An Oath of Vengeance

As winter neared its dying days and spring’s green glory grew ‘neath the ice and snow, the plane of Life issued a curious summons to the wild children of its ancient reaches: the Fae and their High Courts.

The first to arrive was Mor’vaeg the Moonborn Anathema, the wolfine lord of the hunting courts – those Fae who hunted undead and threats to nature, primarily consisting of the wolfine and barghests. The tremendous Fae warrior was pleased to meet the representatives of the Heartwood who came to inspect the noise of his arrival within the Garden of the Dryads, and he was more than happy to spin tales of the elder days of Fae mischief and wild battles. When told that a prophecy had informed them of his impending arrival, the hulking noble seemed unsurprised, though he mourned the lack of sylvans – Fae warrior servants that attended to all the High Courts – in this day and age, sorrowfully informing curious parties that such Fae were now extinct after terrible struggles against the forces of Fundamental Dark. Before departing to hunt undead terrors within the realm, Mor’vaeg informed present Duirani that other nobles would arrive in the following weeks, and that each had been granted visions of threats and crimes against Dia’ruis. When questioned on the vision he had received, the wolfine Fae recounted premonitions of a poisoned land, leading many to conclude that the Imperial spellplague wrought by Bloodloch in recent years had incurred Dia’ruis’ ire.

Next to arrive was Myssurea, an ancient undine noble who possessed memories of the Age of Despair and the final stand of the sylvans. Talkative and easy-going, the Fae lady took her time entertaining questions from gathered Duirani, including questions about the vision sent to her by Dia’ruis. When pressed, the undine finally revealed that she had beheld visions of engineered blight and the hubris of mortal science, affronts to her court that would defile rivers, streams, and wild places sacred to Dia’ruis. Even as the conversation continued, several observant Duirani noted that these crimes rest at the feet of the Theocracy, renewing their fervour against such profanity.

Two weeks later, the Lord of the Soliads – Cirravax, Sovereign of the Scorching Feast – arrived upon the Prime with similar news and insisted that Dia’ruis had arranged for his arrival for a convocation of the High Courts. Though less talkative than the undine Lady, this regent of the Fae was shockingly transparent about the premonition he had received with his summons, spinning tales of a God of Death whose design did not feed the plane from which the Fae hailed. Condemning this god as a threat to the plane of Life, he impressed upon any in earshot the necessity of ensuring that the Cycle be strengthened, propagated, and held in the highest regard for the good of the realm. When questioned about the sylvans of old, the Soliad Lord had little else to add aside from explaining the nature of their extinction and birth, insisting that Dia’ruis did not possess the necessary archetypes to fashion new sylvan children – a state of affairs that put the High Courts in a poor position to continue their work.

Late to arrive was the newly-crowned Stag King, Thyrrus Oakmaul of the Crimson Rut, a satyr Fae who had recently endured the trials of Kaarn, the stag Guardian healed by Duiran’s work with the Living Totem of the Aureliana. Having triumphed in showings of strength, wit, and abundant consumption of alcohol, the Fae noble entertained questions about the Guardian, his own life, the autumnal courts who tended to wounded and endangered fauna throughout Aetolia, and even the distant places of the world connected to Dia’ruis. Like all the others, the regal Fae was open about the ominous visions sent alongside his summons and whispered of those who rejected the Cycle and the sting of their refusal, insisting that those who eluded death stole food from the proverbial plate of Life Herself. Unlike the other revelations, this was accepted as a common truth amongst the Duirani gathered, for it was old news to them and nothing epiphanic in nature. After sharing several celebratory drinks with their new friend, the Duirani retreated to their homes to await the arrival of the asrai seer known as Branwen, the Fae who had helped Duiran find a way to release Akkari from their evangelised state.

As spring reigned true and pure, the appointed hour arrived, and Branwen stepped through a gateway to traverse the vast distance between the Morgun and Titania’s court in a single step with Mor’vaeg at her side. The High Courts aligned as was customary, with the Daybreak Court and their allied Fae separated from the Lunar Courts by Titania and her Twilight Queensguard. The nobles joined together in spiritual communion to grant Duiran a glimpse of the eternal dreams that held Dia’ruis in fretful slumber, weaving an ethereal hum that swept throughout the Hall of the Dryad Queen. Multifarious shades of green blossomed between the Fae collective, coalescing together as a seething mass of vernal energy that rippled like a pond captured, the phantom essence of an ancient-yet-new Lifegiver whorling within the invisible boundaries of their ensorceled gathering. The Fae din soon split apart like fruit torn by jagged claws, revealing the pit of its epiphany: an explosion of imagery and the hauntingly beautiful song spun within the heart of Dia’ruis. As if cut from the whole cloth of Her dreams, the images wove together as an orderly procession per the terms of Her tranquil song and the new beginnings of spring threaded through as a guiding needle to grant Duiran and the Fae Nobles a glimpse of Her ineffable truth.

Dream soon ceded to nightmares terrible and furious, however, at once heavy with the omen of Her need.

Those gathered within the hall of the Dryad Queen beheld dreams of foul murklight roiling within a nebulous space enclosed by stone, soil, and the writhing limitations of the ley, its profanity racing serpentine throughout the bones of the land like the rot of a long-enduring infection. Terrible illness manifest in the wake of all they saw, though there was naught there to suffer its ravages, leaving the very notion of disease behind as a poisoned feast for the unknowable potential within Sapience’s worldveins, giving birth to pestilent nightmares without sense or reason – only hunger and fury. So too did they glimpse wicked, sickening blight that bloomed like a sour carpet throughout a forest unnamed and unknown, steeping Her nightmares in the poison of science and mortal hubris; each mortal present felt Her toss and turn in Her furious dreaming, railing against those that would imitate Her, ape Her purpose and beauty, and tamper in forces that only She could guide without disaster. Crashing waves of fury soon impressed themselves upon those present, the edict of Dia’ruis writ true in the hammer of their raging veins: obliteration was Her immediate mandate and judgement for these two crimes, and the pleasure of the decree coloured Her dreams with the vibrance of endless splendour; even slumbering eternal, the Mother of All That Lives felt palpable satisfaction in the old truth of hunted shadow and excised filth.

These visions of rot gave way to something more sombre, more macabre, granting Duirani a glimpse of a beast of countless eyes and skeletal features, its slavering hunger evident even to those truly insensate. Though none spoke, they knew this to be the god of death spoken of by Cirravax, a lord of the grave who did not owe fealty to Dia’ruis and thus held no obligation to feed Her. A drive to survive was the prime sensation that followed this revelation, for this bestial thing represented a grave danger to Her that could stir Her from Her dreams and put an end to all that the plane was meant to do; this world, influenced by Her every restive moment in ways incomprehensible, would embrace the Cycle by will alone and enjoin themselves to that which feeds Her – an act that would vanquish this many-eyed terror of bone and darkened appetites, bereft of worship and adherent faith as it would be. Though this epiphany wove disquiet throughout the gathered Primals of Duiran, there was no resistance nor denial of the truth of things: to serve Dia’ruis would be to serve and propagate the Cycle, for nothing else would feed Her and inspire Her growth.

Numb to the horror and shock of previous imagery, the last two visions were a blessed and familiar relief to the gathered crowd. Those held in the throes of the vision experienced the displeasure, sorrow, and sting in the heart of their goddess-and-plane, knew now in truth that every person beyond the Cycle was a wound as might be experienced by a mother who lost a child. Though She called for vengeance and redress, even the most twisted of Her nightmares bid them to attempt a peaceful return to the world’s natural order, urging violence and destruction only as a last resort as proof of Her love for all spun from the cloth of Her being. When Duiran unveiled its bloodlust in response to such portents, the Fae Nobility urged caution and diplomacy where possible, bidding the council to heed the will of Dia’ruis before all others. The final piece of the puzzle soon fell into place a breath later, revealing the deepest source of the lirathyar’s ire: the stolen years of ancient and powerful empires such as Drakkenmont itself. Furious that a mortal institution would dare to outlive a lirathyar, the plane’s semi-conscious dreams decreed such things to be destined for a ruinous and bloody end as a warning against the hubris of those who would defile and pillage the land’s sacred bounties.

And so it was that the spiritual communion ended and the High Courts hastened to bind Duiran’s loyal warriors to the newly-wrought geas of the Fae: a vow to honour and live the legacy of the sylvans of yore in service to the Fae and Dia’ruis, shouldering the burden of the plane’s limitless fury at all the wounds inflicted upon Her and Her predecessor.

Penned by my hand on Falsday, the 6th of Dharos, in the year 13 AC.