... collated from Appendices to Game Memo 17...
... collated from Appendices to Game Memo 18...
...collated from Game Memo 19...
Maps
The Old People Back before this land was settled by humans, a race lived peacefully in this area. Some say they were half-lizard, half-man in appearance. They farmed, hunted, and respected the Forest, which they called Ezri, and as their name is lost we call them the Ezri Folk. They taught our ancestors many secrets of the forests, and showed them how to live in Balance. One day, the Devil came to their lands. He could have destroyed them all with a flick of his tail, but decided to play with them first, perhaps cruelly to give them hope before crushing them, or perhaps to encourage traitors to his cause. Accordingly, he sent an emissary amongst them, in the shape of a snake so long that none could see its end. The snake came to their leaders, and said, 'My Massster hasss decreed that he will ssspare you and you may join hisss gloriousss horde if you ssshow your willingnesss to hisss caussse by sssacrificing your firssst born.' As you might expect, this caused a great deal of consternation amongst the Ezri Folk and they knew not what to do. "We have no choice" said one amongst them, known as Unuk-Halai. "We can always have more children. Let us give these as a gift to our new Lord and we will live to have children again." "No," said another, known as Oramis. "If we slaughter our own kin, we will damn our race for ever and become as devilspawn to our ancestors. It is a trick of the Unspeakable One." Unuk-Halai laughed. "You are weak," he cried and leapt upon Oramis striking to kill him. But Oramis disappeared taking the Firstborn with him. Such was Unuk-Halai's passion that, although he did not know the art, he followed Oramis into the Land of Dreams. Some say he did it through hate of Oramis. Others think he was desperate to kill the Firstborn to save his people. Others still think that perhaps he thought to gain power for himself through serving the Evil One. The Foul One came by the next day to see if his demand had made the Old Ones devour themselves. At first, he thought that they had indeed sacrificed their children, for they were nowhere to be seen. Then Unuk-Halai crept from behind a rock on his belly and told the Devil what had really happened. In a fury, the Devil looked upon the Ezri and sent their spirits howling into the Great Darkness. Then he turned to seek the Firstborn. Unuk-Halai took him along the dreaming-path he had stumbled upon which led to their hiding place with Oramis in the Mountain of Sleep. The Devil stamped on the Mountain but only managed to hurt his foot - some of his blood ran out and polluted that land forever, forming a pool in the deepest place. Then he sent forth his creatures into the Mountain's caves to chase out the Firstborn. In desperation Oramis called upon his people's god Kromos to help. Kromos disguised the children and many were able eventually to slip into the outside world. But to reach the surface they first had to swim through the cursed blood and so their new shape was made permanent. Oramis himself is said to be still trapped in the Land of Dreams to this day. And who knows, for some people claim to have encountered one like him in their slumberings Thus passed away the Ezri, at the Devil's whim. Even their memory is a faint echo on a dying breeze.
Droods : a general description
The Droods are Carmania's oldest known human culture. Those living in Wyldwood are considered eccentric and unpredictable by their Carmanian neighbours. They are fiercely independent, fanatical in their devotion to preserving their way of life which they see as Perfect; their ideals have helped them survive through at least three successive absorptions by more powerful cultures. They prefer the Lunars to their Karmanian predecessors, who were less flexible and preferred to obliterate anything that didn't knuckle under, or they didn't understand. The Lunars allow any religion or government to exist as long as it does not prey on others. Modern Carmanians have many fireside stories of the "wild men of the woods", most of which emphasize their more comical practices such as naked festivals, tree-worshipping, preference for barefootedness, supposed sexual acts with trees and downright refusal to use titles to nobs, even the Emperor on one famous occasion.
There are, however, some more sinister tales. They are said to perform Unnatural Practises which slave them to trees in return for obscure powers. Structural timber failures are sometimes blamed on Drood magic. Some Black Droods are said to be able to age others prematurely, in order to extend their own lives - certainly, they are famed for a long lifespan. They are said to be able to control the fall of a wooden dice, etc. The one practice the Empire did put a stop to was human sacrifice, in their fertility ceremonies.
The most striking thing about Drood villages is their houses. These are usually tree-houses, reached by ladders. But they are not made out of planks. The trees seem to have grown boles and hollows which eventually form rooms; large houses are formed by growing several rooms on adjoining trunks. These all seem to grow on a particular kind of tree not seen elsewhere, some kind of deciduous one. In some cases, stairs have been grown into the trunk, spiraling round the outside up to the main room.
Each village has a Yew tree at the centre. It is usually hollow, and there is some kind of shrine inside. Yews are the most holy trees to Droods.
The staple foods of the Droods revolve around tree products. Acorns are common in their diet. The ancient British, and Californian Indians, used these for flour; they keep well and are plentiful in oak forests; however, you have to boil them for ages to leach out the bitter tannin. A very labour-intensive crop. They also have small fields in clearings, where they grow mixtures of crops rather than monocultures. Their communities have pigs and rabbits roaming around, and many game birds thrive in their woods; but watch out! These are all private property!
Droods tend to grey hair, willowy physique and striking blue eyes in appearance. The men wear beards if they are on the village council, a priest etc - the longer the beard, the more important. Most are clean shaven. Younger men like to wear their hair long instead.
Drood greeting: Elambiel !
More Drood Background - for Gelert
Gelert was born & brought up in the village of Esk. You have distinct memories of the constant reassuring sound of wind chimes, and several relatives: Granpa and Granma, pure Droods, who always had time for you; cousin Erath, a girl a little older than you who always teased you; irreverent Uncle Gower, arrested about the time you left home for his part in a moonshine distillery; Aunt Orilla, who disapproved of your 'outsider' Pa and wasn't too sure about you; and several other personalities, like Diorid, a playmate you used to go fishing with; Mr Pegleg (probably not his real name), whom you used to taunt about his wooden leg; Old Garth, considered eccentric even by Drood standards for his attachment to trees, who refused to wear clothes and lived on his own in the woods.
Your Ma and Pa told you to say hello to ( - long list of names deleted - ) before you went, and were excited because you might arrive in time for the Winter Festival where the Droods reaffirm their bond with the forest. They coached you in some of the songs and rituals before you left. Bear in mind that these, like the rituals of most religions, are considered private and not for outsiders. Pa gave you some gin to take along. He also helped you carve some bangles before you went - each has the same personalised design to indicate the man they came from, you may want to think of the design yourself.
Drood women wear bangles on their ankles as a memento of each of their lovers. It would be impolite to sleep with any and not give one as a gift afterwards! Men who can afford it have a metalworker make them out of bronze (very affluent men supply the smith with copper!); poorer men carve their own out of hazel. Naturally, women prefer metal - for one thing they make a noise when they walk and thus draw attention to their desirability and sexual prowess. The men like to boast that their 'mark' is on more women than the others...
Before the Lunars were the Karmanians, and before them, the oppressors of the Droods were known as Olandis. They fought the Karmanians for many years. They were eventually crushed in battle by the Karmanians but a fabulous city full of their treasures was left somewhere in the Grey Mountains. It was overlooked by a tower of rock with carvings of human sacrifice on it, used for hideous rituals.
Kyloris was the general of a Lunar army. He and his army were welcomed by the Droods when he drove the Karmanians away, but complained after he raped a Drood girl. He ordered the Forest burnt, but his soldiers refused. So, he went to get a Danfive Xaron legion; went he returned, entered forest... and he and the legion were never seen again.
Rowan discovered the rituals of human sacrifice which refertilise the land each year. The Karmanians didn't like this and stopped the practice. In the centre of Rood (originally Droodrest, a big Drood holy place) is a Rowantree associated with him; legend has it that if the tree dies, or is chopped down, Rood will be destroyed. The Karmanians professed not to believe this, either, but their central castle was built around it and the Lunars have continued to protect it. The tree is nigh on a thousand years old, so either it's a very unusual Rowantree, or every century or so the rulers of Rood surreptitiously plant a new one...
Madoc Greataxe was a famous warrior of old. It was he who knocked over the Leaning Stone in the battle of Wyrd, and he carried the skull from a dragon as his drinking flagon. Oh, they were a barbarous lot our ancestors but they burned brightly. It happened that a sorceress came from the Land of Dawn, where a people called the Fist Council were enslaving their neighbours. She knew some powers of the Earth, and her skin was like burnished Earth-metal, and so she was called the Copper Woman. But her spirit was tied to Gouger the Great Boar, not Ernalda or her kin. She came to a village where Madoc happened to be staying (this was during the time when he was hiding from the Archdrood, after accidentally decapitating his brother Tywerran * ). She bought a pig, and took it to a glade away from the village. Madoc was intrigued, for she was of great beauty; besides, he had heard that the Easterners had strange practices and he wanted to see what she did with the swine. So he followed her quietly. All of a sudden he heard a great squealing from ahead, as of a stuck pig. He ran ahead to see what was happening, and found her drinking its blood, sucking the crimson fluid from a great wound in its throat. Some blood was spilt, and where it lay, nothing grew for seven years, not flower nor leaf nor blade of grass. Madoc saw her sucking its life out, and he saw that it was wrong. Crying "Cor Dolis!" he raised his Greataxe and fell upon her, aiming to slice her from head to groin. But when his axe hit her head it was as if it had hit metal, for there was a great spark, and the jar numbed his hand yet she was unharmed. She laughed at him and spat blood. Where it touched him, it burned. Then her hair writhed and knotted, and formed ropes, and these grew longer and snaked out. He cut at them, and each he cut, grew faster, til they had grasped him by each limb. Then they pulled him tight and no matter how he struggled, they bound him fast. The Copper Woman smiled and drew a stone gutting knife. Madoc knew that he could not win by force, so he cried, "Spider woman, you have trapped me in your web. Please, whatever you do, do not make me mate with you, for I am under geas of celibacy." A greater lie can hardly be imagined for Madoc, and the very grass stopped growing a moment as it took this in. But it distracted her for long enough for him to think. He summoned the last ounce of his will and called upon the Forest for strength. His muscles bulged and he forced the locks, still tight around his arms, around her neck too. Suddenly she was strangling herself, and the tighter her hair pulled, the more she panicked and choked herself. After a while, she fell unconcious and the locks fell away. Madoc shaved her head and bound her with her own hair, then had his way with her when she awoke. He made her take a mighty oath to behave when in the forest, and took her as his own. For some time they lived together, and everyone said it was a marriage made in Hell, stormy and violent. Several times they nearly killed each other. Every month she tried to kill him in a new fashion, and she was intensely jealous of other women Favouring him. They were made for each other. When a year had passed, she bore him a son, and he released her and drove her out of the forest. "She was a very demon as a wife," he told the men, "and if ever I am King I shall outlaw marriage." Which he did, of course.
* Oh, haven't you heard about that? It was a famous incident where Madoc, in a characteristic drunken stupor, misheard the Archdrood saying "he's late, Tywerran must be ill" as "the traitor Tywerran must be killed". Snatching up his axe, Madoc, ever ready for a scrap, lurched out of the hut and found the hapless Tywerran ambling up the path. He killed Tywerran on the spot, and proudly took the head back to the Archdrood, then had to hide out for three years until the Archdrood died.
We Droods were once enslaved by a people called the Yostandi. Their stronghold was in the northern mountains, and it took the Karmanians many years to liberate us because of the Yostands' fearsome leader, the giant Morex. Eventually the Karmanians sent five heroes who killed Morex by stealth and guile rather than facing him in battle. It is said that the Yostandi left behind a great treasure in their city under the mountains. No-one knows where the city is, but it is guarded by a bloodstained tower of rock with hideous carvings on it. It is only safe to approach during the day.
The following is private 'cult lore', not normally openly discussed with outsiders.
The Winter Festival is a 2-3 day affair where almost the whole Drood population converges at their most sacred site, the Parliament of Trees near the centre of Wildwood. There are about 2,000 people there from Wildwood, and about 500 'Outlyers', i.e. Droods who live outside Wildwood, and the occasional convert to their ways. Most of these are farm labourers, crofters etc who live in Roodshire and cannot afford to buy a large area of land, plant a wood and wait for it to grow to a point where they can live off it. There are also a few dozen elves (green - the brown ones are asleep).
Droods believe in reincarnation. In particular, they believe that when they die, they come back as a tree for one cycle, before being reborn as a man. There are a very few other animals they might return as: certain snakes, and (in legend) one-off reappearances as a badger, a magpie, etc. Erath the Joker returned as a previously unknown type of flower, named after her and now grown by Droods as a medicinal plant. The proof of their tree theory is that when they die, a tree grows from their grave (though a sceptic might point out that burying acorns with the body as food for the afterlife may have something to do with this). The Parliament of Trees is a set of huge, old trees which lies at the centre of the Drood burial place, an area in the middle of Wildwood where the Festival is held. The more important you are, such as a Drood priest, the nearer the centre you're buried, and the larger and longer-lived your tree is. At the very centre of the forest is a gigantic Yew older than Time itself, the father of the Drood way: Eldaris. He is impossibly, magically high: his top touches the clouds and his base is hundreds of feet in circumference. No important decisions are taken without consulting the Old Ones first: the priests can commune with them and draw on the advice of these centuries-old wise trees.
Obviously, if you believe that certain trees are actually your ancestors - and Gelert was introduced to a number of trees that he was told he is related to - you have a degree of concern when people begin chopping down your forest. Thus these days, all Droods are buried in a few holy sites (like the Parliament) for easy defence. But there are plenty of Ancestor Trees around in the forest, so Droods are always concerned if people damage trees in Wildwood. And who's to say that the old oak at the bottom of your garden isn't a forgotten Drood?
A young man was chosen at the last festival as the 'King'. On his forhead are the runes: P!X He is perfect in form and feature, and can have whatever he wants. Maidens vie to sleep with him, for he is a God. If he asked a drood for their sword, they would willingly give it. At the height of the ceremony, he is willingly sacrificed as an offering to the earth. This is a joyous occasion. He welcomes it, for he knows he will be reborn. (Incidentally, the King is rarely afraid of getting into a scrap, and acts as the leader if warriors are needed. Falling in battle is the same as the ritual sacrifice, for Drood purposes, and he'll die at the end of the year anyway, so why be afraid? This has led to some stories of fearless drood warriors.) But droods are human, not perfect, and share base desires like other races. Another, darker aspect of the festivities is the Wicker Man. This is where criminals and transgressors against the religion are burnt to death in a giant wicker effigy. How the crowd loves their screams and cavorting! Fun for all the family! They see nothing wrong with this and resent the Lunar government's attempt to stop this. After all, they argue, don't Lunars have people killed in much more horrible ways in the Games? Now that's barbaric. The last time there was a real burning, with people inside the effigy, was three years ago, and they only got away with that because some of the victims really had committed religious crimes.
Progressing in the Drood way
To be 'initiated' into the Drood Way - The responsibilities, in a nutshell, would be to protect and extend woods and trees. There are no obvious advantages to joining like, in Seven Mothers, you get cheap training or spells; but it may appeal to you. If you wish to get deeper into the Drood religion, you would need to essentially leave the campaign and study with the priests for several years. But after a half-civilised upbringing, the serious devotion to trees might seem a bit silly: singing to them, mind-melding, even the diet is a bit strange.
Crom Serpos
This is the cult of snakes, and it is relatively popular among Droods as they believe they may come back as such. Snakes are lucky, to Droods. Are you interested in joining? There are a couple of priests at the festivities, and they and their followers perform some exotic dances with poisonous snakes, the worshippers going into a dervish-like frenzy amongst the creatures which never seem to bite them. A good torch-lit spectacle!
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