A desperate group of travelers approached the shady-looking man that
lingered beneath the boughs. Or rather, he waited for them to approach
while sharpening his scythe. He had waited years, priming his contacts
and leaving word in the appropriate villages with their dissatisfied
minorities. He was known as the Green Reaper, a rogue who was once a
Druid and yet retained some small affinity with nature, which he used
exclusively for its destruction.

This raggedy band was the first of the silent exodus that had begun
throughout Aetolia - his carefully orchestrated plan had begun. Without
fuss, without fanfare or notice of the general populace, hundreds
gathered over the span of a few nights. A few rebellious youths from
this town, a handful of bitter minorities from over yonder, et cetera.
They camped with Scipter, and listened to his wisdom, for they had been
led by his carefully sown hints and trails left throughout the
continent. He spoke of evils housed within man-eating plants, of their
necessary destruction, of a place of peace and nurtured quiet.

They approached the Morgun, as it was called then, as an enormous mob in
the dark of midnight. Into the trees, Scipter vanished. The mob waited
but, as Scipter did not re-appear, they muttered amongst themselves. The
Morgun rustled hungrily, and the villagers cried out, believing
themselves betrayed. Yet, before their shouts of dismay could fully rise
from their throats, the singing of a blade rang from the trees. A
raspberry branch fell, lifeless, to their feet. Scipter had seduced the
Morgun shrubberies, and for a few moments they lay still, as if basking
in the moonlight. The villagers rushed in, with what weapons they had
gathered, and hacked as best they could. Of course, the Morgun woke from
its trance and many lives were lost that night, but, soon enough, the
spirit of the hungry forest had, at least temporarily, been tamed.

To forever glorify the "struggle against evil" and further justify their
slaughter, the Therans, as they would come to be called, renamed the
Morgun to the Black Forest. Scipter lived the rest of his days in Thera
as the mayor, though he spent a great deal of their budget unnecessarily
"pruning" the so-called Black Forest. After the night of Thera's
founding, however, his scythe was lost, and with it, the title of Green
Reaper. It is this scythe that now carves through the skies, perhaps
embittered by the return of the Morgun.

Penned by my hand on the 23rd of Variach, in the year 168 MA.