Words of the Autumn

[Raksha]

Sturdy parchment warded with Endure Elements and Magic Vestment is posted by a dark-haired lean figure with a wild look about her and a long, unfettered stride. The notes are put up on the abandoned gatehouse of the Viridale Border, by the Four Lanterns in, and on a road sign on a path leading to Sestra.

The text is written in a hand that once might have been obsessively neat and orderly, but now has a jagged edge to it. Almost every character is still legible, though.

These are the words of the autumn, whispered by the Forest Queen through Her sacred paw.

As the moon rises, the word of tonight is compromise. Maybe also coexistence. It cannot be had with the Black Hand.

Three moonrises ago I put down a sick beast. Once majestic, then mangy. Once sleek and full of life, then bleeding ceaselessly. Once free to roam, then binding others to unnatural servitude. It is the God of Blood that twists the forest creatures thus, a God that delights in the perversion of undead corpses and says all must feed them or become them. Do not mistake this for the healthy balance of predator and prey; this god would see all people, all life, bound to the perversity of this way of undeath, shunned from the light of Lathander.

Do you think the rest of life exempt? It is not. The wolf shows us the designs of the Blood God on everything that lives. This desire to make all things their undead mockery, or servants of those mockeries, mirrors the desire of the Tyrant and his fanatics to dominate all life. All gods. All portfolios. All things. Forever. This is not a weight on one side of a balance, this is a hammer to shatter the balance. There is no place for the Black Hand while it advocates and practices such naked lust for control of all things. While it remains so, it and all its branches must die.

If any of nature's children would delude themselves into thinking the Black Hand uninterested, remember the wolf. Remember the plotting of those who would shackle not only humans, but birds and fish and wolves. Remember those who would turn the whole Valley into a cracked and barren fortress from which to wage their war of total domination.

Do we cease having differences with those who log and timber? No, we do not. Their recklessness is worrying, but it has a parallel in nature; they are a wildfire to be channeled and corrected into renewing instead of razing. Do we cease distrusting the motives of a state that sundered the land twice? No, we hold them at arm's length. But we do so as allies, not enemies, in the recognition of the Black Hand's great and unnatural strength.

Without unity, we and all we treasure will perish. Or worse.

These are the words of the autumn. These are words of enccouragement to make allies, to inform rather than condemn, to seek those who might listen further to the whisperings of the wind. These are words to fight the Black Hand in whatever way may be done. Let them find no shelter in the wilds. Let them have no moment's peace until they reconsider their war on all that breathes.

[Raksha]

Third Feast

At the same locations as before, Adama posts warded parchments, striding easily through brush and ghosting across the land with little visible effort, for those who catch a glimpse of her in the act.

These are the words of the autumn, whispered by the Forest Queen through Her sacred paw at a time when summer wanes.

The day of equal night comes upon it, and with it the Third Feast of the Lady. Foolishness, would say many, to gather or congregate or dare to raise the head when darkness rides the land. Foolishness, would say many, to call attention to it by asking others to join in the revels. Then let the land have more fools.

There will be a feast, if not on the night, then soon. There will be firelight safely tamed under the boughs, and there will be a place for all who wish to praise the gods that give food, land, and things to live. If the forest is wild and dangerous, so are many other places where the herd would gather. If the forest is dark and foreboding, then let us bring a light. The Third Feast approaches.

Would one call it foolishness to thank the givers of pure air, of wood and water, of crops and fields? Or would one call it foolishness to not thank them, to trample them underfoot and blithely trust that misdeeds will go unnoticed and unpunished?