Chapter ten: The Children of the Earth

A short time after the div were banished from the sphere, Zheenkeef was no longer able to wait for the fruit of Eliwyn to ripen. One day, while most of the other gods were deep in conversation and debate, Zheenkeef went down to the grove of the tree.

“What do you want, Zheenkeef?” Urian asked suspiciously. “I want them to come out.” “Must you always be so impatient?” Rontra asked her.

Zheenkeef laughed and danced around the tree in response. Soon Urian and Rontra were dizzy from watching her. Seeing this, Zheenkeef ran up to the great roots of Eliwyn. Shalimyr lifted a wave to stop her, but then lowered it again. Zheenkeef had always been Shalimyr’s favorite among the gods. Her mad ways reminded him of his own whirlpools and sea-storms and, indeed, he harbored for his granddaughter a secret love. Once she knew she could play with the tree undisturbed, Zheenkeef began to ponder what to do first. It was then that she noticed the sleeping Shee all about the roots, and these she scooped up into her hands. “This should wake them,” she said, and hurled them across the world into the great woods that had grown since the war with Kador. However, she did not rid herself of all of them, for some of the Shee were awoken by being lifted and, terrified, began to bite the hand that had lifted them.
Zheenkeef hopped up and down in pain and shook her hands wildly. The Shee she still held flew all over, some into the seas and others into the ground. Of course, the Shee were no longer the Shee, for they had had their fiery blood taken from them and had been transformed into a mortal race. Those who landed in the woods are to this day known as the elders of the earth and are the longest lived of the races—for they are now called the elves.
Those who flew into the seas are the magical seaelves that sailors speak of in legend and song. And I believe that those who flew into the earth became the wicked drow, angered by their cruel awakening and forever embittered, though this is not the story the dark elves tell. After ridding the tree of the elves, Zheenkeef thought to throw the fruits of the tree as far as she had thrown the sleeping firstborn.
The first fruit she plucked became covered in her blood, for the Shee who had bitten her hand had drawn blood. Zheenkeef hurled this fruit all the way to the mountains that marked the edge of the earth. By pure happenstance, those mountains were the playground of stolid, pleasant-tempered Korak. On this day, Korak was playing his favorite game of lifting mountains and seeing what was under them, when the first-plucked fruit came flying with terrible swiftness from across the world.
Before the son of Morwyn and Terak had time to react, the fruit covered in Zheenkeef ’s blood hit him in the head, splitting open his skull and mingling his aunt’s blood with his own. From this fruit sprang the dwarves, strong and dour, and they made a home in the head of the wounded and unconscious god. Later, Korak awoke with a splitting headache and the genius of Zheenkeef ’s blood. The simpleton son of the First Mother taught the dwarves the secrets of mining, smithing and many other tricks. To this day, the dwarves hold Korak dearest among the gods for his aid.
But long before Korak awakened, Zheenkeef plucked a second fruit. Noticing this fruit was also covered in her blood, the goddess healed her wounds, and licked her blood off the fruit. Then she lobbed it to the hills. From it sprang the gnomes, touched by the blood, hot breath, and warm tongue of Zheenkeef and, therefore, suffused with her inspirational madness.
The third fruit Zheenkeef kicked, because she grew tired of throwing. It landed in the cliffs, but bounced to the plains. This fruit bore the halflings, meant to be proud, tall and willowy race. However, the bounce had squashed them down to less than half their size, and made them round and perhaps, humbler than they might have been. From the skins of the three fruits sprang the animals and beasts of the world. Kin of the mortal races and the gods, they had life and free will from their mother, Eliwyn, but they never received the fire of power, which passed through the skins and into the mortal races. Thus the animals of the world have spirits, but not souls.
The fourth fruit Zheenkeef decided not to throw at all. In fact, all the hurling and kicking of fruits had given her quite an appetite, so she gobbled it up. The fruit gave her a terrible stomach ache, however, and she began howling in pain. The other gods heard and came to see what was the matter. When Morwyn and the others arrived, they found Zheenkeef leaning against the tree, clutching her belly and groaning.
“I shouldn’t have eaten that,” she muttered. Morwyn rushed to her side and forced her to vomit the fruit back up. Sadly, the race that had been inside was now in pieces, and the gods could not determine what they were supposed to be. It was Tinel who came up with a plan for dealing with the disaster his wife had wrought. Each of the gods would take some part of the fruit and try to reconstruct it. When they were done, they would all meet back under the tree and put the fruit back together from the pieces.
As the gods departed, Zheenkeef noticed that there was one fruit left. Anticipating that she might win this little game the gods were playing by peeking at the contents of the last fruit, she grabbed for it. Rontra noticed this, however, and cried out. “No, Zheenkeef,” she pleaded, “I entreat you. This fruit must be left upon the tree. It must be allowed to ripen.” Surprisingly, Zheenkeef obeyed and danced off, clapping her hands and turning cartwheels. No one knows what is in this fifth fruit, for it has never ripened. There are those who believe that when it ripens, it will herald the fifth epoch, the time of great change and endings. I, dear reader, am sorry to say that I simply do not know.

Why We Know This Is True

Long after the Great Sage Matalou’s martyrdom, the

most powerful Armarius of Tinel’s Scriptoriums at the

time, Madrigan Yewstaff, was inspired to investigate the

veracity of Matalou’s claims. While the Great Sage’s treatise had been called heresy and blasphemy by most, it had

nonetheless caused secret doubts to spread throughout

the religious world.

Matalou’s passages about the div led Yewstaff to

discover that the tome’s claims were true. Expending

a great deal of his church’s wealth and his own power,

Yewstaff performed one of the greatest rituals the church

of Tinel has ever known. He summoned to their great

cathedral the spirit of Gian ben Gian, the only div he

knew by name. He bound the spirit so that it would speak

only truth, and answer thirty questions. And then, with

a council of his wisest inceptors, Yewstaff made the spirit

tell him the true history of the gods.

The div lived in a time when the gods routinely walked

the earth. As the caliph of his people, Gian ben Gian had

supped with many of the gods himself, and learned at

their feet all the creation stories they would tell him. And

while the caliph’s spirit wanted nothing more than to lie

to Yewstaff and mislead the usurper races that had taken

over a world that rightly belonged to the div, Yewstaff ’s

ritual was too powerful, and the Marid could tell nothing

but the truth.

After Yewstaff had finished asking his thirty questions, he made a proclamation to the leaders of the

faith throughout the world. The Treatise on the Divine

was true, every word of it. He declared the Great Sage

Matalou a martyr of the faith, and ordered that the record

of Gian ben Gian’s thirty answers be writ into only one

tome and locked in the most secure hold of the Scriptorium, called the Cathedral of Truth. Often when one

of the major religions chooses a new leader, she makes a

pilgrimage there and reads the sacred tome.

It is said that Gian ben Gian revealed many hidden

truths in his questioning – truths that most are not prepared to hear. But since the leaders of the assembled faiths

came to read the text, few serious scholars have questioned

the veracity of the Great Sage Matalou’s claims.

The Burial of Bodies

Because the fire of rebirth, given to Mormekar by Morwyn, was necessary for the rebirth of the gods, many cultures assume that the dead must be cremated. And yet others believe that the fire of rebirth is held by Mormekar and Mormekar only—if you burn a body, he cannot wash the corpse in the fire of rebirth, and your loved one will never be reborn. This is a religious debate with a long and toothsome history. The position of a character’s culture on burial and burning is entirely up to the GM, keeping in mind that a history of burning bodies makes physical undead far rarer.