Under Sleeping Suns: A Wildcat Did Growl

So for the record, I know I skipped two entire verses of "All Along The Watchtower" in writing these last four essays, but I assure you it was deliberate and not accidental. That being said, let's talk about the Spirit World and its interaction with The Knot in Loris.

Last week, I mentioned in passing the spirit animals of the Vetrur, and way back here I spoke on the Cosmological Makeup of the universe that Loris resides in. In both of these, the assertion that there is a spiritual world separate but intrinsically bound to the physical world is clear and concise. In today's examination, we're going to dive into that for a while.

When The Nine began calling out from The White with their songs, it was the Vetrur who heard them first. The Vetrur legends will tell you that it's because their fierce Northmen ancestors were pure of heart and spirit, both strong of character and flawless of courage. This is no doubt at least partly true, but scholars, philosophers, and other learned folk will add this specific item to that list:

The Knot is tied in such a way that in some places, two or more of the Five Worlds touch and overlap. In some places this makes the walls between the Worlds very strong, and in others, it makes the walls so thin and weak as to not be there at all. Thankfully, the latter are very few and very far between, else the Demons of the Lower Dark might break free and run wild across the face of the world. With The Howling firmly set between the Waking World and the Lower Dark, the beasts that live within that wretched place can only foment nightmares among the living. That is what is promised, at least.

But the sixth strand of The Knot, the nameless "spirit path," does bind the Five Worlds together, and it does at some times and in some places enable interaction between the Waking World and the spirits and creatures that live within The Veil and The Howling – with good and ill coming from both, as such things do. In the north lands of the Vetrur, the spirit path is very, very strong.

The Vetrur can best be described as having a cultural base that draws heavily from both the Norse and Iroquois traditions. They're not as incompatible as you might initially think, really. To the point, however, is the focus on the rite of passage that each of the Vetrur, man or woman, boy or girl, must undergo in order to truly understand the world around them. Through the years, this set of rituals has become very well organized and planned out - there are even contingency rituals in the event that the "normal" set doesn't work to help the soon-to-be-an-adult find their new path in life. If the practice of spending up to a week in a sweat lodge, fasting save for water and elk's blood, reciting ancient chants and focusing on the flame of a candle doesn't do it for you, well, there are a few back-up plans to try.

Because of their traditions and cultural openness toward such things, coupled with the thinness of the barriers between three of the layers of The Knot, the Vetrur are as a people acutely aware of the interaction between the world they inhabit and its neighbors. A child laughing at nothing is more likely to be asked what spirits she is playing with than she is to be thought mad or addled. Vetrian legends and myths speak frequently of hunting parties led out of certain death by kindly spirits, often portrayed as the immortal, ephemeral paragons of the very creatures the hunters were seeking when they became lost in the storm. More often than not, the tale ends with the hunters realizing that their desire to kill and bring home as many of the creatures as they could was misguided, and so they learn humility from the spirit, and remember to take only what is needed. While some of these stories are no doubt merely that – stories – the bulk of them are factual accounts that also happen to be useful as morality plays.

The Vetrur, then, were perfectly positioned to hear the songs of The Nine first. As the Silver Door was opened at a juncture of The Veil and The White, so too is the homeland of the Vetrur a juncture. All things have their spirits, from the lowest beetle to the mightiest of pines. The lakes and rivers of their harsh homeland are the blood of the land, the mountains its bones, and the earth its flesh. Everything that lives within the Waking World has a counterpart in The Veil, a spirit-guide, if you will, that a strong connection must be cultivated with in order to truly live. Through their rituals and traditions, the Vetrur youths reach out to their guide and bond with it. When this has been done, they go out into the world as new people, with new, secret names, and face their homeland head on. It is a wild, hard land, a place that cannot be bent to the will of its inhabitants. Rather, they have had to learn to bend themselves to live with it, as part of it. Though they recognize the power of The Nine and their right to dominance over the world (they are the Gods, after all – usurpers or not), the Vetrur also recognize that the spirits of the world deserve their due respect and that it is better to listen to what the land has to say than it is to simply plow it under and build on it. Oh, the Vetrur farm and plow and build and till just as any other people, but they do so with the mindfulness that the land can bury them at a moments notice, should it choose. The Vetrur are not better than the animals, they are not stronger than nature. They have no Last Good King giving himself up and becoming one with the land so that his people might never know a famine, as the citizens of Angarn have. They have only themselves, and that is all they need.

The Vetrur, by and large, see themselves as one with the natural world – they are a part of life, as it is a part of them. Greatness of spirit and deed, then, are what set them apart from the rest of nature. A common Vetrian homily is that while everything is born and everything dies, the only thing that is eternal is the name of one who has lived their life to its fullest. Honor, they say, never dies.

There are and were other nascent cultures that heard the songs of The Nine and sought to strengthen the ties between The White and the Waking World. In what is today Kolantha, there were the nations of Vulasha and Celinia. Though they've long since been torn asunder and reduced to little more than ash by the Kolanthan Inquisition, the people that would come together to form those nations held strong ties to the spirits of the rivers, oceans, and savannahs that bounded their homelands. As the Vetrur and their far-flung cousins to the south turned more of their ears to the songs of The Nine, the Gods gained in power, and took up their path toward reclaiming the long-misused power of The Eternal Kings. The Reign Of Glass began when The Eternal Kings refused to become agents of The Nine on Loris, and began sacrificing their own subjects in a final, futile attempt to gather up vast reserves of spiritual power with which to fight The Nine. The Rain Of Glass was the result, and Harak-Ur was buried beneath molten flame.

Rumor and legend has it that what remains of Harak-Ur has become a weak spot in The Knot, and that nightmare creatures from The Howling now prowl about that devastated wasteland, hunting for the restless dreams of brave and foolish adventure-seekers and tomb robbers, hoping for a meal of terror and dread. Others speak of forgotten horrors from The Lower Dark becoming flesh and blood in the shadows of the shattered and ruined Ziggurat temples of the dead Kings. Very few have been so foolish as to seek out the truth of these tales. Fewer still ever return.