[✗] [World Lore] The Secret Garden of Tahariae

[Spindle 651]

Spoiler

 

 

Hávamál's Holt, Læraðr, & the Stag

The Secret Garden of Tahariae

 

 

The shadows drew longer than light,

And in the vastness they lingered,

And right came the birthing of life:

The Stag came and mingled,

In the empty night

 

 

 

I

 

The Stag Before aught else was made, beyond the emptiness some call the void, there was a single tree, perfectly pruned with mighty boughs adorned with white leaves that twinkled like distant stars. This solitary tree was called Læraðr - a time-gnawed willow that lifted its great branches within an unbound realm; and thereat, clutched between these boughs, was a peculiar massing of earth; a realm in itself, spotted with a single peak that touched the heavens and possessed winding vascularities of rivers that descended level-by-level until they cascaded into the nothingness below.    Hávamál's Holt, as it was called, was the secret garden of Tahariae, the white stag and keeper of purity. It was in that time before Tahariae departed for Asulon, when he and his kindreds tread upon the freshly tilled lands of Aegis, that he cultivated a land other than his own realm, a secret place, past a point of perception that was enshaded within an umbral nothingness. And it was not the spirit of creation that guided his hand, for this new place was one of measuring, a realm where Tahariae wished to bring those pledged him to test their hearts.    Yet it came to pass that when his Clerics diminished in standing, the Læraðr went forgotten, its sole guardian bound to walk longly until a time yet come, and so it waited.   I have talked now of what became the Læraðr, but this story is of before then; before the realm itself was wrought and Tahariae tinkered in a dark domain.    The Læraðr      So it was for a great deal of time Tahariae floated adrift in that place of nothingness. No birds sung there, nor resounded the gentle roar of rivers, or the howl of the wind as it rolled over lumpy hills; for these things were all yet come, and all heard Tahariae were the soundless echoes in a roofless sky. Then came from an outstretched palm a vast light, and this hand gripped at many unseen things, pulling on the strings that strung the world, and Tahariae wove them into a pattern; a winding array of vast veins of which were the roots of the Læraðr. And that light soon rose up, past the point of his hand and above, and he held there as another unseen string kept it aloft, suspending it like a lion-coloured pendulum that wreathed his new realm in warm light. Then sprouted from those fresh roots a lithe twig, and its arms were frail like a child, reedy and ready to snap at any utterance of the wind; yet there was no wind, not yet, and those arms rose to the light and they drew it in thirstily.    So it came to pass that this scion became a great tree and floated under this new light. Its boughs were now thick and arranged in the likeness of Tahariae’s mighty antlers and it was then that he conjured the earth, the muddy banks of rivers rent with the slice of his hand, and the rocks that first tumbled into knobby hills and then drew tall in towering mountains. He blew over these hills and mountains his breath and so the wind was made; this wind was first brief and churned in low valleys and flats, but its courage soon grew and it quivered the needle leaves and the early grass until it drew up into the high-boughs. Thereat it cooed and imparted the knowing of light into the leaves, and they shone, twinkling forever in that empty place.

So it was when Tahariae finished making the lumpy hills and the rivers and the lights and the Læraðr, that he went into the mountains whose high peaks mingled with the new lights and found himself a solitary cave. He brought with him a single leaf of the Læraðr and its pale light filled the twilit cave with warmth. The air was still, for it was unknown yet to the wind; and it was dark, very dark, and if not for the reddish shafts of light at its mouth, or the leaf of the Læraðr brought too, the wind and the light may have never known such a place. He resided here longly, musing on many things imperceptible to the mortal mind until a time he drew up; then with new thoughts and when the tide of light was high, he left, darkening the cavemouth in his wake.   When the tide of the light ebbed and the last touch of the day drew away to rest, Tahariae went to the muddy banks of a lapping river, his bare feet sinking into a sandy floor. He beheld the river, its sloppy banks, the rushing water, the twist-and-turns; yet here, life yet came, for no fish waved in the water, their scales gleaming with the light of the leaves and the sun like shimmering windswept banners, nor were there smaller creatures like limpets or molluscs clinging to splitting river-rocks. Thus it was that Tahariae called the spirit of the water and it answered; he implored the water take shape of the fish, and the limpets, and the molluscs, and the other things of the water, and it heeded. And at this time tiredness took Tahariae and he hungered; then from the river he took a single new fish, two molluscs, and an oyster and he sat to eat. Yet he would not draw flame in his new realm and he took the fish between his jaws, uncooked and still flapping with life; and thereat he supped, his teeth sinking into its fibrous flesh and he was glad. The molluscs he sucked at the shell’s mouth and it too he ate. Then he brandished a flat knife of sheer light and with the oyster in hand, cut the binding muscle and ate with the river’s water as sauce.       Hávamál In the morning when the light awoke, Tahariae too roused from a sandy slumber. Shafts of early light danced upon his face and his paleness was warmed; up the winding vascularity of the Læraðr his gaze traversed, it rested upon the bright leaves, the boughs thick and heavy of wooded muscle, the lither branches still green and new, and then the sun. This light would guide him in final act, taking his hand and weaving itself into life; it churned there, lingering in the early air like an infant sun. Then, in the deep valley by the river, in the dawn of day where the grass buds were soon to blossom, a solitary doe emerged from the light. Its ears were crested with little tufts of white; the eyes bigly round and black and shaded under the awning breadth of a sweaping brow. Slender legs shaken from birth brought it upon Tahariae and it peared up at him; he gave it name, of which was Hávamál, and it contented to roam the hills and woods, and by the river banks until time’s end.   Now I have spoken on the making of the Læraðr and the deeds of Tahariae in that time before the coming to Asulon, and long has the Secret Garden remained forlorn; but few have travelled to this place since and still too can it be reached. In a time between the demise of Gazardiel and the Garden’s birth, a rent in the fabrics of the realm was opened by the creature Cadmium. With a portal, she drew asunder a doorway red that wept bloody tears of a foul kind; and then she drew foot into Tahariae’s place. Fortunately mischief gripped not her mind and she left in time, yet this is to say, Hávamál's Holt is still to be tread.

 

 

Purpose

Spoiler

Evening,

 

I’ve written this little piece as a tie-in with other deific lore and a location that could be used as an event site in the future. 

 

That is all.

 

 

 

Spindle, out

Refrences

Spoiler

https://www.lordofthecraft.net/forums/topic/157049-%E2%9C%93-tahariae-aengul-of-purity-updated/

 

[saint swag 2436]

spimdle lore 👍

[christman 2216]

this is mfw when spindle posts lore (i love spindle lore)

[femurlord 2314]

Whoa, more spindle lore

[lemonke 1873]

powerful

[ScreamingDingo 16791]

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