[b][i]The past.[/i][/b] Matriarch Old-Winds-Running-Through-Young-Leaves rested a hand on the face of the monolith. That is the best that her name's first verse can be translated without the nuance of sign. She could feel it, the stone, and she listened to it whisper with the soft life that all stone has. Fresh memories, joyful memories, had been made here. It was sad to leave this place behind, for moving on from a good memory is always sad. And yet it there is a happiness in farewell. Urtelem know this, for they know many kinds of happiness that the wiser peoples so often forget. Gently, as if in a soft voice, the mother signed to her old friend. Will you not come with us? The signs returned to her were full of fluent depth, and not entirely clear. It is unusual enough to sign a two-handed dialect with four hands, and Nguxhil's words are always stranger still when they are Nimble. No, said the signs, suggesting sorrow that is not sad; I cannot not stay in this place, because the city that is the City is also my staying-place. It is where I wander back to after I wander somewhere. Old-Winds-Running-Through-Young-Leaves smiles. So it is, then. You have given us so much already. She runs her hand over the surface of the Holy Stone. It is one of many, though dusk has long since hidden what shadows are not concealed by the Cipher Pyramid. No matter. The herd will remember the Stone and its siblings in the circle, remember them well. Beneath her fingers the matriarch feels the shallow imprints of circles, angles, arcs in arrangement. Oh, what they had been given. Thank you, Nimble. Thank you, Spiral-Palms. A sharp, low clap of rock hands. The herd uncurls, looks up from the gleam of moonlight sweeping the Purple Sands. Old-Winds-Running gives the signal. It is time to move on. It is time to say goodbye. It is time to greet the new day. [center][h3]* * * * *[/h3][/center] [b][i]The present.[/i][/b] Sun does not fall through the canopy of the Great Lenses; It leaps and glides. None of the Great Lenses have spread to their full height yet. Their boughs are still stretching. It is exactly as Nimble had said, in her way. Fifty winters it would take for a Lensling to stand up from the earth of wakefulness into the heavens of dreams. Quite a time, even for Urtelem. Herdsfolk could come and go in that time. Joy was one who had come. A pebble, as they are called, and a particularly little one at that. Joy clambered over sandy turf with all the unwieldy effort of a child realising what it means to explore. His parents let him go. He won't get far, and there are plenty of friends who will watch him. A small slope- Just enough for Joy to trip over his own wrist and tumble gracelessly down, coughing grass. Rolling comes naturally, but a pebble's reflexes aren't quick yet. No matter. Joy is hard to dent. To his fresh eyes, this space is new, barely a few arm's lengths from his mothers. Heart overflowing with wonder, Joy slowly creeps over the broad rock face that has been revealed from beneath the thin topsoil. One of the glass people watches him, stirring seamlessly from that basking stillness they have. There are circles marked in the rock, a great abundance of them, sectored and linked with lines more intricate than a spider's web. Glyphs hide between them and in them. Joy sits flat and stares. Communication has rhythm, has an elegance in each sentence. To take the shape of each part and fit it together into a whole, complete from every angle, is to write like the Urtelem. Joy does not yet know what these things mean, but he can feel their pattern. He was made for it. [i]On the two-hundred and fourth day of the sixth year of the Script, three seventeenths of a sector west of here,[/i] opens one, the date forming the center that the story spirals around, [i]the family of Warm-Summer-Rain-Songs found a feathered slouch wounded on its hindleg. For a day and two nights we brought it grass, but it grew ill. Therefore we made it comfortable and delivered it to the vultures. May their hatchlings grow up strong.[/i] An addendum. [i]On the twelth day of the seventh year, a ring of red sunflowers was found in that place. The soul rests easy.[/i] Joy traces the lines with his finger, follows them on to another story, finds an object blocking his way and a glass person looking down at him with a grinning scarlet skull. He smiles and signs his favourite words: What is this? This one, laughs the lensling as he signs, was written when a Maker came to the grove. Other than that, I don't know. Joy signs back with a pout. Why not? It feels so simple, to him, to see the pattern in the story, though all its words are foreign. Oh, my head isn't the same as yours, rock-baby. We have different stuff between our ears. (This expression confuses Joy greatly.) The lensling notices, and signs a little further over the graven slab. If you want to see what the Maker did, look for yourself. There on the up-slope stands the Holy Stones of this grove, in their perfect circles. Every inch of the henge is painted in swirls of vivid white and orange and pink, immortalising the rise and fall of the sun at all times of day. Joy claps his hands and grins. The lensling sits on his stone and dozes in the noon warmth. [center][h3]* * * * *[/h3][/center] [b][i]The past.[/i][/b] Four hunters sit in an unhappy circle, though their hand-sledges are full of game and their fire crackles warm. Four hunters of a party that should have been three. No words are shared. They spent them all the night before. The murmured prayers, the mountain songs, the promises, the thanks. What now? What to say, when all has been said and all has been done, and yet there is no ending? All four are quiet, and yet, compared to Jorn, the silence of the other three seems loud. They do not ask him how this has come to be. They know how it began- Ended- And that is enough. Truly, all three of them hold a brother's love for him in their hearts, and do not dishonour him by wondering whether he could have survived the wound if he had willed it harder. Whether Jorn had finally trapped a hog that could match him, or whether he had fought it long enough to look into its vicious eyes and say, you win. Do your worst. Let me end here in blood and snow, as a woodsman should. Often the gods curse us with death. Sometimes they curse us with continuity. Life, though gutted end to end by a wild tusk. Life, where a winter fever alone was enough to snatch away a wife and son. Nalog shifts her weight, just enough to pull three pairs of eyes to the huntswoman. "I heard a rumour, four years gone," she begins. "A clan of stonemen came to the mountains and an old man who knew their hand-tongue translated. He said they were looking for zombies. Not to smash them, like they do demon-tangles. He said they wanted to help them dream again." It's nothing, or almost nothing. A promise with no depth. Would it be any more satisfying than a leap from a mountain or the jaws of a herakt, if it were true? Nalog glances up at the grey sky and rolls her broad shoulders back to her place in the circle. Jorn moves. His eyes are glazed, but his undead voice still holds fire. He reaches for his staff. "I will go." [center][h3]* * * * *[/h3][/center] [b][i]The present.[/i][/b] They stand like the statues they were at the dawn of their lives, unmoving and unmovable, huge. Each one is spaced an identical distance apart from those at their sides, and they share the exact same pose. One knee and one fist on the ground, head bowed, hand on heart. Eyes shut. Brow low. Gentle the Urtelem may be, but there are times when it is right to show strength. At the center of their half-circle stands a Tedar of unusual figure, facing outwards to a bloated man with yellow-black skin. He looks back at her. He is tall. She is taller. The voice that comes from her eyeless mask of a face makes the man want to look down, see where the child is that must surely be talking, but he has spoken to the Sculptor only moments ago. Her name, such as she tells those who ask, is Help. [b]"You stand in a barren place. You stand before a people that will guide you through it, if you would take their hand. In a moment you may cross over into a life that is new, is strange, and is real. Are you ready to begin the long walk?"[/b] Some have no wish for ceremony. A few prepare one on their own terms. The walk is long indeed, and the first step is soon forgotten. To each soul its own way. The man rests his hand over a silent heart. His voice is broken. "Thirty-nine winters I've seen. All of them have... Been hard. And- many years I was happy. Now, I'm. Not." A rasp. Maybe a breath. "My years are over, but I'm still here. I'm tired. It's cold. I want to go back to my- To them. In peace. My name is Jorn. I'm ready." Help nods, and lays a gentle hand on the man's skull. Tilts it aside. Deft as a butterfly, she incises the base of his neck with an obsidian knife. He doesn't flinch as she presses the smooth, rippled glass spike deep into his throat. For the first time in many months, Jorn feels warmth. She steps back. Nods again, pockets the knife in a small bag. The Urtelem move as one. Their circle comes undone, the unyielding pose softens, and they walk to him, past him, one by one. His hand is as delicate as a flower in their palms, but they hold it with only the slightest pressure. He feels a tug and follows. The Stonemen pass him from one to another as he walks between them, building up a confident pace at their side. Each one takes him a few steps further, laces their hands into the knotted triangle of unity, then the curled prayer of Spiral Palms. Two dozen pairs of legs and knuckles move at a flow. Faces leak into smiles. Hands rise in plodding chatter. Another kind of warmth seeps into the man. These earthen shoulders are not a barrier. Their strength is his strength. Their heart is his heart. He is part of the stone. They lead. Jorn walks with them. [center][h3]* * * * *[/h3][/center] [b][i]The past.[/i][/b] Midnight. Haste. Planned haste, yes, but there was ground to cover. Coming within sight of the willowy thickets that line the river, Flux sights a lumpy greenish figure just about where he expected her to be. Signalling for his guide to go on ahead, the once-djinn swerves slightly upon the sedgy plainsgrowth and catches Yulosi in a broad film of a palm just as she turns to see him coming. Wraps up the goblin and drags her along behind him. Too slow, otherwise. It was a lopsided arrangement, to send her ahead and catch up on the way. Yulosi wanted to go. She had more than a fair portion of that vexing goblin instinct to fiddle with things, prod them to see what would happen, damned be consequences. So he let her puzzle out her own way to the site on what directions could be given. Flux kept her leash short, but there was really no place to hide in this area, and his guide only had so much time before the sun rose. Besides, she could be useful. Sometimes. The blood angel hovered over the anomaly, a mauve sphere of light suspended from his fingertips. It marked the place, and yet even in this almost moonless night the site was clearly visible to Yulosi's cave-eyes. When he saw the forge glow of Flux near the zone the vampire let himself fall, feet first. They exchanged some words as Yulosi was promptly unwrapped and discarded. Nothing they hadn't already yakked about at length. The deformed zombie scuttled off, the only one, it seemed, who was determined to get some use out of her god-given and worm-eaten brain. She did not go unnoticed. As soon as the vampire was requested to make another investigative circuit, a faint shadow was cast from behind her. Yulosi chose not to comment. [color=00a99d]"No Djinni constructed this, nor any Yivvinite. It is too artificial for the former, who are of nature. The latter lack the strength to construct so quickly, and I perceive no life in this monument, besides. Who, then, is our culprit?"[/color] [color=c4df9b]"Point. Shit question. Dontcha spit that rhet'ric at me, we both know 'o did this. Real question is why."[/color] [color=00a99d]"Point. [i]Begging[/i] the question. We cannot assume that we know-"[/color] [color=c4df9b]"-Godssake, Flux, these tracks're six inches deep-"[/color] [color=00a99d]"-What [i]creed[/i] these Urtelem belonged to. You, in particular, should know that the rigours of Chaos can seize any soul."[/color] There was no reprobation in that statement. What is, is. Chaos is no shameful thing. [colour=00a99d]"No Stonemen that I have yet seen migrate with such pace and direction, and I have lived sixty times your years. To construct such a monument of their own accord is, in the meanest term, bizarre."[/colour] [color=c4df9b]"...'sthat mean I can put bets on which god is fuckin' wit' us this time? Day's labour says it's the Great Chippa."[/color] [color=00a99d]"I concede that divine intervention is not an unreasonable assumption in this case. Urtelem do recognise the Chipper; I believe his sign is Callused Hands. A wise enough mortal, even a non-Yivvinite, could have inspired their hearts to unite and build also. Perhaps one of their own number."[/color] The peaked liquid scaffold Flux wore for a face momentarily dissolved and reformed in a different alignment, and Yulosi's eyes followed what she thought was his gaze. [color=00a99d]"We may know soon enough."[/color] The vampire was gliding back, a pinkish star in the distance until he grew close enough for his illuminated wings to be discerned. By that time Yulosi had already wandered off again. She had seen enough of angels, alive or dead. There was a monolith by the near end of the bridge. Yulosi ran her hand over it, already used to the gaps left since she had chewed off the fingers infected by lens. [color=c4df9b][i]A map. Milestone too, probably... A shrine?[/i][/color] The upper surface of the small obelisk had been queerly distorted, broadened and flattened like putty and pinched delicately into the shape of simple mountains, forests. A line ran straight through the middle. No doubt the very river she could hear now. Its sides and base were covered in engraved markings, mostly interlocking arcs and angles. The two largest bore uncanny resemblance to the signed names of Callused Hands and Spiral Palms. Yulosi turned and stepped onto the bridge. A peaceful moment. The river was nearly silent, and Yulosi sat cross-legged in the night, watching stars. No railing on the bridge, nor any need for one. It was rather wide. The stones were rough-hewn, if they had been hewn at all. They were packed thick, and crystallised together, fused the same way the earth closes behind an Urtelem as she tunnels. No doubt the river, narrow though it be, was of the deceptively deep kind with an undertow. Urtelem can't swim, and struggle in mud. [color=00a99d]"Yulosi!"[/color] And back to the chatter again. [color=00a99d]"I presume I'll have to repeat what I just heard- Or did those bat-wings you call ears finally serve a purpose?"[/color] Yulosi cackled, refusing to be riled. She dug a filthy sharpened nail into her ear, pulled out an impaled maggot, and flung it at him. Flux dodged effortlessly, his fluid body stretching a perfect tunnel for the missile to pass through. [color=00a99d]"You,"[/color] he mused, genially, [color=00a99d]"are disgusting."[/color] [color=c4df9b]"Point! [i]Ad zombinem.[/i]"[/color] If nothing else, he was proud of her burgeoning vocabulary. The blood angel had sighted the bridge's builders from above. They hadn't gotten far yet, and there was nowhere to hide on the plain. Yulosi had a feeling she was about to learn something interesting. [center][h3]* * * * *[/h3][/center] [b][i]The Present.[/i][/b] They came in the daylight, their shadows joining with those of the Ironheart ridges. Between the warm and narrow valleys, their footsteps echoed, granite on lichenous quartzen granite. Villagers rose from their terrace-tending to see them come without walking out to greet them. The mountain hain knew Urtelem to be wiser than the sum of their stony parts, in the same way that they knew the snow leopards were guardian spirits, and the death-eye crows held hidden knowledge. Beyond this, they suspected little, though stories wandered. It was their own herd of stonemen who uncurled to offer welcome. Invisible between the orange-grown boulders they had fed on for lifetimes without number, they walked straight through the village in single file without a moment's hesitation, striding on foot and knuckle as they do. When the two lumbering flows of stone collided at last, they butted shoulders with intimate loudness amidst a great deal of tapping and palming and waving and cheironomy. Into the night the bass commotion continued, creeping slowly back around the round hill on which the huts themselves rested until morning found the soft scraping noises dispersed through every ledge on the far end of the little dale, mostly in clusters of fours and fives. To their regret, the mountain hain found that none among their number had ever tried to learn the Urtelem language. They were a community that lived quietly, questioned little, and spurned the outsider, the greenskin and the fiberhead. Now their quiet kinesic conversation was almost clamorous. Would they have understood, the villagers would have seen the wealth of experience that the newcomers brought- Tales of the City where thousands of people gathered, that turned forest, marsh and meadow all into sprawling farmland. The Urtelem had mostly left that place to its other peoples. Stone-grazing and migration could not easily coexist with the farming folk. Deaf to these stories, all the hain could do was observe. What they saw first was the presence of the strange thing that walked with the Urtelem. It resembled something that was animal, vegetable, and mineral all at once, and yet none of these. A grinning red skull stood in its quartz skin, and the shaman announced it a thing of Jaan as soon as she laid eyes on the mysterious amalgam. It stood motionless for most of the first day, only stirring to sign with the Urtelem as they exchanged angle-riddles, as they often did to amuse themselves, and to wave at the villagers, the youngest of which ran from its unnaturally brilliant endoskeleton. By nightfall the stonemen escorted it to a higher ridge, where it sat crosslegged, and soon enough began unfolding coralline branches. It attracted faeries like a fresh corpse. Within hours of the arrival, patterns began to splay over the granite surfaces. The villagers knew they were patterns, for there was some amount of repetition to them. Some were drawn in mud or etched. The largest and finest were twisted [i]into[/i] the rock itself, its very crystal texture realigned to form the curves. Pretty as they were, they fascinated the Urtelem, who spent hours staring at them and signing around them. A one-sided exchange was evident. A newcomer drew the lines, conversed with the indigenous herd, and then guided them as they drew similar marks. As days became months, the exchange intensified until the patterns sprawled so huge so quickly that the stonemen had to wipe clean the cliff faces to start over. Upon the near peak, strange happenings began to occur. Along its ridges, Urtelem were hauling boulders to the place where the rainbow skeleton sat, then splitting them into narrow menhirs with a precision that the villagers only saw in their craftshain. Rippling their fingers over the pillars reshaped them subtly, sometimes over the course of weeks, marking edges and holes into them. At last, one by one, the stonemen erected them into a henge. At dawn the next day, the elders of both herds stood in that ring, ripples of rosy and blue-grey crystal marking their age like wrinkles, and knelt with clasped hands. Such was their concentration that shards of grit jittered erratically around them as they sanctified the shrine. After two weeks, a hermit returned, having been cast out for many decades. No eyes gleamed in his head, and his naked exoskeleton made a hollow sound as he walked, for he was of the Accursed, the Hollow Hain who rise again. The death-eyes croaked threateningly at him as he clambered over the terraces. He was only sighted once as the oldest hain remembered him- Thereafter he was only seen on what had already been renamed Henge Ridge, with a shell as blue as a dusk sky and slowly oozing glass. Two densely tattooed adolescents decided to go and shatter both the aberrant skeletons early in the morning under the guise of gathering spike flies to pry open stream-mussels. They came within touching distance, and, indeed, they [i]did[/i] touch the older lensling, who slept motionless, its thighs slowly flowing to conform to the shape of the rock it sat on. As soon as the axe was raised, a stoneman uncurled behind them, and it was a slow, humiliating backwards drag to the village. After that, the mountain hain only watched as Urtelem meticulously tended to the growing lens tree, clipping it, cracking its exterior, knotting it in place with woven grass. No animosity remained from this event. In time, as the henge was completed and the spiral-drawings became so refined that no one could tell whether the old or new herd had made them, the stonemen took interest in their exoskeletal companions. Over the course of only a few days, the hain saw their narrowest gravel trails hewn into wider, more stable paths through the cliffs. The stream from which they drew water was dammed into a pond deep enough to bathe in. Broken terraces were reinforced. All these things Urtelem did. Some said they were being compassionate. A more perceptive few looked at how only the most colourful stones had been chosen for the dam, and quietly supposed that they were simply amusing themselves. Solving riddles the village had unwittingly posed. One morning the mountain hain awoke to find that the ridges empty. By the communal fire pit, the risers found an unusual bouquet. It was an arrangement of crystal- Tiger-eyes, obsidian, agate, jade and jasper, washed and unguarded, all in abundance. Later in the day, the grey herd of newcomers returned to the Henge, unaccompanied. The orange lichen they had accumulated in their stay made them look almost like the Urtelem who were missing. The community's age-long protectors had left, without a word. Their farewell had been given in other ways. From the valley they strode, on foot and knuckle, on to seek out a place and a way to share what they had learned, as their own teachers had, not so long ago. [center][h3]* * * * *[/h3][/center] [i][b]The future.[/b][/i] It is the sixtieth year, say the Makers, since Spiral Palms first dictated the Script to them. Sixty years- The years a lensling needs to spread to its full height. The age of an elder among the other peoples. The number of stonemen in the largest herd. The first number to be made from halves, thirds, quarters, fifths and sixths. On this day, in the early spring of the north, the Urtelem mark that first gift, and with it mark the new year. In forests and shores, plateaus and tundras, the decade-long winding migrations of stone folk are winding down, converging into a mere handful of places. These places are not random. They have been whispered of on the slates of the lens groves for many seasons. Herds have come and gone before this day, preparing them. They are the sites of old lenslings and grand henges, with broad open spaces and running water, and gravel in abundance, quarried from the surrounding regions so as not to strip the land. Sonorous slabs have been arranged into huge lithophones, their slate keys awaiting players. Here the Urtelem are coming together, and they are coming to celebrate. Days in advance the herds arrive. They pull stout wagons and wear ropes, carrying ores, bloodstone and obsidian, marble and malachite, a glittering, iridescent feast. These they arrange around the Holy Stones, awaiting the day. Stars and moons slowly spin into the position they know marks the hour. On the eve of the new year there are hundreds of Urtelem gathered. Lenslings walk among them, and Makers have come. Herds have built bonfires simply to light the occasion, and they mingle freely. Signs flicker quickly and long. Everything thrums with anticipation. Dawn. Motionless. The Earthen Folk watch a sun rising, their hands curled in the mark of Spiral Palms. This is its festival. This is the day where they remember that there is something strange in the world, something grand, and it watches them still. Then celebration begins. Makers become Singers and primeval chords are rung from abhuman throats and too many hands. Urtelem percussionists begin to ring low lilting melodies on the arrangements of resonant metallic stones. Almost no training has been given, and none is needed. The can visualise the wider intervals of the song like a map, and their timing is perfect. The very ground moves with the heartbeat of the gathered Urtelem, their magic amplifying tremors of sound that other ears can hardly even hear. Minerals from the surrounding lands are broken and shared hand to hand. Bales of glass curls and rivulets from the lens trees are shared, already regrowing in the shadow of the Makers' fae. Geometric riddles of epic complexity are drawn, debated at length by dozens, solved, and left intact to be admired. Many have stories worked into them, of journeys and changing landscapes, for the Urtelem do not savour intrigue or emotional turmoil. Talented stone-twisters gather, their combined efforts crystallising white sand into perfect marble imitations of flowers, animals, one another. Others weave grass rope and garlands. A corner is set aside for discus. Pebbles skip merrily upon the lakes, and projectiles fly hundreds of paces, sometimes meeting one another in the air. Names are recited at length, often in several dialects. Adventurers bid their families goodbye and are embraced into the arms of other herds bound for distant regions. Long-estranged wanderers meet their cousins again. Thoughts become ideas, which harden into plans. Things to build, places to go, times to meet. Maps sprout like weeds. Memories are recorded. The matriarchs watch, and remember. There was a time when none of this was, or could be. The Urtelem have changed, and they change still. Once there were many herds. Now, there is one people. A joyous people, carved from the same stone. [hider=ROCKMAN RENAISSANCE] [b]Seven sections.[/b] The overall gist of this post is a collection of stories from the Urtelem as their culture develops. Most of them don't have a great deal of relevance on the global scale, but some reference changes that could interest other races or characters. [b]First section.[/b] A simple conversation between Nguxhil (Nimble) and an Urtelem herd leader. Nimble is staying near Amestris, as promised. She appears to be teaching the Urtelem about the stone calendar on the purple sands. [b]Second section. Continues from first.[/b] A young Urtelem explores a lens grove, which has been established near another stone calendar, apparently of Urtelem and Sculptor design. An non-linear Urtelem written language is revealed, with conversational graffiti at marked sites of exchange allowing communication between distant herds. [b]Third section.[/b] A human hunter who has unexpectedly risen from the grave hears some news from his companion. [b]Fourth section, continues.[/b] That same hunter is adopted by an Urtelem herd in a ceremony. The Sculptor called Help assists his lensling implantation. [b]Fifth section.[/b] Yulosi and Flux examine a bridge evidently built by Urtelem in order to cross a river. They play an idle round of questions. At least one vampire is revealed to be in Flux's adopted tribe of undead. [b]Sixth section.[/b] A migrating herd finds a mountain village of hain, who live with a stationary herd of stonemen. While the hain watch, a great deal of information is exchanged. The stationary herd is taught to write, a small henge calendar is erected, and a lensling falls asleep nearby. It is noted that, with the ability to plan, less time spent in gathering food, and a greater mobility of information, the Urtelem as a whole become much more capable of assisting other races in an organised manner. Construction projects, even ones they have no use for, make interesting problems for them to solve. Eventually the migrating herd settles down at the village and the once-stationary herd goes on the wander. [b]Seventh section.[/b] The Urtelem hold a new-year's festival in a variety of places. The years are measured from the day Sculptors say the first written language was given, and so the festival has a slight dedication to Jvan. Wandering stonefolk families establish a wider sense of community through meetings such as these. [b]1 Free Point to create the Spiral Script, a written language of arcs and angles easily decipherable to the geometrically-orientated Urtelem brain and virtually meaningless to other races, sheet pending 1 Free Point to facilitate Urtelem adoption of the calendar system used on the Purple Sands 1 Free Point to teach Urtelem how to cultivate lens groves 1 Free Point to give advanced navigation to the Urtelem 1 Might spent total[/b] [b]Jvan 8 Might Ambient 4 Might in Ovaedis 0 Free Points Level Four[/b] [/hider]