Ari Returns
That last module was a bit rough on the party, mentally, shall we say .... Ari is a little less the Vague today.
The chatty elf resumes her private musings.
The werewolf girl is dead.
My response to this is not something that I can explain to my sometime companions. Our first encounters with her were too fraught with conflict; I think they do not understand that I did not want her dead, that I did not hold her attempts to lure me away so that she might do me harm against her.
She was a predator, and the closest thing to a human I could understand that I have yet encountered. I cannot hate her for being attuned to her nature; nor can I hate her for whatever bitterness she had from being bound and carved with silver. She was hungry; I gave her food. I did not give her my blood and flesh, though that was what she truly wanted; respect for the predator does not mean walking into its jaws.
Too many of the others seemed only willing to care about her when they found her caged and asked her if she wished to be free of her curse. The possibility that she was cureable made her into another creature that could be rescued in a day full of casual rescuings, neither a wild thing bound nor a soul in torment.
And now she is dead, along with many humans and others of this place, and no few of the local fey.
I hold to her death as what it is: trapped in the in-between space of human mockery, their freak show, mistrusted because of her fluidity of form as much as anything else, and because of those bindings, held in place to be murdered -- neither freed of her affliction nor free to be as her affliction made her. And I hold to her death as something finite, comprehensible, something that can be held to, because there were so many others.
This place is out of balance, and I am young, young, young, not skilled in the ways of reading the balance of things. The town slowly consumes the forest like mold, like the plague that the forest in turn gave to the town that their devourings might be mutual. The elder of the grove said it was unwise to have healed it, and I wonder if I did wrong seeing with child's eyes only that my friend wished this aid of me and not the greater thing.
The town gnaws away at the forest, and the trees do not have the strength to fight the axes. And the human who runs these things, who does not appreciate the wisdom of lizards, would rather gnaw more and harder in the name of Things than mend affairs. And because the trees cannot strike, the fey grow dark and angry, and also take a course of less wisdom, and invite eternal winter into their hearts and eternal winter's murders. They twist the unliving constructions made only to murder trees into tools to murder others, and take undead beasts as their servants; a distinction that makes no difference.
Their lives are blood on my hands, for all that their queen asked me, asked us all, to deliver them from their curse even if it was blade and flame that must do it. This is the weightiness of the imbalance of this place, this is the cost. I have rendered my apologies to the great nymph that so many lives were spent in this, and now I must bend my will to fix it, bend and shape myself into one who has the capacity to fix it.
This human leader is in need of correction. He is a source of the imbalance - not the sole source, by any means, but his is the manner of its recent escalation. The other humans are like deer; they will graze until sated, even if it kills the forest. He wills to kill the forest, driving more slaughter than the deer whose overpopulation was slowly whittling away at its edges; he brings in scavengers to clear the corpses the deer left behind. He wills more Things made, even if it means that his offspring will have no forest to graze.
The paladin will object to correcting the overpopulation of human deer with predators. This is fine; he has an interest in this herd of his species above all others. But he speaks of human capacity to plant as well as to hew, because he can see starvation for the children if the leader has his way. Humans who plant as well as hew are wiser than deer, and able to see beyond the edges of what will be a long, cold winter.
The chatty elf resumes her private musings.
The werewolf girl is dead.
My response to this is not something that I can explain to my sometime companions. Our first encounters with her were too fraught with conflict; I think they do not understand that I did not want her dead, that I did not hold her attempts to lure me away so that she might do me harm against her.
She was a predator, and the closest thing to a human I could understand that I have yet encountered. I cannot hate her for being attuned to her nature; nor can I hate her for whatever bitterness she had from being bound and carved with silver. She was hungry; I gave her food. I did not give her my blood and flesh, though that was what she truly wanted; respect for the predator does not mean walking into its jaws.
Too many of the others seemed only willing to care about her when they found her caged and asked her if she wished to be free of her curse. The possibility that she was cureable made her into another creature that could be rescued in a day full of casual rescuings, neither a wild thing bound nor a soul in torment.
And now she is dead, along with many humans and others of this place, and no few of the local fey.
I hold to her death as what it is: trapped in the in-between space of human mockery, their freak show, mistrusted because of her fluidity of form as much as anything else, and because of those bindings, held in place to be murdered -- neither freed of her affliction nor free to be as her affliction made her. And I hold to her death as something finite, comprehensible, something that can be held to, because there were so many others.
This place is out of balance, and I am young, young, young, not skilled in the ways of reading the balance of things. The town slowly consumes the forest like mold, like the plague that the forest in turn gave to the town that their devourings might be mutual. The elder of the grove said it was unwise to have healed it, and I wonder if I did wrong seeing with child's eyes only that my friend wished this aid of me and not the greater thing.
The town gnaws away at the forest, and the trees do not have the strength to fight the axes. And the human who runs these things, who does not appreciate the wisdom of lizards, would rather gnaw more and harder in the name of Things than mend affairs. And because the trees cannot strike, the fey grow dark and angry, and also take a course of less wisdom, and invite eternal winter into their hearts and eternal winter's murders. They twist the unliving constructions made only to murder trees into tools to murder others, and take undead beasts as their servants; a distinction that makes no difference.
Their lives are blood on my hands, for all that their queen asked me, asked us all, to deliver them from their curse even if it was blade and flame that must do it. This is the weightiness of the imbalance of this place, this is the cost. I have rendered my apologies to the great nymph that so many lives were spent in this, and now I must bend my will to fix it, bend and shape myself into one who has the capacity to fix it.
This human leader is in need of correction. He is a source of the imbalance - not the sole source, by any means, but his is the manner of its recent escalation. The other humans are like deer; they will graze until sated, even if it kills the forest. He wills to kill the forest, driving more slaughter than the deer whose overpopulation was slowly whittling away at its edges; he brings in scavengers to clear the corpses the deer left behind. He wills more Things made, even if it means that his offspring will have no forest to graze.
The paladin will object to correcting the overpopulation of human deer with predators. This is fine; he has an interest in this herd of his species above all others. But he speaks of human capacity to plant as well as to hew, because he can see starvation for the children if the leader has his way. Humans who plant as well as hew are wiser than deer, and able to see beyond the edges of what will be a long, cold winter.