The Sheaves of Aelfas
In most cultures throughout Fehr’gia, and further still across the planes, the importance of names is well known. They serve not only as means of identification and expression, but also as things of great power and control. This fact is most significant, perhaps, to the denizens of the Feywild. Countless stories across Fehr’gia tell of faeries extorting, coercing, or drawing names from mortals through otherwise surreptitious means. Some use this ill-gotten knowledge for pranks and harmless fun, and others to bind the target to their service, for better or for worse. A very rare few collect names for their own pleasure.
One such fae, known to history as Aelfas, was an avid collector of names. They would travel the planes of the multiverse, wandering through bustling towns and cities with their keen ears open. Aelfas would often spend hours on end sitting in taverns pretending to eat and drink, all the while listening to the conversations around them, a massive tome open at their side. Every time a name was spoken in tales, introductions, or greetings, Aelfas’ hand would dart to the book, and the name would be entered onto its pages. It isn’t known for certain just how long the hoarder of names did this, but it was said that their collection of names was without end.
Aelfas lived a life of contentment and solitude as they traveled the planes, avoiding conflict and moving on if ever they overstayed their welcome. Their collection was far more important to them than making friends, and most importantly, it granted them the peace of having no enemies. That is, alas, until the wrong name crossed the pages of their beloved book.
It is true that names are things of great power, and of great significance to the fae-folk; but it is not just the fae who hold them in such high esteem. To the lawful and fastidious devils of the lower planes, names serve as the binding glue for their fell contracts, the power by which the mortals are held to their terms. Accordingly, the devils know well the power of names, and keep their own close to their chests. When Aelfas recorded the name of a devil to the pages of their tome, they unknowingly sealed their fate.
While enjoying the hubbub of the taverns they visit, Aelfas rarely paid any heed to the actual conversations, only ever listening for the tantalizing names involved, a habit that had never led them astray in the past. It was this obliviousness that Aelfas employed as an adventurer, two tables away, regaled their companions with an encounter they had with an ill-tempered fiend. As the adventurer spoke the name of the devil in question, Aelfas recorded it into their tome with their usual absentmindedness.
Across the multiverse the devil shuddered, sensing that their name had been defiled. Being an osyluth with a mean streak a mile wide, the devil set out to right this wrong, plotting their revenge as they manipulated their way onto Fehr’gia. They hunted Aelfas down, finding the oblivious fae in a village bordering the sylvan forests. The devil waited patiently for Aelfas to grow bored of the town, and stalked them as they began to traverse the woods. Once satisfied with how deep into the woods they had traveled, the devil struck.
Aelfas was no fighter, having always preferred to remain unnoticed, and was easily overpowered by the indignant osyluth. The devil gloated as it snatched away the tome of names, taunting and tormenting the fae as it tore the pages from the book, one by one, and cast them into the wind. Once the tome had been fully stripped of its pages, the devil was left unsatisfied, and so declared that it would do to Aelfas what they had done to countless others. And so, with raw malice in its voice, the devil declared that Aelfas would never know another name again, cursing them to forget all those that they had learnt, including their own.
The rendered pages drifted throughout the woods, carried on the wind as they rustled the leaves and branches. Wherever a page settled, a small shrub would spring forth, leaves hanging from its limbs resembling sheaves of paper. In a bout of poetic irony the devil spread word of this tale so that all would know Aelfas’ name, while the fae would be doomed to never know another name again. Having borne so many names, the book had become a thing of great power - power that had permeated into its pages. Power that now lived in the leaves of the Sheaves of Aelfas.
Although it’s uncertain when, or even how, the tradition began, the elves of Fehr’gia took to this plant, integrating it into a naming ritual. On the eve of their one hundredth year of life, the newly adult elf would venture out into the woods to find one of these shrubs, and pluck from its branches one of its paper-like leaves. They then brew the leaf into a potent tea, which when consumed would send the elf into a trance, in which the elf would discover their new name.
Such is the tragedy and the legacy of Aelfas, the Hoarder of Names. The Nameless.
