers, some fled, some resisted. All who fought were slain.
Who knows then where the last of them have gone? We know that some survived, but do they still live in the deep groves, alive from their bargains? Do they still fight on against the north men and their blades of iron? Rarely still news reaches us of mines broken and north men vanishing into the woods. But is this merely the act of angered spirits or something more?
We cannot say, but we must hope. We must hope that they remain, and that one day, we will find the strength to be free of the north men once more.
--The words of a forgotten elder, preserved on the wind and the flame.
***
The recovered techniques of the rebels do contain some interesting insights which may be useful even to more civilized speakers. Should my lord give the word, the archive will begin studying the ways in which their insights might be distilled into an art fit for use by our scouts and speakers.
Highest regards to the honorable Duke Xi Hung, Master of the Wild.
