Calendar/986/April/26

From Westaven

The winter in Eneini is cold but more wet than frozen. After some three more months of Yule’s training the weather turns the corner, and on the last week in April he returns to Pollexia. His riding skills have increased, and the muddy trip is quite smooth. From the moment he leaves Master Tyrouse’s grounds Yule realizes how hermetical his months of Spartan training had been, for the city and the spring roads of Pollexia had changed: as he leaves Eneini and approaches the capitol city, Yule is struck by the abundance of military preparation. Great bivouacs are being constructed outside the walls of Eneini, Hadrian, and Pollex itself, some of which are already occupied; carpenters and armorer’s hammers ring everywhere; and soldiers crowd the roads and cities. Pollexia’s pullout from war less than a year ago was obviously not an end of hostilities, but a transfer of the front lines from the island nation of Lognia to some other place. Where this next conflict will occur is a mystery, for in Pollex Yule hears rumor of everywhere from Aeneus to some country or another over the Westrun Mountains or the sea.

Inside Pollex’s high stone walls, the Altuthian Keepers of Scrolls attempt to hand Yule a document: two sheaves of parchment upon which are scrawled words Yule cannot read. Cleverly, arms crossed, he refuses to take the pages until he’s read their words, for “I will neither handle those nor pay until I know their contents.” Basically, he is told:

• Trepindia—the entire island—was deemed sacred by the ancient Aeneans, even long before they expanded and became any sort of great city-state. Initially they built cities there (this is some 2000 years ago?), but eventually Trepindia became a great cemetery—the burial place of commoners and kings alike. It was also a center of worship, only. No one has lived there even from the earliest days of recorded time. Today, because of its countless scores of human remains buried there—as well as the evil embodied in their blasphemous religion—the island is the abode of spiritual unrest. Throughout history Altuth has repeatedly warned against going there, for it serves as a memorial of the Aeneans’ foolishness—which ultimately cost them their empire and their lives. They point in recent times to the “Rotten Reaper” plague, which all but killed the entire Aenean population 400 or so years ago, and to the Great Fire of Trepindia, during which the entire island’s northern mainland was enigmatically destroyed 250 years ago. Both of these were echoes of punishments.

• There are many holy islands off the Trepindian island’s “mainland.” Each is dedicated to a deity of one sort or another, and all are in ruins today. Most of these gods would be unrecognizable to modern Westaveners, for they were false—either invented or imported from across the sea. It was not until the fall of Aenea (500 years ago?) that the true gods deigned to reveal themselves and receive worship.

• They found no record of anyone named Ischoarius.

• The specific “Holy Isle” Yule described is unknown to the Keepers of Scrolls; they found some mention of “holy fonts,” usually associated with early national rites of Aenea, such as priests cleansing the bodies of the dead, or even of mass cleansings of entire armies. The gods’ favors were reputedly given to drinkers or bathers in the water of Trepindian fonts. Mythological tales also exist of gods fighting over waters (“fonts”), as desert nomads would fight over an oasis.

• Although not about a font, they discovered a myth of a Trepindian island, talk of “dark birds,” and use of a hunt, such as the scroll includes. This island was called “Most Holy” (or “Holy Holy”/”Truly Holy”) in the myth, and it was once a mountain top looking down over a chaotic mist. Nothing existed but the mist, and this one peak poking out of it. Into this tip of rock some of the gods, bored it seems, stabbed their weapons in sport. From the cut a waterfall flowed--which served as the source of the seas, and eventually of the land, for as the sea rose it floated continents up out of the mist, into the sun. Unfortunately, this mountain was no mountain, but the “crown” (head) of the weapon-wielding gods’ mother, and the water was not water at all, but her blood. They had killed their own mother. In grief, the gods deemed that both the waters and the island from which it flowed was “Most Holy”; they also created men (the Aeneans) to construct a temple around it and protect it for all eternity. This temple fortress was to continually burn sacrifices to the gods, at all times and forever, to keep them strong, and to protect the Holy Water’s source. As long as they did this, the Aenean kings were granted permission to drink the flowing water/blood, which would give them the wisdom (“sight”) to subjugate the world.

• The Keepers of Scrolls mention the above myth with a condescending smile, for 1) historically the Aenean kings were well-known to be madmen, megalomaniacs, and/or fools, and 2) this is but one of hundreds of ridiculous creation myths to be handed down over time.

• The helmet appears to them nothing more than a relic of a dead civilization. They see no magic about it, and they are quite curious as to where Yule found it, although they never point-blank ask.

Yule pays the men another $250, and promises more if they discover anything important in the coming months—although he makes it clear he is not sure when he will come again. Yule then rides back to Eneini.