| The Enclave > Folk > Neth |
| We Who Are Eaters, They Who Are Eaten |
The uncounted breeds of Neth - a Datarii name that has spread into common usage, an old, old word from the Draugh with associations of destruction or ruined craftwork - appear grotesque to mortal folk of the Enclave. Neth are a varying mix of hateful, violent, pitiful, cruel, loathsome and cunning, as if the worst of all mortals and beasts were mixed together and poorly cooked. Neth of all varieties spawn true with each other; only short lives, brutality and perpetual infighting keep them from consuming the Known Roads of the Enclave.
Neth call themselves Totchak Ur - We Who Are Eaters. Other Enclave folk and lesser Neth are the Totchun Ur - They Who Are Eaten. Neth are sickening in their omnivorousness, but the Eater-Eaten view of the world appears to be as symbolic and ritualistic as it is literal. Neth society, for all its ugly violence, is more sophisticated than it might at first appear.
[ Posted by Reason on December 25, 2004 | Permanent Link ]
| Ur Maka |
Ur Maka, Great Eaters or Eaters of Great Things as the sages understand the crude Neth language, are the largest and most brutish of the Neth. Twice as tall as an Ammander, and just as broad, an Ur Maka resembles nothing quite so much as a giant, twisted Datar, both repulsive and terrifying.
Ur Maka are enormously strong, quite capable of tearing lesser Neth limb from limb. For the Ur Maka, all other smaller beings are Totchun Ur and little else. The Great Eaters, bile-dripping and horrific, are just as vindictive and hateful as any Neth. They are not clever, however, nor gifted with foresight, a fact that has saved the life of more than one spearman from the King's Keep on the Forest Road in the depths of winter.
[ Posted by Reason on December 25, 2004 | Permanent Link ]
| The Older Spearman |
What are they like? Who's been telling you that I'm one to ask? Don't know that I can put that in words for your ears anyway; you'd want a whitebeard and his books for a pretty telling.
Hungry they are, but not like you or I for wholesome food - something different. You see the rats after a bad winter, draggled, sick. They're like that, but hungry to see worse. And the way they look at you! As if they can see the bile in your mouth, know you can't stand sight or sound of them. It makes them hungry that way.
There's ugly, all kinds of ugly people. There's cruel like the young women or Three Stones magisters. But Neth, no, they put everything else in its place, and they come just as sure as the rotten fruit in the grass. They'll stick in you, they will.
[ Posted by Reason on December 30, 2004 | Permanent Link ]
| Erem's Fingers |
You're no better than the last spears - your armor's no prettier, neither. Blood! Erem should be dead, sick and past the end of his road since we came down from Krineth's Hills. But no, he won't die afore he's told a hundred and their friends, and coin for each telling. Mark my words, I'd take a blade to myself afore I let Neth blood chill me to a slow death. Did he show you his fingers, what's left of them? His hands might as well be buried; they were rotting meat fresh from an old midden even this past summer. The four of us left who could walk, and Erem dragged on a litter, come down to the Trade Road from the tombs. He brought the stench of Neth with him, blood and bile, and sick we all were. Sick, but not dead like the five good spears left to rot on bare rock under the sun; harder men than you they were, mark me well.
The Unbroken Cask? You know all I could tell if you gave coin to the dying. I'll give you nothing, and take none of your coin! Find the Cask without my help - go and seek as you will. You'll find your reward pinned beneath filth and dying Neth, Neth who yet twitch and hate and chew the flesh from your fingers while you scream.
Leave me to my ale, you and all the others. There's blood and greed on you all, food for Neth Powers, and it sickens me.
[ Posted by Reason on May 27, 2005 | Permanent Link ]
| Sage, Spearman, Speaker For Neth |
Of the many strange contemporaries attracted by the master explorer Krineth over the course of an eventful life, The Marked was perhaps the strangest. A sage of hidden meaning and esoterica, The Marked is best read once removed, filtered through the understanding of later scribes and Ammander whitebeards. If not for the popularity of Krineth's deeds amongst commonfolk and nobles even to this day, it is likely that the last intricate, spidery parchments inked by The Marked would have moldered away uncopied. As it is, his works and their interpretations have been plundered over the generations by troubadors, sages and educated noble folk in search of the authentic Krineth.
The other heritage left by The Marked, painstakingly picked from abstruse bindings by unnamed scribes and lesser sages such as The Cloud, concerns the cruel Neth. The Marked was unusual amongst mortal folk - if indeed he was of mortal blood, for there are some who called him a Visitor - in his ability to face Neth without disgust or fear. It is clear that Neth fascinated him, even as he was forced to slay them while companions turned aside or fled in revulsion and loathing.
From copies of The Cloud's few remaining works, hidden away in private collections in Port and the Three Stones Library, it is possible to learn that "The Marked expressed novel ideas throughout his inkwork, the present and pertinent of which is that experience, the motes of knowledge captured, is channeled through a single body part in each individual. This narrows in the stream of life lived can be taken as an axis, a central divide in the map of man or beast, supporting and informing all personality and perception. For the sage, this organ is the heart, the seat of thought. For the crafter, it is the hands. For Neth, this axis of balance between the self and Creation is the mouth, the bile-filled maw of uneven, sharp teeth reflected in their crude structures and implements."
What little is known by mortal folk of harsh Neth language came from The Marked, as does the educated sage's poor understanding of Neth rituals, desires and Powers - the urge to suffer and hate; the Maw; the Eaters of All; the strange wooden structures built in deepest winter. Common folk, even those spears who patrol beyond the Odan and on the Forest Road in snow, know little of Neth save they are to be feared, pitied, fought and avoided.
[ Posted by Reason on May 31, 2005 | Permanent Link ]
