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Mythology
Table of Contents
Preface
Section I: Gods and Goddesses
Section III: Myths and Religions of other Peoples
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“A
peddler stood at a forking of the road, his horse and two donkeys behind
him, the latter weighed down by the goods he was selling – pots and
pans, hammers and saws, the kind of items that are often in want by
villagers -, while his horse bore the light load of his bow and his tools
for tinkering. There was sometimes a need for his skills in the places he
visited, to fix a hole in a bucket, to sharpen and straighten a saw, and
other kinds. He would have much preferred to be a tinkerer most of the
time, but too few of his customers had broken items that he could repair.
“The
two roads splitting from the one he had been using looked much the same.
Both were lined by trees, growing just sparsely enough not to be called a
forest, both offered shade, and neither showed any sign of where it would
lead. Which way should the peddler take?
“It
was then that he noticed the single marking of the forking road, a square
stone, with moss growing precociously in some crannies of the rock. The
peddler knelt before the stone and cleaned off the moss on a whim, then
sighed happily when he discovered that those crannies connected to form
the image of a walking stick. ‘Now look at that, Horse, we’ve gotten a
bit of luck!’ he cried out. ‘This stone must have been blessed by a
priest of The Great Wanderer, Nash’Geo. Now let’s see if I haven’t
got something suitable in your saddle bags.’ It wasn’t uncommon for
the peddler to speak with his horse, for on his long solitary journeys he
had found that his steed made for an excellent listener, better – in his
own mind – than the women he had known.
“The
peddler searched among his belongings, then retrieved a good-sized candle
made of goat’s tallow. ‘Yes, this is a good choice,’ he told his
horse, ‘for a goat is well-traveled herself. She seeks out the highest
peaks of a mountain, the places few others dare explore.’ The horse did
not reply but watched with some interest while its master returned to
kneel before the stone, placed the candle on the ground and lit it with
his tinder box and matches. ‘Great Wanderer, blessed child of Maidoyú
and Olmawi, hear my calling,’ the tinkerer said as he bowed his head.
‘I wish to honor you by my travels, yet I now am at a crossroads and do
not know which road to take. Please, Great Wanderer, help me!’
“The
candle burned steadily, the smell of the tallow rising upwards to the
heaven.
“’What
do you look for in your travels, mortal?’ a voice asked, and when the
peddler raised his head – not without a blush entering his face -, he
saw a giant stand before him, his legs to each side of the sacred stone.
The giant was twice as tall as an ordinary man, yet his sight did not
frighten the peddler. Nor were his horse or the donkeys scared by the
sudden appearance, since they, as much as the tinkerer himself, knew that
this was the God of Travel himself rather than a creature of this world.
“The
peddler bowed his head quickly again, saying, ‘Thank you, oh Great
Wanderer, that you have showed yourself to me! Thank you, thank you!’
“Nash’Geo
chuckled lightly, a noise both deep as mountains churning underground and
light as a merry brook. ‘Answer my question, please, mortal.’
“The
peddler wondered what he should ask for. After all, he had already been
blessed extraordinarily by the god deigning to visit him! But, he also
thought, who knew how long the god would stay by his side? How quickly
would he tire of this mortal being’s concerns? ‘Great Wanderer, I wish
to know the road which will lead to the best profits.’
“’The
profits of a peddler, or those of a tinkerer?’ Nash’Geo smiled. ‘I
can see that you are both, and I see that your tools have not been in much
use lately.’
“The
mortal’s heartbeat quickened. ‘Is there a way that will allow me to
use my skills? Lord, ever since I was a child, I knew nothing better than
to repair something that had broken down. I am good at it, really I am,
but –‘ He sighed before going on, ‘Lately, there has been little
besides a leaking pot or a stein of ale that needed fixing. Oh, how I wish
that I could prove my worth, that I could live as a tinkerer rather than a
peddler! That is what would make me happy.’
“’Then
take the left road,’ Nash’Geo said. ‘It will bring you the task and
the happiness you desire.’ After having spoken those words, the god
vanished, as quickly as he had appeared, and with him, the candle
disappeared, leaving nothing but the fumes of the tallow behind.
“His
heart lightened, the peddler jumped onto his horse, took the reins of it
and the donkeys, then rode towards the left road. Before leaving the
crossroads, he halted briefly and told his steed, ‘Horse, henceforth I
shall be a peddler no more. A tinkerer’s life awaits me, and we shall
get rid of those donkeys quickly.’
“Years
passed before the self-same tinkerer returned to this very crossroads.
Much changed he was, not only by the weight of the years which had bowed
forward his shoulders. Where before his only companions had been beasts of
burden, his retinue now consisted of four armed guards, while he himself
rode in a carriage drawn by the finest of horses. His clothes were the
finest of silk, embroidered with gold. Yet his face was not one of a happy
man, instead it was lined by the wrinkles of worry, which could tell long
tales of woe and hardship. Angrily he left his carriage, walked over to
the sacred stone – which had by now been reconquered by moss – and he
pulled out a large hammer fashioned by a dwarf to split the stone apart.
‘This is for you, deceiving god!’ he cried and raised the hammer.
“’Halt!’
the god’s voice echoed across the land, and the guards immediately drew
their swords when suddenly the giant figure of Nash’Geo appeared. But
the god waved his hand slightly, and the guard’s blades flew from their
hands to embed themselves into the dirt road. They realized that a god
opposed them, which was enough to keep them from any cries of protest.
“Their
master, the erstwhile peddler, was not frightened by the god’s
appearance though. ‘Deceiver!’ he challenged the deity. ‘You have
destroyed my life when I thought you had helped me!’
“Nash’Geo
chuckled, the very same noise that the mortal man had heard long years
ago. ‘Have I really done that? You have asked which path would allow you
to live as a tinkerer, claiming that it would bring you happiness, and
that is what I have told you.’
“’Your
path led into a warzone!’ the tinkerer shouted. ‘The day after our
meeting, my donkeys were stolen, and I only found them again a week later,
slaughtered by the wayside. Horse died a month later, from an arrow shot
in its poor heart. I was nearly killed as well! Soldiers took me and
forced me to accompany them, to keep their arms sharp, to fix their tools.
Those were months of starvation that you led me to, not the happiness you
promised, Great Deceiver!’
“The
god looked over to the tinkerer’s retinue, his carriage and the gilded
clothes he wore. ‘You seem to have found profits, mortal, though.
Moreover, you have done more than just fix the arms of soldiers, have you
not? In that war you mention, was it not you who built the siege weapons
that brought the victory to your side? When those weapons broke down, was
it not you who repaired them so that they could launch their projectiles
against the enemy’s fortress? And were you not rewarded richly by the
new monarch?’
“’All
I wanted was to live as a good, simple tinkerer. I wanted a safe life, not
the one of toil and hardship that you brought me!’
“Nash’Geo
smiled. ‘You never asked which was the safe road. You wished to live as
a tinkerer, which is what I gave you. You have proved that you are a good
tinkerer, mortal. Had you taken the right path, you would have never
learned what your worth truly was. All your existence you would have
yearned to show the very skill of your fingers and mind, yet never would
you have been able to. You would have lived in safety, never challenged,
never threatened. Now I ask you, which is the better? To have braved
danger and discovered who you are, or to have stayed huddled up in a
shack, never to have explored the possibilities of your own self? If you
prefer the latter, then by all means, bring down the hammer and shatter
the stone. Otherwise, tinkerer, see what you have and enjoy it.’
“The
god vanished. To his surprise, the tinkerer smelled burned tallow in the
air. He looked at the hammer in his hands, wondered about the god’s
words, then he sighed. Without a word he dropped the hammer, leaving it to
rest next to the sacred stone. After watching both items for a while, he
returned to the carriage. ‘Take us home,’ he told the driver before
settling into the soft pillows and looking out of the window at the sacred
stone. ‘You were right, Great Wanderer,’ the tinkerer whispered. ‘I
was the deceiver in this, for I have found more than I had bargained for.
Thank you for your aid.’”
Traditional
(told most commonly in the southern regions of Ibrollene; this version is
taken from Rudergeb Rimmg’s collection of folk tales, Sirap, 3098 A.E.)
“Ye
think ye’d know a priest right away. As fer me, that’s what I always
told my buddy Terc – Tercuk Peh, that’s his full name -, that I could
smell a cleric from a mile away, just by the stench of smug sanctity. Terc
used to laugh loudly at that. Nothin’ unusual, Terc was constantly
chucklin’ about this or that. Sometimes he’d start gigglin’ while we
were fightin’, if ye can imagine that. A madman he was, an’ I really
miss the fool.
“We’ve
been through a lot of scrapes together, had our share of fun –
fightin’, drinkin’, laughin’, chattin’ up women, an’ all the
things a man lives for. Terc dragged me across half the continent or more
in our travels, always promisin’ there’d be some great fortune
waitin’ for us. ‘course there wasn’t. At least none worth all the
trouble we got ourselves into! ‘Let’s see Cornevan’s Atrocity, down
in Robhovard,’ he decided one day, while we were safe an’ sound in a
Tonomai kafeserat, nearly a year’s travel ‘way from the
southern tip of the continent. What do ye think happened? We went down
there, ‘course, an’ I still have the scars in my legs from the arrows
o’the local savages. Sure, we had a good time in our journey – ye
always could rely on Terc t’be a good companion. I’ll admit gladly
that the Atrocity was a sight worth seein’. A sane mind can’t imagine
somethin’ as twisted an’ crazy as that.
“But
a fortune? Money, gold or somethin’ o’the kind? Forget it! Terc’s
ideas, they never led to anythin’ o’that kind. What they led to was
seein’ some place new, some place extraordinary. Oh, I was grousin’
all the time ‘bout that, not least of all ‘cause we rarely had enough
coins to buy things. Always had to make our own tools, hunt, an’ live
almost like the Robhovardian savages I just mentioned. Still, I’m kinda
glad to have seen all the places that Terc thought of.
“We
spent some ten years journeyin’ together, till the day he died. Fell off
a mountain side, into the burnin’ lava of a volcano we’d been
lookin’ at. Damnedest thing I’ve ever seen. I could swear Terc’s
eyes were wider than his face during his fall – an’ not ‘cause of
fear but ‘cause he wanted to see every little detail of the lava see
afore dyin’. Like I said, a madman he was.
“Yet
the biggest surprise the ol’ bastard had saved up for after his death.
Y’see, each of us had given th’other an envelope, within it an address
an’ a name – just in case either of us went to visit the gods afore
th’other, so our kin could learn of what happened. Ye know what I found
when I opened Terc’s envelope? The address of a Darawk temple in Cayaboré,
an’ the name of a priest there. Turned out the cleric wasn’t a Darawk
scholar, rather he was one of the Nash’Geo priests.
“An’
so, the priest told me, had Terc been. For ten years, my companion an’
best friend had been a priest – an’ I never realized! At least now I
know why Terc used to laugh like that about my skill at detectin’
priests. Somewhere in the great beyond, Terc’s gotta be laughin’ at me
still, now that I tell ye these words.”
Bentraugh
val Dizar,
Northerton, Cayaboré
“And
The Great Wanderer spoke, ‘There are more ways to travel than just the
one your feet find.’”
From
“The Wanderer’s Book”, Edition of 3157 A.E. (reprint in Eboracum
Novum, 3161 A.E.)
“Indeed
there is much more to travel and exploration than just going there. If the
reader of these lines has ever undertaken a journey further than the
twenty miles to the next town, he will know what I refer to. There needs
be supplies of food, a fashion to repair your saddle or whichever else
might fail one’s service, not to mention a map – or at the very least
a vague idea of what lies ahead.
“Now
consider the Nash’Geo priest’s ideal of exploring that which no other
man has ever seen before? To boldly venture where no one has set foot
before? You do not know the terrain, you do not know what – if any –
peoples live there, nor what dangers await you. Can you go there on a
whim? Of course it is possible. It doesn’t make much sense, though.
Chances are that the unknown will kill the unwary traveller, most likely
in a way that the experienced and well-equipped journeyman could easily
avoid.
“The
earliest clerics of Nash’Geo found out about this harsh truth through
personal misfortune. That was when the words of The Great Wanderer were
recognized for what they truly meant, and the three castes of our clergy
developed, all of which cooperate in the great endeavor to explore the
width of our world (and perhaps even beyond).
“The
first and purest caste is that of the explorers, those who – in
person – fulfill the mandate of their proud order, to feast their eyes
on the marvels of the world, and then to report home their findings. It is
not that they consider themselves the superior of the other castes. Far
from it, since in their travels they have come to cherish the deeds of
their fellow priests who commonly stay in the known world and have to
subsist on the tales of the explorers’ adventures.
“There
is little that an explorer has in common with his or her brethren, the
single identifier being their love for tasting the new and unknown. Aside
from that, there are as many kinds of explorers as there are sentient
beings in our world. I have met some who are so timid that you find it
hard to believe they have explored the crevices of the Laru’Sedna
Mountains, amongst them one who claims to have found a passage into the
land beyond the mountains. (Her name is Teshkay Nevrodd, a knightdwarf who
originally hails from Robhovard. She has put her tale on record in The
Sight From the Peaks, published in Sirap in 3122 A.E. Unfortunately
her account has never been verified, and shortly after our meeting she had
set out for the Laru’Sednas again, never to return.) Other explorers are
of the boisterous kind who can regale you for a whole evening with the
tale of just a single one of their journeys, with details that border on
the unimaginable.
“Never
pretend that you can recognize an explorer priest from his words or his
deeds! (Also, do not forget that there are plenty of people in our world
who would make for splendid clerics of Nash’Geo yet never considered
entering the order. It would be a shame to discredit the efforts of such
valiant explorers like Vestan Yust, a man whose memory The Great
Wanderer’s priesthood holds in high regard, although Master Yust had
never joined their ranks.)
“The
second caste of clerics is the one of the guardians. They are
commonly of a hardy and brawny kind, most suited to a warrior’s life –
but with the desire to assist a greater effort than that of merely
surviving into old age. The guardians hire their services out to those in
need of protection, like a caravan crossing the Elfadil Desert, or a
merchanter train into the Arrufatian Wild Coast, but also to those who
require a reliable bodyguard, such as perhaps a prince in jeopardy from
his own court. There are, after all, many good reasons for desiring
protection.
“The
guardians most often choose to protect those who journey; yet some have a
rather sedentary lifestyle. The Duchy of Quebas, in the Arrufat Peninsula,
has been employing Nash’Geo clerics as their palace guards for nearly a
century now. Many of those guards are the grandchildren or
great-grandchildren of the priests originally hired.
“But
whichever their occupation, the guardians never keep their entire salary.
A portion, commonly all which exceeds their own immediate needs, is
transferred to the third caste of priests, the patrons. (Lest the
reader worry that in this fashion, an aging guardian has no manner to
support himself, rest assured that the order of Nash’Geo uses some of
its funds for this very purpose. The order also supports the family of a
guardian priest who has died, and not rarely have the children of such a
priest joined the clergy upon coming of age themselves.)
“The
afore-mentioned patrons are the ones who sponsor expeditions to unknown
regions of Gushémal. They also take care of assembling the necessary
supplies, horses or ships or other methods of conveyance, as well as
possibly required guards. The latter is the easiest of their tasks, since
they commonly arrange for the employment of the guardian priests as well.
(Most guardian priests are affiliated with a patron priest, relying on the
latter’s business contacts. A very good relationship this is, one that
almost always ensures that the guardian is employed rather than wanting
for a job.)
“Yet
it is the outfitting of the explorers which is their most noble endeavor,
and the one in which they take the most pride. Patrons are closely
associated with Darawk temples, a natural fact for it is the priests of
the Lord of Knowledge who can tell which region of the world is the least
charted, and where an expedition might be the most fruitful. As a matter
of fact, it is often the clerics of Darawk who devise the idea of an
expedition (adding their own seeker priests, much like Nash’Geo’s
explorers, to the party). Clearly, though, a patron priest knows far
better what is required to make said expedition successful and to ensure
that the knowledge it uncovers will be brought back to civilization.
“Another
connection of the patron priests is with the clerics of Mauerstras, the
God of Trade and Wealth. Primarily since these other priests know best
which merchant requires the protection of Nash’Geo guardian priests, but
also because of the patron priests’ natural affiliation with money.
Mauerstras clerics are entrusted with the money of their customers and
faithful, they make sure that said money appreciates in value over time;
they also invest the money in other causes, hopeful to make a profit.
Obviously, a patron priest of Nash’Geo has similar concerns, albeit it
that the patron hopes to enhance his funds for a new expedition (or to pay
for the pensions of guardians and explorers). Occasionally a priest will
serve both deities, a task liable to consume every waking hour.
“Of
course a patron does not exclusively rely on the income from his guardian
priests, or the profits realized from trade and the like. There are always
donations granted by citizens – or by the Darawk clergy, willing to
assist in an expedition’s finances. The former is certainly welcome, no
matter how high the sum. If a simple weaver wishes to donate a sum of a
few bronze coins, why it is worth far more than a bag of gold from a
wealthy merchants; the patron will be happy to relate to the donor all
that has been accomplished from the gift, the tales of the explorer
priest’s journeys.
“There
are some who claim that the patron priest is the most noble of the
servants of Nash’Geo. Never does he find adventure, never is he
permitted to see some of the wondrous sights of the world for himself. He
suffers so that others might explore and find the new. Yet do not think
that a patron would complain about this fact. If anything, he will bemoan
that he has too little time in life to accomplish all that he desires.”
Zhames
Teekerk, Cleric of Nash’Geo,
Owain Frisanacco, Topay Coalition
(excerpted from “The Traveller Priests”, 3139 A.E.)
“Most
priests, dear girl, you can recognize by the mere sight of them. Take the
tan vests of a Darawk scholar, or the red, tight clothes of an Alyssian
servant. Right away you know what kind of a man he is, and what you can
expect of him as the years peel away the handsomeness of youth.
“Yet
there is also the follower of Nash’Geo, the journeyman’s deity (whom
you might also know as Nagraph or simply Geo, both names that are common
in the provinces; the knowledge of such names should not put red on your
cheeks, for there are much better causes that have a girl blush). Trust
him not implicitly. A man being a priest does not mean he will cherish his
woman as he ought to, and of few clerics this is more true than of those
beholden to The Great Wanderer.
“Worse
for you in your search, it is hard to decipher whether a man is simply an
adventurer, after no more than his personal wealth, or one who has a wider
goal, the kind that ennobles him. Surely the latter is a better mate than
the fellow who is only a man.
“Yet
there is no sign to look out for, not even the walking stick which is The
Great Wanderer’s symbol. For obvious reasons, many travellers use the
stick, not only those consecrated to a deity’s service. Yet it is the
only indication you might find. See if the journeyman who has caught your
eye treasures his walking stick, treats it as more than the simple aid it
would be for an ordinary man.
“That
would be your first – and best indication – of who this man is. If
then you can find that more than the obvious purpose is hidden in the
stick, that is for the better. There are some priests of Nash’Geo who
have hidden a rapier within their stick, the wooden hull being no more
than an inconspicuous scabbard. (Do not fret if the man of your heart’s
desire should have such a device; in his chosen profession many dangers
await him. Indeed, one of this kind might be the better for yourself,
since he is most likely to survive and come home to your hearth.) There
are others who have hollowed out their stick, so as to store their most
valued possessions inside, such as gold or gems or, hopefully, a picture
of their woman.
“Believe
me, dear girl, it is a happy occasion when you should inspect your
priest’s stick and fight your own image inside!”
Sheelay
Deraytman,
Sirap, Ibrollene
(excerpted from “A Guide for Maidens to Find the Partner To Share Their
Life With”, 2984 A.E.)
Read
on about Nash'Geo
(Temples, Blessings & Curses)
on the second page!
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