Lundi 16 novembre 1768 (Saximilian, lemmingfolks, bateau)

[CORRESPONDANCE]: L'humilité commande qu'en préface à tout commentaire je mentionne ne pas être particulièrement érudit au delà de mon domaine. De longues explications pourraient être nécessaires afin de comprendre ce qui définit un peuple et trop aller en ce sens me semble vexer l'esprit de mon voeu de silence. J'ai cependant un petit cousin en ville qui s'adonne à la parole aisément.

[CORRESPONDANCE] Alors, tenons-nous en à ce qui semble approprié et poli. Quel est votre domaine, que faites-vous, et pourquoi ce voeu? Il me fera plaisir, en outre, de rencontrer votre cousin pour la discussion plus poussée.

[CORRESPONDANCE] J'appartiens à une tradition monastique difuse. Fist of the forest est le nom qu'on lui donne ici. Comme mes congénère, je suis ici pour soulager le fadeau de la civilisation. Des druides ont quittés pour aller au front, j'entretien et je défend leur forêt en leur absence.

La tradition à laquelle j'adhère encourage une vie simple se rapprochant de celle des animaux, mes voeux de silence et de pauvreté sont conséquent de cette idéologie.

- Le front? J'entends certes parler de guerre partout ces jours-ci, mais j'ignore s'il s'agit de la même. À laquelle vos frères druides se joignent-ils donc?
-Ils sont parti se battre contre les forces de Wølt et de Zarus!
- Sans aucun doute.
- C'est le front dont j'entends parler. Il me semble pourtant que nous soyons éloignés du front... que même les gens locaux n'ont jamais entendu parler de vous. Quel intérêt avez-vous à cette guerre? Il me semble qu'historiquement, vous ne vous êtes jamais mêlé à de telles batailles non plus.
-Nous avons répondu à rêve envoyé par la terre mais peu des nôtres se batterons... ce n'est pas notre rôle... nous n'avons pas d'affinité pour la violence.
- Un rêve envoyé par la terre? Cette guerre aurait-elle une portée si vaste sur le destin d'autant de nations? Si lointaines?
-Sans vouloir être impolis, cher monsieur, Mon cousin serait plus à même d'expliquer les tennants et aboutissant de la croisade en cours.
- C'est vrai, cela. Cela aura aussi pour effet de mieux respecter vos voeux, soyons francs. Puis-je disposer de son nom, que je puisse tenter de le chercher ainsi, en ville? Une idée du genre d'endroit qu'il risque de fréquenter? Vous arrivâtes fort nombreux, c'est le moins qu'on puisse dire.
Picket Fence, il est barbier sur la rue des Fleurs, presque au port. Notre nombre est proportionnel à la tâche qui nous incombe...
Tâche dont je m'enquerrai des détails à Picket Fence directement. Je vous remercie pour cette brève conversation.
-Tout le plaisir était pour moi, portez vous bien!
Mouquet coupe ainsi la conversation mentale.
La petite créature regarde Rose et Mouquet semblant se demander si quelque chose va se passer
Vers Rose

Il semblerait que monsieur ici, LampOil fasse partie d'une race de gens tout à fait intelligente et sensible, et qu'il soit un moine qui a fait voeu de silence.

Son cousin, PicketFence, qui est en ville, saurait en dire davantage, car lui, peut parler abondamment. J'étais curieux par rapport à leur présence ici en grand nombre. Le peu que je sache se résume à ceci:

Ils ont reçu un rêve de la Terre, et se joignent à l'effort de guerre contre les Zariens et Wølt.
Un rêve de la Terre?
Rien de moins?
- Cela vous frappe également comme étant digne de mention honorable, n'est-ce pas?
-C'est le moins que l'on puisse en dire...
-L'importance qu'ils accordent à leurs rêves est étrange
-Et la provenance qu'ils leurs attribu me trouble
- D'un point de vue psionique, cela me semble tout à fait naturel.
-Vraiment?
- J'avais cru comprendre que la nature vous parlait en des langues plus subtiles, peut-être?
-Vous parlez de ma capacité à éviter les désastres?
-Je suppose qu'uns pourraient avoir des druides eux aussi. Ce "Ils" que vous avez utilisé... je le supposai référer à un large groupe.
- Selon que j'ai compris, un contingent de druides se dirigerait au front. Et davantage, même.
- Il n'est pas impossible que leurs druides soient des guides spirituels majeurs chez les leurs.
- Nous serions apparemment sur le territoire qu'ils conservent ou protègent normalement.
- Lui désignant le lemming est ici pour remplacer les druides partis au front.
-Les signes sont là... je me demandait si on m'ignorait...
La situation doit être critique pour queles druides abandonnes leur territoires.
- C'est ce qu'il me semble.

Je retourne donc en ville, m'enquérir de la situation. Cela me permet, même à distance, de mieux comprendre l'étrangeté que représente ce conflit. Vous y rendrez-vous avec moi, ou attendrez-vous plutôt mon retour?
-Je crois qu'il serait plus simple que je vous suive

Mouquet fit donc une révérence à son interlocuteur mental poilu, et s'en retournerait vers la ville, accompagné de Rose, dans l'espoir d'y trouver un lemming barbier, ce qui lui apparaissait à la fois approprié et ironique. Chemin faisant:

- Nous cherchons donc un certain PicketFence, sur la rue des Fleurs, au port. Il est... barbier.

Rose:

-Picket Fence? C'est vraiment son nom, ça? Et aussi... tout le reste. Encore un personnage.

- Certes. Comme si nous en étions inlassablement entourés.

Les deux compagnons y feraient donc leur entrée.

- Bien le bonjour. Je suis Mouquet Sansregret. Je cherche un certain... PicketFence, que l'on m'a référé comme le tenancier de ce commerce?

Picket Fence:
-That would be me, good sir!
May I, perchance, be of assistance?
Yes, indeed. I just spoke with a cousin of yours, a certain LampOil, who, although devoid of speech, was able to direct me to you.
-You certainly look like people who could make the mutes talk...
- We're quite the characters, it seems.
-Very much so, I'd dare say!
- I'd very much like to discuss a favorite subject of mine. War.
-Yikes. I'd rather not?
sourit en coin

- I figured as much. But it's rather about your people than about the war itself.
-Ho, well. Then you'll probably have to stop me at some point. Haha!
- I'm a desperate listener.
- Let me get you started, if you will.
-I'm begging you
(s'addressant à un homme au coin de la porte:) -You can come in, the chair's empty!
Unless either of you need an haircut too by some coincidence?
- Let's keep it simple, and without a specific question, then. An a somewhat open subject.

It seems a lot of the local townsfolk aren't too sure what's dragging your people in droves through here, and possibly towards the war front when they had hardly heard of you before.

I'm all good for the hair cut, thank you very much.
-It is a question of nature and circumstances, really.
- The nature of one's race! What a fascinating subject.
- Go ahead.
Ho, I'm sorry is it, um, inconvenient for me to have customers are some of the information you want to discuss sensitive?
- Not at all. It's all about your people and their sudden appearance, and perhaps their motive towards the war. It seems to me it's all very open.
-I'll give you the immodest version for it is the truest, we are, as it happens, the stewards of civilization and the gardeners of the wilderness.
- Quite burden to bear.
-Quite indeed. but it is manageable under normal circumstances. We unfortunately live in abnormal times and we have been sent to crusade far from our homeland in order reinvigorate the continental civilization.
- Now. I was away for quite a while, you see, and I've just started hearing about the Wølto-zarian front.

What has happened, and what could possibly justify that the stewards and civilization and gardeners of wilderness would come out for this specific conflict?
-I'd say it is mysterious to us as well but a lot of us have been having Dreams of a Great Wound forming through our dreamsense. It is very hard to express and very uncomfortable to contemplate. Not all of those that are here have received the visions and not all of those that had the visons came, but we did organise our crusade to try to prevent or restore what happenned to the south of our homeland and going south we arrived in Sergonia which is at war against very disquieting forces.
"En Fuschia: Les territoires Iradiés et arcanaiques de l'ancienne Viaroslavie"
https://zarus.forumactif.com/t325p100-29-janvier-anno-dei-1764-arrivee-en-atlantide-decouverte-de-la-wayfarer-guild
Prevent or happen what happened to the south of your homeland? What are we talking about, exactly? The Pilouki? The Old Viaroslavia?
-Those are very old wounds, it wouldn't make sense for the earth to have called us for that. I suspect the genocidal threat might be what summoned us. For if not that what could?
- It seems to me that the Earth wouldn't call upon its people unless for a... fairly serious threat.

What wound are you talking about? I take it the disquieting forces you are talking about are the undead? Which, as far as I know, the zarians were not particularly fond of.
-They didn't use to be but a few years back they made an unholy aliance. For a long time Sergonian doomsayer have been warning that this day would come again. And now that it has an old threat came out of the abyss. A former emperorof the Zarian, and undead, picled in the Abyss for half a millenium and now is back leading the alliance as foretold. What wound may come out of this is uncertain, but we can only support the Sergonians in their war effort...
- Thus armies of druidic... what are you folk called, anyways?
-Armies? No no no no! You got the wrong idea. We are stewards we do not fight, we only make it possible for society to maintain itself. It took the place of a Barber that lived here and went off to fight the war, I adopted orphans and in a few years when I die, my children will raise those orphans and then so will my grandchildren, likely... you people live quite a while, you know?

So we are just here for as long as we have, a short time by your standards, to make sure that those who can fight still have a nation to come back to when this war is over.
So your people... come in droves, to cities and towns... to take care of infrastructures and make sure social roles are upheld until the return of the people that have exiled themselves to war?
Yes, we keep civilisation, that's what we were created to do. We farm the land, we weave the wool, we mine mountains, we raise the orphans we cure the sicks, we bury the deads we keep the books... all those small things need to be done by somebody even in dire times.
Who takes care of you and yours while you're gone, then?
As I said we sent those we could afford to send. Perhaps slightly more than that, it will be strenuous times for those who stayed behind, but they'll manage, we made sure.
So about none of you are at the front. You're just... making sure there is something to come back to once the war is over.
That is interesting place to hold, literally and figuratively, in the balance of the world.
*an
I know it isn't glorious, but we were not made for glory. Those who try to acheive it usually soil themselves and end up disgraced, you see.
Not that we are particularily wicked... we just have taboos...
Knowledge (The Planes): 14+6= 20
- I might have an idea of a world wound of enough magnitude so that the Earth itself would respond to it.

But as far as I know... very little people know of its existence or of its location. And "life threatening risk" is quite the euphemism to qualify it.
-This sounds awful... The people here truly need our help... the implications are not good for anyone or anything if we ended up misplaced
The war against Zarians and Wøltans has nothing to do with that wound. If anything, the war is an obstacle to getting to the wound.

It's one of my goals to eventually put my hands on capable people who would be able to understand the wound and close it.
But it still seems like you are required here. These things seem to be happening... simultaneously. Which might also be a sign.
-There are mean gods and entities that periodically want to ruin existence. Each in their own way. Sometimes those tings happen as coincidence sometime they are concerted efforts...
- Hmmm... that is true. Foiling the plot of gods seems like quite the epic undertaking.
-Who are Zarus and Wølt if not that... and whatever cause the other thing you were thinking of... it cannot be much better
Customer:
-Hey guys? I didn't come here for a sense of existential dread?
Picket Fense:

-Terribly sorry,good sir, the beard is on the house today!
- Well. Although we could speak all day, I do believe this answers my questions in the way I desired. Your explanations were quite clear.
-Ho, did it?
Rose:
-What's with the names though?
- I suppose that is also a valid question.
Picket Fence:
-The names?
Rose:
-They are not name-like.
P.F.:
-We like to have names that have a meaning. We chose a name for our children when they are born. Usually an object, material or an idea that is civilised, to set us appart from the beast we look like. Tools are very common for males, ideas and music instruments are more common amonst ladies... We avoid things made of metal, food items or object made to hurt or kill those are all taboos... My birth name was Fence and My cousin's name was Lamp. Usually at some point we end up meating someone else with a similar name and we either agree between ourselves of an adjective or way to modify our root name so that we can be differentiated, or people around us do it for us...
If I met an other picket fence, I'd become White picket Fence, or Garden's picket Fence or something else...
Rose: What happens if you break taboos? You don't seem like you would kill or imprison one of your own... that seems like it would be against your taboos. And your host society probably doesn't care enough to do it for you. Plus, people lie... you don't know if someone breaks your weird rules. All you do is encourage lies and hypocrisy among your ranks.

P.F.: We shun the red ones.

Rose: You'll have to explain that one to me with words that make sense in the context of the question I asked. Do you not know about lie?

P.F.: Every year we Become white for the winter. Those who broke too many taboos don't, they keep their estival fur. They stay Red, tainted, disgraced.
- Interesting. A curse, perhaps divine in nature? Would someone of your people who does not know of these taboos still be affected by the curse of the red fur, I wonder.
P.F.: As far as I am aware of, yes.
There are stories about such individuals
Stewards raised among other people will often end up that way.
- Fascinating. Mouquet avait l'air pensif; le reste de ses pensées étaient trop crues ou offensantes pour qu'un individu qu'il venait de rencontre puisse les recevoir sans en être offensé, alors il ne rajouta rien, pour l'instant.
P.K.: I'm told! As you can imagine the ramifications on our culture are numerous. It is a good thing that the Earth dream is strong in our heart and in our head. Guidance... and a sense of purpose... it is hard to ask for more in the time that is given to use and it is a sad existence for those who end up deprived of it.
The red ones lose their touch with the Earth?
Some of the less wicked tainted one, admitedly, might be very willing and able to help you with the other wound...
It is said they do lose their link with the earth, yes. Legends are told about some who did not... but we do have an awful lot of legends about an awful lot of people for a young race
I understand from your multiple statements that you a race of short-lived people. But you are also a "young race"? Happened into existence rather recently? From what standards?
From the standards of the world that surround us. There is a wyrm in the north that was alive when we came to be and he still live. Our whole race is younger than this one creature.
- That is, sadly, telling little. But I do understand what you're saying.
-If you want numbers, it would be about a millenium.

Rose:

-So... you are basically as old as the Illumians were you don't seem to be as much of un upstart specie as they were. Actually humble as you are... I'm sort of curious about how your whole specie could end up cursed? Did you offend a god or something? Who do you actually serve, just the earth?

Picket Fence:

-I... erh... *sigh*. If we go by the legends of my people the curse is what made us. There was a slice, slice is the word you use to refer to a group of actual lemmings, that got very populous a "long" time ago. They caused devastation on the land they lived in to the point that they ravaged crops of the people living there and caused a famine. Nature, the earth, the world, however you want to refer to it, took notice and got angry at those animals and cursed them with conscience and bestowed uppon them the task of making their wrong right. Both the wrong they did to the land and the wrong they did to the people. It has been a powerful drive in our heart and in our dreams ever since.

Rose:

-Fascinating. Your origin is congruent with Zarian cosmology, you could very well have been created by the same entity, the same aspect of nature that cared so much about humans, don't you think Mouquet?

- I have been having questions myself about the nature of Zarus and his association with humanity. I've had doubts about his whole belonging to the human race, even.

But the mythos does suggest that The World created Zarus and his kind. What -are- the circumstances of a race being brough into the world even? Does this happen suddenly? Over some measure of time? How do the minds of such new races deal with their new existence? Do they feel themselves slowly drifting into existence? How do you cope with suddenly being conscious and having no remembrance of yesterday? Some races must have been brought up somehow by other races, much like their own children. Or slaves.

If Zarus "came into being" much like these...

To me, The Oversoul presides all existence, and it seems likely to me that in the eternal chaos of its shards colliding together in their coming back to the original being, new existence, and therefore life, could be brought to the world, in both progressive or a sudden manner.

It's not improbable.

Rose:

-I don't know if you remember that insufferable Bard at the Trivial temple? Heffword he claimed was his last-name. Offensive enough for me to recall it... years later...

Your family had conversations like those with him before I erased myself from that temple-

Picket Fence:

-Ha yes, the priesthood of Trivia, ecclectic as they are, have lots of ideas about how we all came to be. They'll tell you all sort of conflicting origin stories-

Rose:
-and they'll tell you they are all true!

P.F:
-Indeed, quite the puzzle. As far as I know, the Elves are the most adamant about how THEY were created and nobody will try to contradict them for there wasn't really anyone else around when they came about. If there were more of them -at all- we'd have better sources for any claim of origin for anyone. Or dragons I guess, but those are even more discreet about their wherabout...

- Somehow, I feel that... contradictory stories do not necessarily mean they take each other's veracity away from each other. I don't feel the world is as simple and as straightforward as that. "One truth" and all others are utterly wrong.

And I also refuse to give way of credit by default to those of old age, by virtue of old age alone. Would this mean that any other younger race would be denied the truth of the universe? I do not believe that the universe to be that... impermeable. I feel we are surrounded by that truth, bathing in it. Perhaps just... blind to it.

Picket Fence:

-I think defference is due to those who came before. I feel that if there is any such thing as objective truth, they'd have peices of it that can help us understand it. The sense of the earthdream I have also is a guide to a part of the truth and as a young race I think we have as much access to truth as any other would have, clues are everywhere for those who can see, I'm sure.

- Well. This conversation means much. It seems to direct us to understanding that if we value this world integrity and well-being, the dimensional breach will be our next goal. Once more... personal matters are dealt with. My full concentration will have been liberated and power will have been unlocked. We'll be in a better position to understand and to deal with the problem.

Patron, on the chair:

-Y'know. If either of you want to know answer to those that wou'd be t'yer likin' you could just get in toutch with a priest of Trivia. They do know a lot of things and even better: a lot of poeple. Whichever faith's got the archbishropic of wisdom at the moment might also be of use, you know?

- This is sound advice. We'll consider it.

Thank you very much for your time, and for sharing.

Mouquet fit une révérence polie à l'anthropomorphe.

- May your life, as short as it may be, be a good one.

Picket Fence:

-It is. May yours, as long as it is comparatively, be well spent.


Alors que Mouquet passerait la porte, il entendrait le client dire à mi-voix: "Was that a bit grim, all of the sudden or 's'it me?"