Introduction
From the musings of Delei Aratus
To the woodsmen and women who live along its borders and to the folk of the Trothkhannan, the Skaarvald is a place to be avoided at all costs. Centuries of Aruhvian doctrine has associated it with the Fey, those foul spirits captured in the pages of the Aruhviad whom the Keeper and his Graces smote down and chased from the face of the earth with wrath and vengeance. Good Aruhvians who spent their childhoods reading Dancarian scripture will know, however, that the places the Fey were rumoured to live and reside can still resonate with their wickedness and the good lord the Keeper has bade his servants to avoid.
The Anatratic Quandries Chapter Two, Verse Six
To outsiders, the forest is certainly a place of dread and foreboding, but for those who live along its edges, many of whom who have very little time for priests, the threat is far more immediate than that of simply angering the Keeper. Across Aestis the tradition the Greenwood Folk is common, these are the people who live on the edges of great forests and hunt and forage in the woods, grazing cattle and pigs on the heathland close to the forests edge, finding firewood, timber and mosses to insulate their homes. They fish in the forest rivers and pools and know a handful of the hidden trails long ago used by the Fey. They are known as Greenwood Folk because they rarely penetrate the vast dark interiors of the great forests (or, those who do are rarely ever seen again). On the edge of the Skaarvald live hundreds of dotted communities of Greenwood Folk. These communities are some of the most diverse in Aestis, with Olorians, Del'Marahans, Virefolk, Mountain folk, Arclanders living together alongside Half Firg, some Jaraki and Ryvvik. A Greenwood village is an ideal place to lie low for those who are on the run, only the most diligent bounty hunters go to the edge of the Skaarvald; life in the villages on the edge of the forest is hard but a collective identity has emerged and the people refer to themselves as 'Woodly'. A core part of Woodly culture is the folk lore, songs and tales that explain life on the edges of the forest and which imparts deeper truths than are found in the Aruhviad. Woodly folk know from their songs that the Fey never fully died out, and those that journey deep enough into the great interior of the Skaarvald will find them if they wish to be found. In some tales the Fey are wicked, mischevious tricksters, luring unsuspecting travellers to their deaths, in others they are kind and noble. Some songs tell of Fey who punish foolish mortals who harm or abuse the meadows, streams and great trees of the forest, and others describe humans that once encountered sad or mournful Fey who told the true story of the Keeper's treachery. This isn't to suggest that Aruhvian prejudices against the Fey and the religion's claims that they are the original source of evil in the world haven't seeped into the villages of the Greenwood Folk, far from it. A deep and abiding fear and superstition, partly informed by the power of religion shapes the lives of the Woodly.
A handful of Greenwood Folk who have ventured too far into the forest and have lived to tell the tale have returned, haunted by the fear of a great and terrible presence deep in its heart and have been gripped by a madness and a terror. Some claim that they very woods themselves rose up in the shape of beasts and devoured their friends. This article helps to explain the story of the Skaarvald and the darkness that dwells within, and helps to explain the experiences of those that dwell on its edge.
The Thorn King
The Skaarvald, a thousand centuries ago was the Fey realm of Elieash, one of the few surviving kingdoms following the Fey's wars with the Keeper. It was ruled by the vain and resentful Hyadthe Fey King Nothoril, whose pride and vanity would be his downfall.
The relentless foe of the Fey, Eratheon, a servant of the terrible and monstrous Haunter that existed beyond the edges of Damnation itself, was sent to assist The Keeper in his wars against the Fey (for the full narrative of these wars please read
The Story of the Fey). He recognised in Nothoril an individual who could be used to finally destroy the Fey from within.
Nothoril, the lord of the Elieash, had never enjoyed the unconditional support of his peers in the way that Neniel or her predecessors had. Nothoril, who was Hyadthe, always felt that he was an outsider, removed from the inner circle of power and influence of the Fey rulers. He was a fierce defender of his realm and a powerful and wise ruler, but also at times vengeful, suspicious and bitter. He was perfect for Eratheon's schemes.
Eratheon created a hidden, secret realm beneath Elieash, a place that was wild and dark and that echoed the inner bitterness of Nothoril. This was known simply as 'The Briar', and Eratheon instructed Nothoril to keep its existence a secret. The Briar brought to Nothoril immense power, but as he exercised it he began to fall into Eratheon's trap. Slowly Nothoril became transformed and began to merged with the briar until he was subsumed into it completely. Only when it was too late did the Fey of Elieash, led by Ty'aran, the most loyal knight of Nothoril realise what had happened. Rising against the Fey, the lord of the Briar, once known as Nothoril led a war to subjugate the realm. Despite an army from Anagol sent to help their kin, half the kingdom fell and was ruled by a new master, The Thorn King.
The remaining Fey, desperate for sanctuary and fearing that the rest of their realm would be over run turned to the subterranean acquatic people, the Oriads (the children of Orius), with whom they had a long and bitter history. The Oriads turned their back on the Fey barring the doors deep into the earth in their hour of need. Elieash fell to the Thorn King, and bands of human settlers entered the forest, seizing what remained from a greatly weakened Fey. Those refugees from the fall of Elieash fled northwards to Anagol. What remained of their home became known as the Skaarvald, or the 'Lost Forest'.
The Briar
When magic was finally drained from the world and the surviving Fey entered the Feysleep deep beneath the earth, with a handful standing guard over the entrances to their caves, each taking turns to live in the world for a millennia or so, then waking a comrade so that they may slumber. They Fey who remained awake needed to rotate between themselves their guardianship of the great portals (called the Nyadris Doors), to prevent being overcome by the despair of the ages, a common condition amongst the eternal and the solitary, a millennia was the time in which any one Fey's sanity could endure. The Skaarvald was gifted by Eratheon, whose body was returned to the Haunter once his duty was complete, to the Thorn King. The Thorn King, knowing that he was the traitor of his own kind, sought to establish himself as some form of deity within the forest, which he ruled from the netherworld of the Briar that Eratheon had created. As humanity grew in power and stature, the monstrosities that the Thorn King created, known as 'Thornkind', mirrored the beings that existed beyond the forest's borders. The thick briar took shape and formed into humanoid servants and also briar wolves. The Thorn King knew that the handful of remaining Fey, those who stood guard over their comrades and those that had decided to hold out in enclaves in the forest, were no match for his power. The Keeper had drained the power of the Fey by capturing the power of the Song, the first magic to have existed in the world. When Nothoril was transformed into the Thorn King, he thrived on a different kind of energy, one that the Keeper had not learned to control or steal. It was the power of Damnation and this meant that The Thorn King endured when the Fey did not.
The Awkening
When the Sundering occurred and magic flowed back into the world, it was the Fey who woke first. Initially just a handful of them emerged into the world, led by a lowborn Fey scout called Calastophen. She was helped by a Saasku warrior called Dei Renh, and the two fought side by side to restore a small part of the old Kingdom of Eileash, which they called Urainthas or 'the citadel on the shining water'. This small lakeside fiefdom was defended by the remaining Fey, and as one of her first acts as leader she sent delegations to those beings the Fey remembered were their friends, the Firg, the Jaraki, and she sought out any surviving Graces. She sent word to the Oriads that they must find a truce, the Oriads had also returned to the world after their own vanishing and found it greatly transformed by humanity. Calastophen realised that the Fey's greatest enemy, the Keeper, was gone and this gladdened the hearts of all her kin, but she was instinctively wary, knowing that the Thorn King, when he eventually awoke, would be more than a match for all of them. She also knew that the hearts of humanity had been so deeply poisoned against the Fey, that any interaction with mankind must be limited, careful and cautious.
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