Baptism

It was a tumultuous time in the Arena, as it often is. And around this time a certain child was born to certain parents under a certain star, but enough of that for now. The child was born in the midst of the Reach and their many mountains, and raised amongst all manner of savage, man and beast alike. As well as those that appeared to be both, and those who appeared to be neither. It was not a joyous moment however, for in the midst of his birth, a plague was wreaking havoc on the land; one that the wise hags and elder chiefs were powerless against. And six years later, when the hags finally divined their foe, they set out to destroy the Bjoulsae river.

Now most would wonder at this, at how forces of nature could be stopped or even destroyed, but the peoples of the Reach knew how to corrupt and twist nature, to pervert and distort and manipulate it until it was under their collective heel. And the hags gathered together from near and far to begin their ritual. Oaks were sacrificed upon and made cursed. Hewn and carried out they were, to dam the Bjoulsae's spirit. Their protective talismans were handed out amongst their kinsmen: skulls of their enemy's children, carved and graven upon, to protect from the sly magicks of the river.

And on the twenty and first day of Second Seed in the year 3E 376, with torches and fires put out, they began the war on the Bjoulsae that would end four months later, with nary a single victory, though that is not the purpose of this story. They could not have known who their enemy really was. There was no way of knowing that sometimes, legends are true.

When they began to bring their oaks, the river itself began to fight them. Thrashing and raging like a cornered beast, it ripped men who were barely grazed by a splash right in. And out of this muddy torrent, men who looked like mer but weren't, rode out on strange amphibious creatures. The violent wave rushed forward with them, and under the charge of the spears, the Reachmen scattered and those who did not flee were run down and hacked to pieces. Bodies lay everywhere, severed hands clutching the talismans that could not save them. The first battle of the Bjoulsae Dam had been lost. They would fight four more times before being wiped out by Sload mercenaries, but that again; that is another story.

Somehow, inexplicably, the child survived. It is said that those that the river chooses to touch are blessed and destined for priesthood and piety, though this child was destined for neither. There he is, struggling to float on his forsworn timber. His beads, human teeth and feathers, and his talismans all washing away, clothing him instead with mud and scum, covering him in the wax that will blanket his soul for the fire that is to come. And when the current is done with him, he rises out of the shallows, cowering. Broken. To be remade; to be reforged by the Bjoulsae.

His baptism by water leaves his soul stained. See how the river feeds him: by the milk of tall fungus, and how he reads the ogham writ on the Pilgrim's Path. See as he leaves to go into the wilderness, with cracked crown and more besides. One of the ceol in his head oozing its red ichor and dripping upon the damp earth, for the Bjoulsae always bears its price. And when clambered out the babe, coughing and wheezing and quite thoroughly scratched up, the child of the Reach had died.