Of friends and forests
- Pronouns
- He/Him
With the wealth on display, despite there being barriers of language, the Big Man still managed to get across that he wanted not just what was on offer in this expedition, or to get more of one particular thing, but he wanted regular trade with the nomads, and he wanted to stay not just for a few days to negotiate, but to rest their feet for a time as a proper feast was prepared to celebrate their arrival. For their part, as they saw the vast amounts of grain being removed from the storehouses within the heart of the primary cluster of houses, the nomads were so compelled to not fall behind that they selected a prime aurochs from their herd to slaughter to provide meat to the meal being made. There was suspicion all around, but there was beer and bread, meat and music, and dancing and revelry soon enough.
The morning after brought the yelling and shouting over what had been gotten up to the night before. While there was the usual round of admonitions and congratulations between parents about the decisions of their young adults had got up to during the night, there were a few cases of cross-tribal dalliances and it seemed that there was something of a problem. Through pantomime and a rapidly growing collection of words and grammar, the two chiefs managed to figure out what was the problem. For the people, young people having the occasional dalliance before marriage was only really a problem if there was a pregnancy or disease, and even then the individual families were expected to just sort it out. Food was grown and distributed collectively, and they always made sure that they had plenty in the storehouses for not just one year but as many years in advance as they could before the grain started to spoil. It was rare that the Big Man had to go to the people and tell them to actually try to avoid having kids for a year or two because there had been a bad harvest.
For the nomads, it was a bit of a bigger deal who was having sex with whom. It wasn't just a matter of political ties, which were obviously important, but having stable partnerships were significantly important for caring for children. Unmarried couples getting caught having sex tended to result in either an immediate marriage or mutual exile if the clan was clearly disapproving of the pairing. The Big Man considered this and then asked if they shouldn't just marry off the couples then. His counterpart frowned and pointed out that the situation was most prominently the young warriors of the people sleeping with the young women of his tribe, and that this was not a good trade.
The Big Man nodded, and then asked, "Right then, you lot who slept with their women, you're with them now."
It took a few moments for it to sink in for the nomads and the youngsters, although all of the elders in attendance were all nodding along sagely at the Big Man's words. Thinking for a moment while the nomads tried to figure out what to say, the Big Man then said, "Oh wait, that's more mouths for you to feed. Issue everyone heading out a supply of food."
It took quite some time for it to come out that yes, the Big Man was serious, and yes the rest of his people were backing them. There was then a bit of back and forth as they worked out a way to make it 'fair', the nomad chief soon realizing that this wasn't just a stunt or foolishness, but that the people took the settling of matters and injuries deadly serious, just that they applied to themselves. They wouldn't accept transgression from outsiders against them, but neither would they accept the opposite. Soon enough the trader found himself in the act of swapping out members of his own tribe just to make it so that the people staying or leaving at least had some reason to want to do so, such that he was not inflicting the injury of disruption of family unevenly to either side.
Of course, by his estimate, he came out far ahead in the deal, but for once he wondered if maybe he had found actual friends with whom he could safely and reliably trade with.
Seasons later, they returned with fresh loads of goods and slyly wondered if maybe there were anymore young warrior men who might want to sleep with their daughters, because spirits above could they fight! While there was a definite learning curve, the young men who had made fighting their profession were bloody good at it and had been the difference between survival and disaster more than once. A few of the men who had originally come with made to return to their original families with their new ones, but it remained a good trade all around. For their part, the returning men spoke of the wonders they had seen in the broader world.
And the Big Man smiled. Why ask for any one thing, when you could ask for friendship and have all the things?
Years went by and the mantle of Big Man passed along. The people were definitely having better relations with their neighbours, not just with the contact with the tribe of wanderers, but with the newly appointed heir, one Cwyrl, Son of Myta, Son of Ashryn. Born of his father's vitality and taught by his quick tongued mother, who had not spent her years idle but had bent her skills at persuasion and manipulation to climbing out of the social hole dug by her actions at getting back at Ashryn. With the assistance of his mother, he had been making headway in repairing relations with his grandfather's people, which neatly connected with another project initiated by the previous Big Man: to look into the forests atop the hill.
For generations the people had haphazardly tended to the forests, taking what they needed, which kept things mostly clear, but someone had noted that there seemed to be fewer trees. Since growing plants was what they did best, the people had gone at it with gusto... only to realize that trees were harder to tend to than grain. Still, they persisted, and as Myta and Cwyrl went about their business of doing business, they brought in people of the forests to assist. There were troubles and quarrels, but the quick tongued mother and son duo smoothed things over. Trees needed different things than grains, and just planting them in rows and expecting a forest by the next season was distinctly unrealistic.
However, in the efforts to replant areas where they had cut faster than the forest could regrow, and the people noticed something. Generations of working with irrigation in the hills and the flooding season in the valley had given them all a keen eye and awareness of how water flowed and could cut the land. They'd never really looked before, but in seeing bare areas where they were trying to plant get washed away in the spring rains while the older forest had the roots cling to the soil, their eyes lit up in enlightenment. Now that they were paying attention, they could also see how the forest soil was rich, where lowering down on the hills where they had cut away trees and bushes for fields they had to abandon the farms every few years because the soil became thin without the floodwaters of the river.
The trees were clearly important, the people just hadn't looked at what they might be doing. But they knew soil and water and they needed this now. They talked with the people of the forest who their heir, and then actual Big Man, brought to look over things, and they started to try things. Selective burning seemed to help, and it was distinctly noted that the black ash seemed to make the soil universally better, and staking down mats of reeds and fibres within the mud seemed to reduce the way the rains could cut it away and remove the tree seeds they tried to grow. Which direction they grew trees in was also clearly important, and they paid attention to how the trees could be aligned to best slow the water on the hills instead of creating channels... or they could deliberately create channels to collect water for their own uses.
It was costly, oh how it was costly to just feed people to do things that didn't directly result in grain, but as Cwryl's hair grew grey and he watched his grandchildren grow up, he knew that he was getting results... and the revenge his mother had impressed upon him to take. Crow had one last trick to play, one last laugh to caw.
Friendship with the traders had soon enough resulted in more directed marriages, political ties, and he had encouraged and orchestrated them. He had also encouraged such ties with the shattered remnants of his grandfather's people and the other victims of his father's rampage, and as it turned out, the men of the forests who hunted - and thus killed - to keep their families alive made for good warriors with just a bit of retraining. Bit by bit he was making the warriors of the families of old the servants of the traders even as he made his people the well fed warriors of the farmers. Bit by bit, piece by piece he was - and even as time closed in on him, largely had - replaced the lineages of chiefs with ones more preferable to him and his mother's ghost.
As he considered all of this, he also considered what to do with the twilight of his years. His counterpart among the traders - although he idly wondered how much longer that would last as already tribe meet ups would include their tribal head and clan leaders whenever possible and it was probably only a matter of time before the slow merger finished - had been tell him stories of the greater world: some troubling, some wondrous. There were other great peoples out there, peers to this valley in terms of significance. Amazing tales were told by the traders and the people who went with them, and he wondered if perhaps he should make a great journey to form the finale of a life well lived.
Perhaps most wondrous of all was the stories of a settlement an enormous distance away, one where the people oversaw a fantastical wonder, a place where spirits congregated and one felt intensely close to their realm. Tales told of travellers who would walk a full year to go to this place and make offerings to the guardians of the place, that they might experience the wonder themselves. Few of the people of the valley had gone, and fewer still had returned, but those who had could speak only of how their fondest wish was to have the chance to return, and how they barely had the words to describe the experience. Such an experience was one Cwryl was quite interested in.
Somewhat more practically, there were tales of a settlement in a place where all rivers emptied into a body of water that stretched across the horizon. While such a sight was assuredly a wonder to see, more important than that was the fact that the settlement had collected wonders and luxuries from the waters, and ties of trade with them could bring great wealth to the peoples. If he walked there with his counterpart, bearing gifts from the valley and things gained through the trade of their grain elsewhere, that greatly increased the chance of a lasting deal being established between them.
More troublingly, the traders were reporting that there was a group of people from somewhat distant lowlands who were also farmers, but who seemed to be more interested in attacking their neighbours than tending the land. While conflict happened and that was why warriors were needed and men needed to know how to fight, this other group seemed to revel in it. Their raids were disrupting trade, either by creating dangerous patches that the traders decided to just go around to minimize the chances of being attacked, or by wrecking previously established deals by killing the people the deals were made with or disrupting whatever activity was going on. Finding out more about these aggressive people first hand could be of significant benefit to the peoples relying upon Cwryl, especially if it could be determined if they were an actual threat.
Finally, on the list of places to go and things to see, there were dreadful campfire stories of an entrance to the Underworld up in taller hills, a place where smoke poured from the ground and the wails and groans of the dead could be heard echoing from deep within. While an ominous place, a dreadful place, there were stories... stories of how if the living walked in, while they might not walk out again, they could also deliver a petition to the spirits directly instead of having to die first... if their constitution and bravery held. A final way to serve the peoples for an old man, to walk headlong into death instead of waiting for it to claim him, and to make a request on behalf of his family and the families he protected and supported.
And then, finally, he could just spend his final days as he had spent his prior days, in work towards seeing the projects of his people fulfilled. There was always more to do for a Big Man like him, even if he had already shifted much of his duties over to the heir due to age's toll on his body. A journey might bring great benefit to the people, but staying here would definitely bring some benefit.
Decisions, decisions...
The final act of Cwryl, Grandson of the Crow, Son of Myta and Ashryn, was...
[] Pilgrimage to the site of wonder
[] Trade expedition to the village on the sea
[] Investigation of the lowland tribes
[] Journey into the Underworld
[] Keep working at home
The next great Big Man was chosen for...
[] Administration
[] Diplomacy
[] War
The morning after brought the yelling and shouting over what had been gotten up to the night before. While there was the usual round of admonitions and congratulations between parents about the decisions of their young adults had got up to during the night, there were a few cases of cross-tribal dalliances and it seemed that there was something of a problem. Through pantomime and a rapidly growing collection of words and grammar, the two chiefs managed to figure out what was the problem. For the people, young people having the occasional dalliance before marriage was only really a problem if there was a pregnancy or disease, and even then the individual families were expected to just sort it out. Food was grown and distributed collectively, and they always made sure that they had plenty in the storehouses for not just one year but as many years in advance as they could before the grain started to spoil. It was rare that the Big Man had to go to the people and tell them to actually try to avoid having kids for a year or two because there had been a bad harvest.
For the nomads, it was a bit of a bigger deal who was having sex with whom. It wasn't just a matter of political ties, which were obviously important, but having stable partnerships were significantly important for caring for children. Unmarried couples getting caught having sex tended to result in either an immediate marriage or mutual exile if the clan was clearly disapproving of the pairing. The Big Man considered this and then asked if they shouldn't just marry off the couples then. His counterpart frowned and pointed out that the situation was most prominently the young warriors of the people sleeping with the young women of his tribe, and that this was not a good trade.
The Big Man nodded, and then asked, "Right then, you lot who slept with their women, you're with them now."
It took a few moments for it to sink in for the nomads and the youngsters, although all of the elders in attendance were all nodding along sagely at the Big Man's words. Thinking for a moment while the nomads tried to figure out what to say, the Big Man then said, "Oh wait, that's more mouths for you to feed. Issue everyone heading out a supply of food."
It took quite some time for it to come out that yes, the Big Man was serious, and yes the rest of his people were backing them. There was then a bit of back and forth as they worked out a way to make it 'fair', the nomad chief soon realizing that this wasn't just a stunt or foolishness, but that the people took the settling of matters and injuries deadly serious, just that they applied to themselves. They wouldn't accept transgression from outsiders against them, but neither would they accept the opposite. Soon enough the trader found himself in the act of swapping out members of his own tribe just to make it so that the people staying or leaving at least had some reason to want to do so, such that he was not inflicting the injury of disruption of family unevenly to either side.
Of course, by his estimate, he came out far ahead in the deal, but for once he wondered if maybe he had found actual friends with whom he could safely and reliably trade with.
Seasons later, they returned with fresh loads of goods and slyly wondered if maybe there were anymore young warrior men who might want to sleep with their daughters, because spirits above could they fight! While there was a definite learning curve, the young men who had made fighting their profession were bloody good at it and had been the difference between survival and disaster more than once. A few of the men who had originally come with made to return to their original families with their new ones, but it remained a good trade all around. For their part, the returning men spoke of the wonders they had seen in the broader world.
And the Big Man smiled. Why ask for any one thing, when you could ask for friendship and have all the things?
Years went by and the mantle of Big Man passed along. The people were definitely having better relations with their neighbours, not just with the contact with the tribe of wanderers, but with the newly appointed heir, one Cwyrl, Son of Myta, Son of Ashryn. Born of his father's vitality and taught by his quick tongued mother, who had not spent her years idle but had bent her skills at persuasion and manipulation to climbing out of the social hole dug by her actions at getting back at Ashryn. With the assistance of his mother, he had been making headway in repairing relations with his grandfather's people, which neatly connected with another project initiated by the previous Big Man: to look into the forests atop the hill.
For generations the people had haphazardly tended to the forests, taking what they needed, which kept things mostly clear, but someone had noted that there seemed to be fewer trees. Since growing plants was what they did best, the people had gone at it with gusto... only to realize that trees were harder to tend to than grain. Still, they persisted, and as Myta and Cwyrl went about their business of doing business, they brought in people of the forests to assist. There were troubles and quarrels, but the quick tongued mother and son duo smoothed things over. Trees needed different things than grains, and just planting them in rows and expecting a forest by the next season was distinctly unrealistic.
However, in the efforts to replant areas where they had cut faster than the forest could regrow, and the people noticed something. Generations of working with irrigation in the hills and the flooding season in the valley had given them all a keen eye and awareness of how water flowed and could cut the land. They'd never really looked before, but in seeing bare areas where they were trying to plant get washed away in the spring rains while the older forest had the roots cling to the soil, their eyes lit up in enlightenment. Now that they were paying attention, they could also see how the forest soil was rich, where lowering down on the hills where they had cut away trees and bushes for fields they had to abandon the farms every few years because the soil became thin without the floodwaters of the river.
The trees were clearly important, the people just hadn't looked at what they might be doing. But they knew soil and water and they needed this now. They talked with the people of the forest who their heir, and then actual Big Man, brought to look over things, and they started to try things. Selective burning seemed to help, and it was distinctly noted that the black ash seemed to make the soil universally better, and staking down mats of reeds and fibres within the mud seemed to reduce the way the rains could cut it away and remove the tree seeds they tried to grow. Which direction they grew trees in was also clearly important, and they paid attention to how the trees could be aligned to best slow the water on the hills instead of creating channels... or they could deliberately create channels to collect water for their own uses.
It was costly, oh how it was costly to just feed people to do things that didn't directly result in grain, but as Cwryl's hair grew grey and he watched his grandchildren grow up, he knew that he was getting results... and the revenge his mother had impressed upon him to take. Crow had one last trick to play, one last laugh to caw.
Friendship with the traders had soon enough resulted in more directed marriages, political ties, and he had encouraged and orchestrated them. He had also encouraged such ties with the shattered remnants of his grandfather's people and the other victims of his father's rampage, and as it turned out, the men of the forests who hunted - and thus killed - to keep their families alive made for good warriors with just a bit of retraining. Bit by bit he was making the warriors of the families of old the servants of the traders even as he made his people the well fed warriors of the farmers. Bit by bit, piece by piece he was - and even as time closed in on him, largely had - replaced the lineages of chiefs with ones more preferable to him and his mother's ghost.
As he considered all of this, he also considered what to do with the twilight of his years. His counterpart among the traders - although he idly wondered how much longer that would last as already tribe meet ups would include their tribal head and clan leaders whenever possible and it was probably only a matter of time before the slow merger finished - had been tell him stories of the greater world: some troubling, some wondrous. There were other great peoples out there, peers to this valley in terms of significance. Amazing tales were told by the traders and the people who went with them, and he wondered if perhaps he should make a great journey to form the finale of a life well lived.
Perhaps most wondrous of all was the stories of a settlement an enormous distance away, one where the people oversaw a fantastical wonder, a place where spirits congregated and one felt intensely close to their realm. Tales told of travellers who would walk a full year to go to this place and make offerings to the guardians of the place, that they might experience the wonder themselves. Few of the people of the valley had gone, and fewer still had returned, but those who had could speak only of how their fondest wish was to have the chance to return, and how they barely had the words to describe the experience. Such an experience was one Cwryl was quite interested in.
Somewhat more practically, there were tales of a settlement in a place where all rivers emptied into a body of water that stretched across the horizon. While such a sight was assuredly a wonder to see, more important than that was the fact that the settlement had collected wonders and luxuries from the waters, and ties of trade with them could bring great wealth to the peoples. If he walked there with his counterpart, bearing gifts from the valley and things gained through the trade of their grain elsewhere, that greatly increased the chance of a lasting deal being established between them.
More troublingly, the traders were reporting that there was a group of people from somewhat distant lowlands who were also farmers, but who seemed to be more interested in attacking their neighbours than tending the land. While conflict happened and that was why warriors were needed and men needed to know how to fight, this other group seemed to revel in it. Their raids were disrupting trade, either by creating dangerous patches that the traders decided to just go around to minimize the chances of being attacked, or by wrecking previously established deals by killing the people the deals were made with or disrupting whatever activity was going on. Finding out more about these aggressive people first hand could be of significant benefit to the peoples relying upon Cwryl, especially if it could be determined if they were an actual threat.
Finally, on the list of places to go and things to see, there were dreadful campfire stories of an entrance to the Underworld up in taller hills, a place where smoke poured from the ground and the wails and groans of the dead could be heard echoing from deep within. While an ominous place, a dreadful place, there were stories... stories of how if the living walked in, while they might not walk out again, they could also deliver a petition to the spirits directly instead of having to die first... if their constitution and bravery held. A final way to serve the peoples for an old man, to walk headlong into death instead of waiting for it to claim him, and to make a request on behalf of his family and the families he protected and supported.
And then, finally, he could just spend his final days as he had spent his prior days, in work towards seeing the projects of his people fulfilled. There was always more to do for a Big Man like him, even if he had already shifted much of his duties over to the heir due to age's toll on his body. A journey might bring great benefit to the people, but staying here would definitely bring some benefit.
Decisions, decisions...
The final act of Cwryl, Grandson of the Crow, Son of Myta and Ashryn, was...
[] Pilgrimage to the site of wonder
[] Trade expedition to the village on the sea
[] Investigation of the lowland tribes
[] Journey into the Underworld
[] Keep working at home
The next great Big Man was chosen for...
[] Administration
[] Diplomacy
[] War
