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Tall Men of the Mist Forests
Tomes of Amaxathroth > Ink, Blood and Parchment |
Where the Mountains of Andar slope to mere hills, mists from the sea make a white blanket of the forest. This was once the extent of the Yellow Pendant Priests, who ruled three great cities and shunned seafaring to turn mountains into gardens. Ruthless, they were, in cutting soldiers from the cloth of men and crushing concubines from the petals of women - and so the Tall Men of the mist and forest were kept thin in number, gaunt and hungry.
The Yellow Pendant cracked an age ago, and its God slid away to ooze beneath the earth. The people who once bowed before priests with clouded minds forsook the mountains, for demons stalked the slopes, cracking rocks upon the snow peaks and battling in anger fit to boil water in the valley streams. Men came instead to farm strange, long-necked cattle in the hills, and thin-lipped Lords of dung and wood built walls about these holdings.
The Tall Men are more broad than tall, and all they share with men is the need to take that most desired by another. Mist-colored, they lope in silence, hang from trees to sleep, and strip the flesh from an armored man in the time his heart has for a final spasm. If you must cross the mist forests beneath the Mountains of Andar, do so with a hundred trained men, and count upon ten gruesome deaths with each new day.
There is an art by which Tall Men might be hunted; the Yellow Pendant Priests knew it well. Long spears to watch around, short spears to watch above, and thin, silent climbers to catch the beasts at their sleep in early dawn light. With men who cannot flinch nor cry out in the spray of companion's blood, you might win glistening skulls at little cost - and that is the secret of the Yellow Pendant. Soldiers not so sorcerously pressed are but meat for the Tall Men, a delay in the demise of those whom they protect.
The hill towns of Caitub and Mastaca kept Tall Men beneath the mists with the promise of large, white sand pearls - a pouch shown to any wanderers brave enough to slay the Tall Men who tore the hindquarters from cattle. The Lord of Caitub would smile as he watched a new band depart in eagerness, and put away the pouch, for he would not see such useful fools again. The Tall Men throw the shattered skulls of men up upon Halaka's Rocks above the forest, where the mist laps at a platform once sacred to the Yellow Pendant Priests. The concubines of the Lord of Caitub cast these remains upon the fields, where the long-necked cattle shower their gratitude in the manner of cattle in any other land.
So too was I offered this chance amongst chances when I journeyed the hill paths beneath the Mountains of Andar. In a past age, I would have slain the Lord of Caitub and all but the most gentle of his leering concubines, but Amaxathroth the Murderer was made no more in Daathu - and what value to even the rarest sand pearls to one such as I? They were engraved most deftly with a writing of the Yellow Pendant Priests that will remain unread until the void claims this world. So be it; with all that has been lost, this little more will not tip the scales of the Gods.
[ Posted by Reason on October 23, 2006 ]
