Looking Southward and Backward, Part 6.

The dense concentrations of homes and workshops gradually diffuse now. The imperfect circle of cityscape draws inward and pinches along the causeway as the land suddenly slopes downward. Far to either side, the city continues for a short time, now up above our heads, but soon nothing but the clouds of smoke and the stunted outermost walls can be seen. The upper reaches of Deneroth continue to thrust up into the sky, of course. When one crosses through the First Gate, the world opens up. When one leaves the fringes of the False City, it expands. The vastness of the south-central Ersuunian Basin, ancestral homeland of the Esgodarrans, yawns before us. Its breath is cold and bitter, having few windbreaks along the flattened road, but the view of the land makes up for it, in my eyes at least.

To the east, the land slowly rises until the horizon is obscured from view, but we know that the elevation continues to climb that way until one reaches the uplands and river cascades which once formed the eastern borders of the old empire. It flattens out into a narrow corridor of steppe to the northeast somewhat behind us, and that way once offered one of the few dependable routes east which was not too close to the hill and riverside people to the south or the impenetrable forests of the Reossos which dominates much of the north. The Axebite lies somewhere thereabouts, and stretches as far east and west as any explorer on foot has ever cared to venture. While my own writing and that of others would make it seem as if Deneroth were the only city in all the land (with the begrudging exception of Nambar), several large towns do still dot this great northeastern frontier. Hard people who live hard lives, but undeniably kin to anyone who still tries to call themselves a Haraalian. I am remound of my desire to travel east someday and conduct research probing into the truth behind their tales of the wastelands even farther beyond, for I was lambasted by my colleagues (with some good reason) for my weakly-sourced compositions on the Fokari some time ago. Of course I am aware that even if I were to procure funding for such an adventure to meet distant people, my work would never see publication through the ITU. I know this from personal experience.

In any case, we are heading south- not east. Though the road does drift westward for a short while, giving our party a decent peripheral view of the gentler heights of the west. It's a far cry from the hyper-taiga of the Reossos, but the woodlands of the west have provided Deneroth with timber and firewood for centuries to come, and yet they seem far from depleted. Or at least, they seem to be from our point of view. Those who dwell in and around the hilly forests might find that their homeland is sorely lacking in 80-90% of its biomass, as one study slipped under the noses of the Department of Ecological Philosophies argues. Sharp-eyed Sarq claims that he can see people moving back and forth around the nearest pines. I would not be surprised if they are woodsmen making one last round in search of adequate firewood for the winter. It is said that the highest points in those hills cause a mild rainshadow for the west, explaining the relative dryness of the climate surrounding Nambar and its coast. I would dare to say that this is true, but that it is a rainshadow of the mind, and that it works the other way.

Closer to the roads, we begin to see small hamlets dotting the peripheries between landscapes. Our hired assistants and guides become chattier now, as they describe which village they or their family come from, or which one has the finest hidden orchards or fishing ponds. An argument over which has the prettiest women is now brewing, so I will turn my focus toward other things. Such as scanning the horizon for our next addition to the crew. We will be meeting up with an old correspondent of mine, though it is not entirely clear when, where, or for how long.

Hedge magicians tend to operate on a timescale like that.

Elrusyo is his name, and he has been one of my precious few sources for knowledge on the overt supernatural during my time in the ITU, given the longstanding bans on all things akin to conjuration. While this does not extend to the herblore which is his livelihood, passed down to him by a mother who'd reportedly wanted a daughter, the man has immersed himself extensively in the literature of all forms of magic. Of course if I were to ask him, he would remind me at length that they are all the same thing, in the end. I do still wonder how he's afforded even a quarter of the material he has referenced in our letters, however. Many traditions are quite unique to their parts of the world, yet leeches and caraway seeds can only earn a man so much. I have never met him in person, but I was told that I would have no difficulty in telling that it is him when he does finally make his appearance.

I pray that he won't be distinguishable by a pointed hat and staff, or some embarrassment of that sort.

Beyond the Axebitten Woods.

Click here to read the first post about the Axebite.

"Quickly now, before the abscesses burst. Help me up..."
- Last words of Charcoal-Maker Tald, shortly before mounting an impromptu funeral pyre.

In legend, the Longfolk slay indiscriminately, mutilate the corpses, and burn the remains.

In fact, the Longfolk kill cautiously, neutralize the corpses, and purify the remains with fire.

It is with ages of begrudging duty that they fill the sky with arrows at a moment's notice, taking countless lives and making a blight of the land each season. The dead, from smallest rat to largest draft animal or person, is taken in the night past the Axebite, every limb and extremity removed and then bundled together in order to be burned atop a pyre of at least four different species of hardwood. To do differently would be to break the tradition, and to break a Longfolk tradition would be to court with ever-present and looming disaster.

They have been doing this for so long that they would be excused not to remember why they do it, if they didn't live for many centuries on end. In fact, the same Longfolk who carved the warning stones around their lands are the same ones alive today- and they are a rather young generation of them, at that. Once, long ago, when words did not fail them, they did do their best to communicate with the outside world. They were known to send envoys into the lands of the small folk around them, to establish both a rapport and a clear set of guidelines. For it was, and still is, of the utmost importance that no outsider exposes itself to the heart of that forested realm. For their own good, they must be kept out- the only mercy which can be afforded the non-compliant is a swift death.

This is because the Longfolk do not fight to keep the outside world away from the forest. They fight to keep the forest away from the outside world.

A long time ago, before the glaciers receded from Qeshuut or before the mountain named Asha collapsed upon itself in a storm of fire, the people who would become the Longfolk loved their forests. They built their homes around the tall trunks and harvested the fruits of their canopies. Boughs and branches became the spears and bows used to hunt upon the forest floor, and the practice of tree shaping was elevated to an art form. Songs were sung with the names of every plant stepped on underfoot when they traveled.

The end began with a series of blights, spaced far enough apart at first, but increasingly close together and severe, until an entire generation was exposed to worse famine than had been known in ages. Then the bark began to peel away from their tallwoods, revealing discolored and spongy wood beneath which had been rotting in secret all the while. Entire villages became abandoned as the trees they were built around fell away piece by piece until nothing remained but hollowed old trunks sloughing off a continuous shower of decay each. The forest floor was snarled in all of this fallen debris, and the life was choked from the underbrush over time.

When the first strings of animal attacks came, over-hunting and disturbed territories were blamed as the people desperately tried to readjust to their environment. But then the beasts became more daring and ferocious, mauling folk in broad daylight in the middle of camps as foam churned in their mouths and open sores wept upon their backs. Bears and wolves wandered in cannibalistic droves, elks were sighted with gore and viscera adorning their antlers, hinds and rabbits tore the throats from things with fangs which should not have been. The first few purging expeditions met with limited success, pushing the afflicted wildlife back but finding no source for it. For a time, every tribe hoped in silence that this too would pass.

When the trees themselves rose up, they knew that it would never end.

From somewhere deep in the forests, out from the ancient heart which had long been held as sacred, some befoulment for every living thing had sprung forth. It wasn't clear whether it spread through spores, or in the water, or if even the air itself was tainted with some kind of vapor. All that was known was anything afflicted could and would turn eventually, violent and guided by misintent even as its body rapidly decayed into a new source of corruption- a bloated, festering new beachhead in a war which the folk of the forest were losing. For the first time, they turned to the outside world for assistance.

Through their nascent arts of diplomacy, or through theft and deception, they obtained the arts of metallurgy. They had known and used fire, but this new hell called for greater and hotter infernos than they had ever conceived of before. With long-handled axes and saws backed by hedges of cruel-tipped tridents, spears, and man-catchers, the beleaguered survivors turned back inward at last. The groaning of wood and gnashing of teeth was drowned out by the clash of iron and the crackling of flames. The land was hewed, chopped, torn and picked at until nothing remained standing on legs or roots. The first cleansing fire was said to last six hundred nights.

Back and back they pushed the evil presence, paying for every mile with blood, sweat, and the agonized screams of the burning ringing in every pair of ears. They grew controlled and disciplined in their new craft of war, carving swaths through the blasted hinterlands and setting controlled fires which could be shaped as precisely as their old and beloved woodwork once was. For reasons which only the oldest of them know, but which they are loathe to explain, a standstill was finally reached, far beyond the wooded frontier where corruption had not yet taken root.

In their current incarnation, the Longfolk are dour and relentless in their duty. Their arms and legs stretched over time and with each birth, giving greater reach to their long, hacking weapons and longer pull to their meters-high bows with arrows like spears. The ash of a clean fire is the most adornment a typical one of their number wears, caked upon their skin until their long and gaunt bodies look ashen white, grey, or the same bluish color which haunts the dreams of so many homesteaders outside of the Axebite. It is not lost on them that they now resemble the violent and walking trees which they must ruthlessly cull, and some see it as the burden of their sins, heaped up over the ages like so many bodies on a pyre.

The world has gone on without them, leaving little evidence of its former dealings with them save for the moldering archives of a few long-gone kingdoms. The tongues of men changed overnight, it seemed to the Longfolk, until their sparse ventures out into the land beyond the forest were met with babbling gibberish and complete, mutual misunderstanding. But even bereft of allies, they continue their ceaseless vigil within and without, preventing the corruption from breaking out and keeping the hapless children from beyond the woods from becoming carriers of the blight.

If ever a single mote of rot were to escape, they fear what damage it would do.

They fear what measures they would have to take.

At the edge of the Axebitten Woods.

"Ain't nothin' ever gone in or come out of the deep forest alive in my time. The Longfolk keep it that way."
- Hrith, retired forester of Bluehill.

"Trespassers Will Be Loosed Upon. Survivors Will Be Burned Alongside The Dead."
- Tentative translation of the old script carved into all monolithic boundary stones found along the edge of the Axebite.


The Axebitten Woods are the outskirts of a temperate broadleaf and mixed forest which spans a large part of the Reossos basin and swaths of the hill country beyond. Outposts and frontier towns exist almost equidistantly around the edges of the woods, yet there are no roads or other thoroughfares cutting through the forest, nor are any of the rivers which run through it utilized beyond certain points. The impracticality of this is a well-known fact of the area, and a source of constant frustration for traders and other travelers who must circumnavigate large tracts of forest in order to reach a different market. Attempts have been made in the past to trailblaze through the woods and into the forest beyond. All have ended poorly.

The woods themselves are an area of sparse woodland roughly a mile deep which forms a band around the forest proper. Beyond the woods is the eponymous Axebite, a huge area of flat land which has been stripped, all vegetation completely cut down to the earth save for occasional stumps and heaps of dead plant matter, all of them having a withered or even burned appearance. Occasional hints of animal matter, as well as more humanoid parts, are reported to be visible from the absolute extreme edge of the wood's safety. This borderline is marked by a vast series of deep-set stone markers, each approximately eight feet tall and three feet wide, facing outward with what appears to be a warning not to step beyond this point. Only, the language carved into each stone is so old that many who happen upon it, especially the frontier folk whose tongue is heavily provincialized, cannot read it. Generally however, the mistake is only made once by any given group.

This is because any trespasser, whether they walk on two legs, four, or fly on wings, invariably attract the attention of a very sharp and very large arrow. No one has ever determined what the size threshold is to being noticed, but even large beetles or cicadas have been reported as nailed to a tree at times. Because of the sudden and exponential rise in the denseness of the forest beyond the Axebite, no sight of the archers is ever had. The long-shafted arrows tend to remain for a day, only to vanish alongside their targets sometime in the following night. More rarely, hints of light like bonfires may be seen through the trees at night, or smoke in the air during the day. Thus, very few chances have been afforded to any researchers daring and unhinged enough to desire a closer and safer look at one of these arrows.

The common folk of the area, forced by necessity to eke out a living and too proud to leave their homes, have simply made due. No one walks past a certain point in the woods according to local tradition, and steps to conserve and efficiently utilize what timber is available from the woods have been taken with varying but often remarkable degrees of success. This does not mean that the enigma of the woods does not evoke a strong response from the locals, however. Quite the opposite, as the rich series of legends and myths surrounding it would suggest.

Chief among these myths is that of the Longfolk. Despite there being no credible sources for who or what does the killing past the Axebite, a vivid picture of them has been painted regardless. These beings are approximately humanoid in shape, though with much exaggerated limbs and features. They vary from seven to ten feet tall, with long arms and long fingers which swing far past their knobby knees. Each is nearly emaciated-looking, with irregular bone and sinew visible beneath a tight hide of grey-blue skin. They feast upon everything which they kill by bow, and often they are so gluttonous that when they do not eat something raw, they often take bites out of the meat as it is still roasting upon one of their fires. Thus their stomach is a pit of embers which can be seen glowing through their torsos on dark nights, and their breath is acrid smoke. They have no language and no culture beyond their means of hunting. They have always been there and forever will be.

These fireside tales told by haggard old grandpappies have given generations of children terrible nightmares out on the frontier, and in good form they have grown up to pass that trauma on down to their children, and their children's children at every opportunity, both to make them behave at home, and more seriously to keep them safe if ever they needed to enter the woods.



The truth of the matter is distressingly worse.

Click here to read the second post about the Axebite.