Escher steps onto the stage, unadorned by any sort of decorations.
I was told to shy away from classical stories, and to shy away from some of the more composed themes.
I will begin simply, because sometimes the simplest lessons are hardest to learn.
Marcos conjures a loaf of bread.
Holding it out he shows it to everyone.
What is the purpose of tradition? I would like to think that it is to allow future generations to enjoy something.
Now that something could be as simple as this loaf of bread. a treat that is only possible because of the traditional recipe used to make it.
But it could also be as complex as the reasons why a certain family encourages their children to do farming or to raise live stock, or my case to study illusion magic. yes I am a child of tradition. but unlike some i don't see tradition as a rod that breaks when we deviate from it, i see it as the rope that we use to anchor ourselves to people, places and things that are important to us. When something important to us begins to fail we can use that rope to reinforce it, or to disconnect from something that could harm us. in my case it was an ancestor who in the wake of a family tragedy took up necromancy to prevent his family from leaving him. the knots in that rope were many and complex. even though that tradition stretched back longer then the records of any book i possess, I chose to sunder those traditions and escape from the legacy i was born into. I still bear the scars of that sundering, but i am proud of the traditions i have made for my self.
Take this loaf of bread, made in a traditional way. The recipe for how to make it is an excellent example of a tradition. This loaf of bread is made with crushed grain, oil from olives, and water drawn from the river.
In its time it was great, but that was because it was the only way it could be done. But after a few short years someone found a way to crush the grain that left fewer pieces of stone mixed in with the grain.
splitting the loaf in to two complete loaves he holds one up and holds the other up. neither looks like each other. the original is flat and still has large dark specks, while the other is fluffy and large from leavening.
sure there were people that preferred the old way of making bread. The bread made the old way was traditional, and eating it required patience and care to make sure that you did not break a tooth on the rocks in the bread.
Back home, the women of my family once placed a single rock in each of the loaves that are made. To remember the traditions of the past and how we can not see the future clearly unless we know where we have come from. They used the finest milled grains and the purest of filtered water, and only the finest and freshest oils. but they had not forgotten the past. Though sadly the past has forgotten them.
Marcos drops the traditional loaf and it hits the stage like a rock making a loud [whack].
He takes the fresh loaf of bread holds it out.
tradition has purpose and stepping away from it is not something you should do lightly. if you hold it too loosely you will lose it
gesturing to the loaf on the stage.
hold to it too tightly, and the thing you are trying to preserve for future generations becomes crushed, causing this generation to not pass it on to the next. all because they could not enjoy it.
Marcos squashes the loaf of bread into an amorphous lump, before offering the unappetizing ball of bread to someone near by.
Who thinks they would enjoy eating this?
conjuring a ripe melon he holds it gingerly.
take this melon for example, I want to share it with you all, but there is not enough today. Should I hold onto the melon and all it's seeds keeping them bottled up away from the sun. or should i scatter them in a field and let them get some sun and soil and a bit of rain, and hope that they grow into the melon I know them to be. Like the seeds of this melon our traditions are the seeds we place in our children which is the soil from which the next generation will grow. we must care for both the seeds and the soil. because if we don't there wont be a next generation. the surest way to kill off the next generation is to suffocate this one.
Tradition tells us many things and guides our path into the future, but holding too firmly to tradition can leave you vulnerable to new threats, which is what today's story is about. A story about tradition, and how it almost destroyed a civilization, and how something new saved a civilization that learned to adapt without forgetting the past.
with a waive of his hands Escher opens a trap door in the stage and a dais rises holding a large and heavy book. He opens the book to somewhere in the middle.
The story I have for you is of the very first necromancer, the one that existed even before there was a name for it. Long before cruel men used it to do horrible things, before the natural cycle of life and death became about good and evil. there existed a young child that wished to defend his land and his people with something new, something that shed new and unflattering light on traditions, showing flaws in those too ignorant to hear.
But I suppose if I am going to tell you a story about the honored dead, perhaps I should dress the part of a story teller more appropriate to the story.
Marcos pushes his hood back revealing what looks like a skull where his head should be, and it is decorated with colorfull flowers, leaves and ivy.
Marcos continues to speak and the mouth of the skull moves as if it had muscles driving it, but none are visible. the stage begins to roll and shift with tussocks of grass and expand back over 400 ft as old trees vanish and new ones grow in new places making the sage longer and larger. each of the puppets siting lifeless on the edge of the stage, each in turn begins to take on more lifelike features and costumes hinting at station and personality.
My story begins so far back in the histories that only one of my books remember it, for most any creature alive at the time chose not to chronicle what happened because so many swore to bury it.
My story begins in an enclave of druids, as they discuss the education of a young druid.
Scene opens on a elder druid appearing to be over 70 years old. The older druid is joined by a young druid who appears around 20 years old. The race of the elder druid seems ambiguous but but somehow familiar its skin is a smooth flawless shade of green, blending in with the foliage with ease a fact that is aided by the elder druid's stature of only 3 ft tall. The younger druid shares none of the verdant pigmentation instead having a pale tanned pigmentation and stands at almost 5 ft tall..
Both druids have long graceful ears that look longer then elven and somehow familiar.
elder druid
You are too impatient, you draw too much from the world. You try to do more then you should and you lose control. When you lose control things can die.
young druid
But you said that death is part of the natural cycle. If I draw all the life out of a single weed I can make the plants around it stronger. Why is it wrong to help the farmers when their crops are failing because of weeds?
elder druid
Because weeds are part of the natural world too. it is not our place to help the farmers with their farms, it is enough that we don't destroy their fields for the destroying the grasses to plant their crops. they don't know their place, if they had their way thy would cut down every tree to make way for their cities and tear up every sacred grove to see if there was metal underneath it. they have no respect for the natural world.
young druid
but are not the young races part of the natural world? are they not allowed to feed themselves.
elder druid
they have no respect for tradition. They were safe in their cave high in the mountains. Why must they want for more, they are too greedy that is why. they insist on perverting nature by destroying trees to build their homes. the trees are sacred and should be left un-touched and unchanged for just like tradition dictates.
young druid
Well then why don't we teach them a better way. You have taught me many things, why am i so different then them. why can i be taught and not them?
Elder druid
Because we are immortal, and they are not. There is not nearly enough time to teach them the proper respect. You are being taught because there is some debate about if your tainted bloodline. your father was imprisoned and starved to death for his crimes upon us by mingling our blood with that of the impure.
the young druid pushes up his sleeves to show welts and bruises in various stages of healing.
young druid
perhaps the issue is the teacher and not the student.
the last comment from the young druid earns him a savage beating from the elder druid.
the scene fades out.
A new scene fades in. the elder druid is sitting on a large fallen tree with many others all looking very formal and somber. Those sitting on the log all look to be the same age but the elder druid stands out as he sits in the center.
before them stands the younger druid looking to be in his late 40s by human standards
younger druid
Are you going to just ignore the problem? it is at our borders and continues to advance.
council member on the elder druid's left
It is not our problem, and it is no longer yours either. Those that choose to abandon our traditions brought this on themselves. It is not our responsibility. To clean up their mess.
younger druid
You speak of this like it is an overturned cart of their produce. But no matter how you minimize the problems, there are still abominations from the lower planes sweeping across the valley. Are you so blindly confident that your traditional practice of waiting will make the problem go away. You can't just cover the eyes of the your and expect that ignorance will keep them from harm. The west Grove is lost to fires that grow large when it takes a life, and do mot respond to magic.
You do not wish to act, but are you forbidding me from stopping this.
i warned you that the young races were playing blindly with things that they did not understand. they needed guidance. but you said tradition kept you from sharing wisdom they have not earned.
elder Druid
we can not give our consent or blessing, we refuse to do so. they must pay for their mistakes. we care not what happens to this stand of trees, or the next. Nature is more then the plants and animals. nature persists and so shall we. If we must move to a new home we will move. in time neither nature nor I will remember this minor grain of sand among the sands of time.
the scene fades out as the young druid walks away disappointed, but at the last second he tilts his head as if making a revelation
disembodied voice
of the young druid whispered
from the darkness
Nature is more then the plants and animals.
the scene fades back to show a familiar but very old man wearing robes of white. behind him the forest grows wild and pure. in front of him he stands a towering demon with a 15 ft whip made of fire. behind the demon an entire horde of lesser demons.
very old man
A mentor once told be many years ago that nature was larger then I thought it was. I have come to realize a great many things are part of nature since those days....
cutting the old mans monologue short
towering demon
kill him
6 lesser demons rush forward to attack the old man only to be stopped in their tracks less then 2 ft from the old man, unable to move.
very old man
did you know that nature is everything. rolling in an endless cycle of life and death.
did you know that you are a part of nature, but if i move you forward in the cycle before it is you time to go the excess energy can be used for other things.
the old man rotates his hands like he is turning a knob, and the 6 demons turn to dust leaving 6 crackling sparks that for a moment have the shape the demons once had. the old man reaches out his hand collecting the energy which he absorbs.
I can use that energy to extend life by rotating the cycle of another creature backwards.
the old man reaches out and rotates another imaginary wheal and the old man un-ages back into the young druid still wearing the white robes.
or i can take the energy and release it as an unrestrained burst of destructive energy to just end a life. Having nature at your fingertips is having life and death at your finger tips.
the old man tosses an seed from a Banyan tree at the towering demon, which immediately takes root burrowing into the demon which nearly instantly turns to compost as its branches spread out sending root leaders into demons extending out for 1/4 mile. in every direction as the grass and vines sprout from nowhere grabbing demons and dragging them under the soil as the entire area turns verdant green and takes on a smell of fresh turned soil.
the scene fades out.
when a new one fades in, the young druid looking age 20 again stands confidently before the council that rejected him so handily, none of the council members look to have aged.
silence passes between the council and the young druid for quite some time as the council tries to intimidate the young druid.
elder druid
you pervert our ways, and mock our traditions, you take life when you should not interfere, to preserve live when you should not interfere. you claim a single grove of trees as a home. you teach the young race of things they have not earned. you teach then how to bend nature to their will so they can expand their cities and farms. you rule over them as a king when they should be dead victims of their ignorance and stupidity.
calmly speaking with a patience perfected with age that does not show.
young druid
I teach balance, and that life and death are an ever moving cycle. while you tech nothing because you have no incentive to teach what you known. You collect stones and bones thinking they have value.you are the mighty goblin race but you give nothing back to the world. this young race you speak so ill of, are noble and work to better themselves. they work not for them selves but for the strength of the communities around them. But perhaps it is your immortality that striped you of the need to share your knowledge.
with a waive of his hand the young druid grabs hold of a very large but invisible wheel and begins to try and spin it. A mobius strip appears in the air and begins to stretch and warp.
the young druid begins to rapidly age as the energy flows to his hands and the wheel begins to spin shattering the mobius strip that seemed to represent the life time of the council.
Now you have a choice teach you knowledge to the young races, or continue to be the goblins you have always been scratching through the wreckage of other's lives always hoarding and never sharing what you have. perhaps eons from now the elves you look down on with such disdain, will in turn look on you with the same disdain. It is your choice on how history remembers you and your legacy.
I do regret that i will not live to see you face your own mortality, for in ending your immortality i have exhausted the entirety of mine and burned my connection to the flow of magic.
elder druid
it has been 100,000 years since you were last here and in another moment that passes just as quickly you will be forgotten. we will see your precious elves fade just as quickly. I fear we may have to clean up the mess you made by sharing magic with these...elves you call them.
Marcos closes the book and all the illusions fade in an instant. Marcos lifts his hood back into place as he begins to speak.
As history has recorded this version of the goblin race, their traditions of non interference and isolation became their undoing, they have long forgotten their own history and no longer possess that which they held back, from those they felt un-worthy.
The tradition of the old teaching the young is important, not just for the young to learn. But also for the old to trust themselves that they have taught the lessons well enough that they can let go of the young, confident that the young will carry on down the right path, to become the old and continue the cycle of teaching the young. So don't hold onto the thing you love the most so tightly that you find that you have lost it, never able to reconnect with it. I hope that each of you finds that they have less ignorance then the ancient goblins.
I would like to close by saying that my version of past events has had some details changed to make the story more impact full.
This message was last edited by the player at 23:23, Tue 04 Aug 2020.
