Pollard

An Earthenborn that has been fundamentally changed by wound, disease, or other damage. Earthenborn show a curious tenacity for recovery from grave injury and inevitably grow much stronger after the fact. This change can be obvious such as new external features or as subtle as changes in intelligence and personality. It is known by many names including Wether, Wiltback, Unflowered, Unsel (Cantran), Cortia (Aposfabrian), Thistrenes (Penninsular), and Ijenno (Upper Quiates)

Wounds that Flourish

When humans and beasts face injury, the body struggles to heal the wound and expends great energy to return damaged tissue to its former state. Infection, dismemberment, shock, and pain are all adversaries to this process and more often than not, the body is riddled with scars, disfigurement, and lasting agony long after healing. In contrast, Earthenborn spirits are ever-growing things that bounce back from injury with flourish. Lost hands grow back as savage claws; wounds scab over with tough, bark-like armor; a beheading is followed by the sprouting of a thousand eyes like the [reaching boughs] of a tree. Indeed, it is this last case which lends itself to the creature's most commonly used name.

For Better or for Worse

This process is poorly understood and subject to immense variation, as indicated by the many pollards of historical importance. Injuries that gifts one Eartheborn great power may outright kill another or have no effect. There is a clear correlation between the extent of injury and the extent of change with physical changes to the body manifesting only for grave injuries (dismemberment, severe burns, etc.). Though the recovery is always complete and fitful, the transformation is not always desireable. Changes to appendages may be difficult to accquiese to and other physical changes could be viewed as disturbing or ugly to other Hekkauthra or their worshippers. Internal changes range from altered senses of taste or smell; different personalities or ways of thinking; and new patterns of hunger, sleep, and libido, all of which can be stressful to the individual.

History

Around the year 300, Anaphrene's automatons began their purges of the Earthenborn, seeking and slaying their prey with devastating efficiency. Those that escaped held their Moung form for a long time after and sometimes became fixed in that fearful, animal state. Others, gravely wounded by the machines, limped off and went into hiding as Moung or other things and thus grew into the first Pollards.
(?? Many Earthenborn alive today are now Pollards ??)

Notable Pollards

• The Suthegreen Pollard. An Earthenborn who was famous for their good deeds throughout the Handland even long after the purges. At last, they were betrayed by a close friend and became a Pollard. Yet they continued on caring for the denizens of the lands, now forgotten and weakened from lack of prayer.
• Coirefox. A fox-like creature whose bottom half has fused to a tree's bough or trunk. It drifts silently in the wind, looking like reddish moss, until someone wanders too close at which point it strikes with vicious teeth and claws.
• Irsex Ninoy. A chimerical Moung from Aposfabr who loses limbs one after the other. They grow back just as fast in fantastic shapes and forms.
• Fruit Bearer. Earthenborn enslaved by (??) had their heads shaved and their bodies whipped. When they escaped, their hair grew back as vines with fruit hanging from the ends and their scars became grains in their tough, woody skin.
• Ficus Ma-Uhng. An Earthenborn who resisted Anaphrene violently and eventually killed her youngest child. Anaphrene slew them herself and threw the body into the Trinzejar jungles to hide her disgraceful anger. The spirit took to the plants and trees and grew into an enormous, unmoving ficus that stretches over a fourth of the jungles. Enraged, Anaphrene came close to burning down the entire jungle but she relented, recalling that the jungle had been left by her mother, Helenaphe upon her death

The Hennehock Spider. Legs turn into trees Fejhands. Hands develop eyes. Extrasensory Behearted. Guy's got a hole in his chest! Boughwing? Tangledwing? Dim Moung. A Moung reduced to light filtering in through cracks in the ceiling after its body was vaporized in hot fire.
Moecc, Orne, Choung