The Green Voice

Lately, it has come to my attention that a number of letters are not reaching their destinations, and I've even heard of them being stolen from their recepients. It seems I've acquired an inconvenient reputation. Given the situation, I will hereafter be signing my letters by different names and sending them by different couriers, and must ask that you destroy these letters after you've read them. Any knowledge of import I might relate, you'll just have to memorize.

-This article is excerpted from the collected correspondence of the The Alchemic Psychopomp, one of the Fabled Compendiums of Sof Sator. It contains uncommon, forbidden, or perhaps even dangerous knowledge-

I stuided as much as I could about the deity they call the Green Voice from the colleges I have access to, but I'm sure you can predict how woefully uninvestigated it is as a subject. Therefore, I took it upon myself to travel to The Laines myself, whereat I arrived at the The Hearkening Bulwark some two weeks past. I came with a letter of introduction from a colleague in Revan, which they regarded with no kind of acknowledgement at all. In fact, the Rangers who populate the Bulwark seemed to regard me with suspicion after I showed them the letter. Someone might have warned me that they had such feelings about Revan, but perhaps my cold reception was due to some other factor. Fortunately, I was not foolish enough to tell them why I was here, instead explaining that I'd come to study the techniques of their war medics.
I'm not particularly skilled at pretending to be a physician, no, but I know enough about medicine that I can confuse anyone short of an expert. Still, the Rangers I first met with were helpful enough to set p a meeting between myself and their chief healer, so I had to slip away, lest I waste too much time constructing an ever more elaborate lie. I suppose I'm saying that the locales were less than helpful this time.
As for why I'm here, and why I'm writing you, allow me to tell you about the being that the people of the Laines call the Green Voice, and what I have discovered of its Word and Song.

The Green Song

Unsatisfied with reality and the mundanities that fill mortal lives with such trivial suffering, anthrals tend to invent alternate explanations for things they deem large enough to carry the blame for their fates. These things, mostly natural things, become canonized in song and story as gods. This is the case for the deities of the Jei-Medir people in Pharaul, which they have named Wind and Sunfire in worship of storm and sun. It is likewise the case for the deities of the Ayqir people of Vont, who have named their gods Rime, Salt, and Dim Fathom in worship of ice and sea. Most who have ventured opinions on the faiths of the peoples of southestern Sof Sator are of the opinion that this is also the explanation the Rhyqir and Icqir people of the Laines and their deity of nature, named Green, but if I agreed with that I would not have come.
A deeper reading of the act of communion with Green has led me to believe that it is something special, and perhaps more real than the other deities in its primal pantheon. You already know my suspicions; your doubts hae been so well stated in our correspondences that you almost had me convinced that I was wasting my team by coming here. I will not, therefore, gloat over my vindication when I tell you that my theories have been supported by my findings.
The rituals of worship enacted by these primal sorcerers, who call themselves Soothsayers in Pharaul and Vont and Mediators in the Laines, require a particular kind of music to conjure. In the case of the deities Wind, Sunfire, Rime, Salt, and Dim Fathom, the natural world reacts to songs composed by the sorcerers. This is not altogether different than typical sorcery, except that the elements of the natural world they direct their ritual toward do resonate with their songs. The world replies in kind, echoing the song back at them. This does come with some ability to manipulate these elements, which these sorcerers mistake for boons from their deities. It is, in fact, just sorcery. They are casting spells and nothing more.
Green is different. The Mediators begin to sing, and then Green replies, not simply to resonate with the song or echo it back at them, but to guide them. The Green Song is something that exists in nature. If anything, the Mediators stumbled upon the proper notes to trigger the Green Song's emergence, after which they sing along. They have learned the song over time, though they also claim that the song changes, which I have confirmed. Before I began my active study, I observed their rituals for aweek, and I have watched them adapt to changes in the Green Song. I have seen it surprise them, create redundant rhythms and then change them abruptly, such that the Mediators struggle to compensate.
To be blunt, I've seen the Green toy with them. It seems to willfully defy them, as though it wants them to try to sing along, but does not want them to succeed. You understand, then, what this resembles? Have we not both observed similar struggles between the spirits of the dead and the ghost-binders in the deep laboratories of Arun? I would not go so far as to say that the Green is a ghost, for it would have to be a dead spirit of such incredible size and power that it could playfully defy the will of an entire population of sorcerers who have made a religion out of their attempts to manipulate it, however unwittingly. But I do believe that the Green is something real and willful, a spiritual being that could, in theory, be bound if properly contended with.

The Green Word

From the song, the Mediators of the Laines have discerned its command. How they have come upon this conclusion, I can't imagine, but religions are often built upon such inscrutable interpretations. You know the Green Word, the command that the deepwoods of the Laines must never be entered or explored by anyone. This is, after all, the command that began the The Thousand Year War, and the reason for the existence of the immense bulwark and its various gates. Rumors of uncontacted Icquir tribes that live in the unexplored depths of the Laines, so deep beneath its incredible canopy that they have never seen the sun, nor heard the sea or glimpsed the mountains that surround the Laines, are treated by the people of the Laines as fact. No surprise there, but there are further rumors of leviathan beasts dwelling inside the woods, enormous bestial monarchs that are to the deepwood what whales and the Writhe are to the ocean. I cannot say these are unfounded. No one could. It is forbidden even to peer too long upon the deepwood, and if I were caught trying to use magic to gaze into its depths I would be expelled. Or perhaps executed.
Of course you know such laws are meant to be violated. I did conjure a small song to peer into the Deepwood, but I did so only briefly. I can tell you that the size and power of the Green Song emanating from the deepwood would have made further attempts futile. If any beings do live in the wood, magic must be impossible for them, so overpowering is the ceaselessness of the Green Song within.

The Green Voice

Therefore, I violated the law of the Green Word and entered the deepwood. What's more, I've survived to write you about it. I passed into the deepwood undetected, thanks to a few certain potions and spells which I will not divulge. If you ever wanted to get me killed, this is your chance. Tell the Rangers of the Laines what I've done, and they'll hunt me until the end of my days, perhaps even slaughter my family and end my line. I have no line to end, of course,but you understand that I'm telling you to take this secrecy very seriously.
I have no reports of leviathan creatures for you, nor of any uncontacted tribes. I cannot tell you they do not exist, but I did not encounter any. I did not go far into the Deepwood. I admit, I feared the Green Song, whatever thing is singing it. If I went too deep, as I said, my own magic would have become ineffective, and I'm not willing to risk such a state for even a moment.
On the trees, I discovered a fungus. Yes, a fungus. I know that you are not interested in fungus. Forgive an alchemist her preoccupation with fungus. My point is that it sang the Green Song, which was not something the rest of the deepwood seemed to do. There were animals in the deepwood as well, which were no different than those in the rest of the Laines, though some of them also had this fungus growing in their fur or elsewhere on their bodies. There is a troubling infestation of this fungus in the Deepwood, and no one will know because no one can enter. It made me wonder again if the Green is some enormous dead spirit, something perhaps rotting beneath a mass of horrible fungus in the musty depths of the Deepwood. A thing, perhaps, which has charged its faithful with keeping all the world from interfering with its rest.
Of course, I had to investigate.

As to my Particular Talents...

There is a rule, in the Laines, that the dead must be kept away from the Deepwood. It's a peculiarly specific rule, isn't it? I imagine some terminally ill zealot of the Green on their last day must have roped their way down the interior of the bulwark at some point, run for the woods and had the Rangers after them. Or perhaps there's something more to it? Unfortunately, without a dying person around, my role as psychopomp is useless to me.
Did she kidnap someone? you are currently asking yourself. Yes, I took someone from their deathbed and dragged them into the Deepwood. If I weren't will to take such simple steps for the sake of investigation, my life would hardly be worthwhile.
I'll not expound on this greatly, as any of my own impressions or guesses would pale beneath the truth of what I observed. To a mat of fungus in the Deepwood's shadows, I threw a terminally ill young man who would not survive the night. Like chum to teh sea, I threw him, wondering what might come. I waited for him to die, and as he passed away, I hooked his soul and held it using that combination of sorcery and alchemy that I will never describe to you. As I held him, I made with him the normal deal which I make with the dying, and while he numbered his secrets I searched through his truths for clues about his relationship with the Green. The poor man knew nothing. He had never even wondered that there may be a deeper nature at work. Too young, too foolish, for such questions to have occured. Young souls are always useless like this.
When I released him to the afterlife, he did not go to the afterlife. Instead, I watched his soul slip into the Deepwood, as if pulled down into those sunless depths by some invisible hand. Never, never, never have I witness or imagined anything with enough strength to so callously rob a body from the mouth of hell, claiming that which is owed to that which must, by necessity, one day consume us all. As I came out of my visions and gazed upon the now empty body, I watched the fungus beginning to take hold of the flesh. I sat and pondered for awhile and, come dawn, the soulless form stood and looked upon me. Dead as it was, still dead I was sure, there was in the dead man's eyes a spark of life, of hatred, of pointed condemnation for my presence.
I fled the Deepwood. My investigation into its power has ceased. If you are mad enough to follow up, then you may tell me whatever terrors you learn, assuming whatever resides within doesn't take you into itself and make of your husk a fungus-ridden vessel. Whatever resides inside the Deepwood, this thing named Green which sings with its devouts and commands them to keep the world away, I now have no desire to personally investigate it. I will stand on the border of hell and taunt the demon with its own damned souls, but to have a dead man gaze on me with honest hatred in his dawnlit eyes filled me with a dread I haven't felt since I sloughed my own mortality. For a time, I will wander north and westward, perhaps to investigate the secrets of the Golden Reef just for an excuse to be as far as can be from the Deepwood of the Laines.
And to think, green was my favorite color. Now I need a new one.
-Erdal En
807 C.R.