History of the Painted Folk

“Spirits give us strength. Forest, be our shield. The time is upon us to paint the trees of our ancestors with the blood of trespassers.”

— Ovate Eochagan’s benediction before battle, 308 AA

First Peoples

There is no recorded history on how the Halflings came to the Westerlands. No other folk were in the continent to write their own texts, either due to isolation such as the Dwarves or future migration. The oral traditions of the Halflings tell that they do not, in fact, originate from this world. They claim that in the ancient days they came from the Spirit Realm, populated by faeries, shades and all other manner of entities. They believe that when a Halfling dies in the Spirit Realm, they wake up in the Material Realm. Likewise, they claim when a Halfling perishes in the Material Realm, they are reborn in the Spirit Realm, to eventually be born once more in the Material, a cycle of death and rebirth which replenishes their species.
In this near-prehistoric epoch, the Halflings say they constructed an impressive civilization that stretched across the continent. This was no traditional empire of borders, cities and rulers but instead of the decentralized tribes of the Halfling peoples. They had no king or queen, no standing army, no significant hierarchies to speak of. Wherever they went, they planted new forests that would grow in a single day. Even though their society was hardly industrialized at all, barely even forging metals, the ancient Halflings were said to have a deep and complex understanding of magic through their own mages, called Vates, who drew on the power of spirits to fuel their magic. The Vates were said to be able to walk into a tree and walk out another anywhere in the continent, enabling communication with other tribes. Early accounts from Dwarven texts report that the Halflings guarded the secrets of their magic closely.

The Wars of Settlement

By ~2,500 BA, when Elves and Humans came to the Westerlands, the Halfling tribes had become isolated from one another. The forests they grew began to wither and die, and all the magic they poured into them seemed to make no change. Some tribes blamed it on evil spirits corrupting their magic, others on the foreigners who had arrived. Regardless, the Halflings had to contend with the Human newcomers, who arrived from the northeast, and the Elf arrivals, who arrived from the sea to the southeast. Both possessed at the time forged weapons, with the greatest asset of Humans being their bronze blades and chariots, and the Elves their understanding of arcane magics. With Halflings as populated across the continent as they were and the newcomer folk desiring land to settle their peoples, conflict proved inevitable.
A series of bloody, centuries lasting wars began. Magefire and torchfire was rained down upon Halfling forests (it is important to note Halfling is the human term for their people, Halflings call themselves the Painted Folk), and the Vates who drew their power from the trees of their ancestors were weakened. Humans and Elves also had advantages of stature and strength that the Halflings found it hard to counteract. These burnings incensed the Halflings beyond belief, as they believed that their trees were sacred and the remains of their ancestors, and began a series of wars of revenge by both sides that scorched many forests and killed many Halflings, Humans and Elves.
By ~900 BA, when the Nevarine Empire began to form and the Eternal Lordships had been well settled in, the wars had stopped. Many of the old growth forests of the continent were no more, destroyed to make room for Human and Elven settlements which had no interest in living in the trees. The Halflings had retreated to their oldest of forests, those still strong with the magic of the Spirit Realm. While aggressive expansion would occur over the centuries, the rapid pace of warfare cooled down.

Halflings among the Tall Folk

In the Human lands, displaced Halflings were often ‘encouraged’ to assimilate. Including conversion to Gaea worship, adoption of human customs and refraining from ‘painting’ themselves. (While outsiders saw this as paint, Halflings raised among their own in the forests are inscribed with magical markings that are unique to the individual through their reincarnations by a Vate.) By the modern day, while many Halfling communities in Human lands have long since been worshiping Gaea and adopting Human customs, even if reluctantly, they still face discrimination. Many Halflings live in so-called ‘Little Towns’ out of the way of Human settlements, as stereotypes of Halflings consider them thieves and swindlers and force them out in times of hardship. In the Eternal Lordships, Halflings are often treated as indentured servants for households. The long-lived Elves bear a grudge still for the wars of their ancestors, and every Halfling born in the Lordships is considered to be ‘indebted’ to Elvenkind, and must work off their debt until they are considered free. Thus a more legalistic system of discrimination is present in the Lordships, but a Halfling that works off their debts is legally a full citizen. This, however, supposes that many Halflings are able to work off their debts, which almost all do not as debt remaining when a Halfling dies is passed onto their children.
Yet not all Halflings were forced into the lands of the Humans and Elves. Those that remained in the deepest forests became embittered against the ‘tall folk’ and took to a lifestyle of isolation at the best of times and raiding the villages and towns of the other folk in other times out of revenge. Likewise, poachers, loggers and pure expansionists would also venture into Halfling forests to ‘clear out’ the residents. These occasional raids sparked wars between Halflings and Tall Folk, ones that occasionally the Halflings won in that the subsequent incursions were unsuccessful, but increasingly their forests would be lost and tribes displaced.
This forced the tribes of the Painted Folk to either adapt or perish. They adopted more and more forged weapons, standing armed forces, and even structured hierarchies to command attacks or defenses as necessary. Tribes which previously had acephalous governance adopted the role of a ' ‘Ovate’’, or chief Vate, who would coordinate resources and tribe members in the case of an attack or raid.
This kept the largest of the forests in Halfling control, and by the turn of the era there were a few major forests that remained in Halfling control, mostly in the more untamed and cold north of the continent. The Frostpeak Forest in northwest Nevar, the Dunleach Forest northwest of Redrock, the Chill Forest, which had the largest population of Halflings, along the delta of the Red River, The Ferrous Forest north of Ironbark, and Tavach Forest northeast of Orkug. There were quite a few smaller forests with Halfling populations, but these made up a small percentage of their overall population.
The one exception to this endless back and forth conflict was the Chill Forest, which was granted sovereignty and protection by the Empresses of the Nevarine Empire after their aid against Tasmoros in the War of the Dread Emperor. Tensions have remained high, but there has been little war between residents of that forest and the Duchesses of Redrock in the subsequent centuries. Campaigns by The Divinate in the wake of its founding further shrunk Halfling control of Frostpeak and the Artorian Forest, with significant animosity remaining between the theocratic state and the Painted Folk tribes in the area.

Vates and Soul Magic

Many scholars have wondered how the tribes of the Painted Folk have survived as much as they have in the millenia since the forces of Humans and Elves sought to bring the continent under their control. Much of this can be attributed to the efficient guerilla tactics of Halfling tribes, their deadeye archers and knowledge of the terrain, but the most powerful weapon in the Halfling arsenal remains their Vates, the only known practitioners of a form of magic that outsiders often dub ‘Soul Magic.’
Vates practice Arcane Magic, but they do not need to learn in order to gain the magical spark. Instead a future Vate, usually around puberty, regains the memory of their previous self. Still, they do not gain all knowledge, and must be trained by elder Vates in order to properly wield soul magic. Vates are able to partially access the memories of the incarnations of not just themselves but other Halflings, and thus are able to assign a newborn Halfling the markings of their last incarnation, ensuring some continuity between incarnations. This is hardly the limit of a Vate’s power, however.
In the ancient days, the Halfling oral traditions attest that the Vates were able to draw directly on the spirits from the Spirit Realm, but for an unknown reason the boundaries between the Spirit Realm and the Material Realm were strengthened significantly by the time Humans and Elves arrived. This caused the knowledge of how to directly draw upon the Spirit Realm to fade and be lost, and for Vates today, even calling on their previous incarnations does not give them a full picture of how to use the old magic. Instead, Vates of the modern day access their soul magic through a number of methods. While they can cast spells just as much as other mages, they focus on their powers of the soul and spirit over spellbooks.
The most common method that they use for soul magic is called ‘Soulbinding.’ Soulbinders are able to ‘bind’ bodiless souls they find in the Material Realm, as Vates can see forlorn souls, or in rare forays to the Spirit Realm to power their magic. This binding usually takes the form of understanding a spirit’s history and desires, and helping them move on from this world. The Vate then gain the strength of the spirit to power their magic, and the lost souls are able to gaze upon the mortal world once more, a mutually beneficial relationship. Spirits from the Spirit Realm are often far more difficult, the hardest being the wiley faeries.
The other method of soul magic Vates commonly use is ‘Souleating.’ Souleaters take a far more confrontational approach to lost souls and spirits of the Spirit Realm, instead of negotiating and working with them choosing to consume their essence. This process grants great power to the Vate who choose to use it, but there are significant risks which cause some tribes to outlaw souleating. A Vate who consumes too many souls can become addicted to the process, and start feeding on the souls of living creatures, a practice that the Ovates of the Painted Folk often punish by death if turned against the tribe. A highly addicted Vate can begin to transform into a being known as a Drude, a being purely composed of soul. Drudes consume the soul energy of those around them, and thus pose a danger to any soul-bearing being.
All Vates, however, pose a unique vulnerability despite the power they gain. If they come across spirits and lost souls hostile to them, they run the risk of the entity possessing them. Thus a Vate must always be vigilant against the dangers of the spirits and souls they consort with, lest they be trapped in their bodies, slowly whittling away into nothing more than shadow of what they once were.
Only Halflings are known to become Vates, due to the unique nature of their souls, but some Vates travel outside of the forests for various purposes. Some are sent as emissaries of tribes, to learn more about the outside world. Others are outcasts, for some misdeed or mistrust of their tribe. It is also possible for Halflings outside of the forests to awaken to their reincarnations and Vate nature, and they often face special difficulty in warding off malevolent spirits and souls without training from an elder Vate. Other folk often fear and distrust Vates, believing that they all eat the souls of the living, and thus Vates are often called witches in other lands and face persecution.