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| Galmearan Elder calling herself 'Milkweed' of one of the 'Shadow Tribes' |
Note scrawled in margin-
"First draft. This is how I understand it anyway. I gained my knowledge from the Abail Elves and by talking to a Galmearan elder calling herself 'Milkweed' of the one of the 'Shadow Tribes' (as the Kreyicians would name them). I have sketched her on the reverse of this page. Being almost 60 she is very old for a Galmearan, and very fond of hot herbal infusions."
In a book of notes for various books -
"Long, long ago, at a time when the Dwarven empire still straddled the globe and humans had yet to land on the coast of Ottarol there lived a race of people named the Galmearans. Born of Elvish ancestry they treated the forest as their home and all beings as their family. Standing at most at 5 feet high their slight frame seldom left any sign of their passing and few people even knew of their existence.
And so it would have continued if it had not been for the insatiable hunger of the Dwarven empire for wood to fuel her furnaces and food to feed her workers. Having devoured the forests west of her the ravenous empire turned her eyes south to the seemingly deserted forests of the Galmearans. Being a peaceful and dispersed folk the Galmearans failed to recognize the danger until it was too late. With Dwarven axes at their heels the Galmearans fled north beyond the leafy bows of Gaer to the dense forest that used to stand on the land of Kreyic.
For many hundreds of years the Galmearans lived in peace and solitude in the dark woods of Kreyic. They had learned the bitter lesson of survival the hard way and haunted the trees the way spirits might do, terrifying anyone who dared set foot on the soft loam of their forests with an elaborate system of switch back paths and traps. They also started learning the arts of war such as archery and knife craft. Soon such Myth had grown up about the forests that no soul who valued their future would enter.
Sadly the very thing that saved their lives also sealed there fate. Humans from the continent of Tuyun landed on Ottarol’s eastern shore at Brach. Being men of grand ideas the leaders at once made war with the Elves hoping to steal their lands. Though the humans had much steel and magic they where ill knowledged on the Elves of Gaer. The humans of Brach found their own numbers severely lacking and the dream of a quick victory turned in to a long, long battle. After several decades of war the humans eventually acknowledged defeat and the elves banished the remainder of the army to the haunted forests of Kreyic. Although severely reduced in number the Kreyic army was still large enough to hold off the Galmearans and form their own kingdom.
The Kreyician humans expanded to the sea in the east, the plateau in the west and Gaer in the south and so yet again the Galmearans where pushed north, wedged between the collapsing Dwarven empire and Kreyic. And so they still reside, piteously few in number held in the last large tract of 'uninhabited' forest on Ottarol.
Kreyic prospered, her wealth known the width and breadth of Ottarol. Peace rained with her gentle hand for a thousand years or so until the west wind sent a parcel of hunger across the plateau to Kreyic. Tens of thousands of locusts descended of the fertile land of Kreyic. Soon starvation swept the land and all went hungry. In the desperate quest to search for a cure to this pestilence Kreyic turned her eyes to her neighbors and so she noticed the silent haunted forests of the Galmearans that lye in the north where the locusts could not go. And so yet again the lands of the silent folk was under threat from outside.
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| Woman of the 'Shadow Tribes' |
This is the history of the Galmearans, of how they came to be where they are and, although they hold no grudges, of whom they must be wary. This tale paves the way for many others for at this point so begins the War of the Mistake, the war that could so easily have wiped out the dryads of the forests, the Galmearans."
