Doctors prodding finger upon your head made you rumble in the deep container

The spotlight beaming through the seance space of the delivery room is like a light at the end of tunnel

Come to the light! We say.

Your face emerged all At once One Second Tufts of dark hair The next All of a face

Thunderstruck in frozen pressurized passivity of birth.

Turning to tears of agony anew

Eyes finding what hands now mean And Mother was and is again

Every novel sound of every kind brings bewilderment, and searching onto the eyes

But if you are skin to skin with Mother, it is alright.

Skin tinted blue, and bottom lip thrust out shivering in the cold, you still manage to smile back at the faces smiling at you. A mixture of the old meeting the fleeting new.

At the end of the night, it is okay to just sleep with Mothers nipple in your mouth.

Beyond the Golden Girdle, (The Golden Wood)

Lands of great sleepy hollows, places to lay in rest in.

Eldertrees live in this forest, unique to all others, as they were the oldest race of beings to ever live. They lived out their entire lives in peace and tranquility for many thousands of years. They planted the arch trees from when they were mere saplings. They once were planted all over Ascesis, but now they only still live in the Golden Wood, as the rest were cut down long ago. They can communicate through vibrations on their long root network. They can also whisper to Mera that live around them.

The whispers of the trees communicate in one of the oldest languages of all the world, in tones of love and compassion, about the primordial connection of the Earth, the skies, and the first rains to ever come to the world. The sense of gentle persistence and confidence in this process was embodied in these trees. The way that life was originally meant to positively grow in connection between the heavens and the Earth are embodied in them. The sense of renewal in the somatic body is also a feeling a person gets when they bask in the aura of the trees.

Butterflies and moths fly around the tree, feeding and sustaining the flowers of the tree. In the whispers of the wingbeats, they communicate secrets of all the universe. In later years, after innocence is sacrificed as previous conceptions of the tree were abandoned. The eddies and currents, and back flowing of time are perceived, when the sap is consumed in an mood of utter dedication to the truth.

There sap is sacred, and has limitless magical qualities. It has started to be stolen over time in latter days by witches that are using it as part of a cosmetics industry in latter days.

The Eldest Trees also live there, in sacred meadows and groves. Other names for them are grandmother trees, and grandfather trees. It is said that these trees serve as the personal guardians for the Elves that are born, sheltered under the trees.

Yet this sheltering has negative effects on those that lived under there care long enough. The culture began to stagnate and decline as the ages wore on.

Deep underground in the Black Wood, there is are long networks of cities, collapsed underground. They were among the first cities created by the Golden Elves from on high on the surface, long ago. In these cities, they engineered the Silver Elves in their likeness, and also created the Terran as well. The Silver Elves were ripped out of Time and Space in strange experiments to test their strength and endurance. So cynical were their masters in their decadent latter days, that they performed many unspeakable evils in projects conducted in these cities. These evils later became buried underground, as horrible monsters of experiments gone awry, or as ancient, buried artifacts of power. They raised the Silver Elves in their own likeness, In these cities, powerful and mighty technology was wrought, and many ancient mysteries. They were the first to power their cities with spilt up starlight, which they also used to inform their own archetypes.

Some disappeared from the surface long ago in a War waged with apocalyptic weapons. Others were buried over thousands of years, as the aggressive mega trees covered the forest floor in their detritus, as thousands of years of branches died off and fell to the ground. The rapidly evolving underground life also repurposed the cities for their own use as well.

There was a strange, insulated effect on the ground that came out of these bunches of detritus. It was a maze of dead vegetation and large branches in various states of decay all over the forest floor. Having a watchful touch was a necessary adaptation, leaving the creatures that still survived from the quickly over growing forest to develop a an extremely refined sense of touch that

Accessible by ancient tunnels, which were formerly a protected highway system in ancient times, was the Old Capital of Lux. These tunnels themselves were a large complex of ruins. They stretched through large underground lakes and rivers. One is the large underground rivers of Naib. Life forms utterly strange live in these subterranean depths, guided by a sense of touch.

Because of the horrors that occur underground, a group of Silver Elves split off, and were sundered into the North, building holy cities in the highest mountains to get closer to their circumstances.

Nowadays, a Citadel City is built on top of it, but Lux can be accessed via numerous trapdoors and sewer tunnels under the city. Underneath is a mesh of a very large labyrinthine series of tunnels, twice entombed tombs and ruins of former residences, shops, and temples.

Some parts of these cities became horrible experimental zones. Many people, carefully selected as a population zone, were kept in these dark circumstances, but given certain advantages. This ended with the creation of orcs.

But it’s most extreme feature is its utter blackness of its depths. No light finds its way down into its frigid depths. Lux used to be a city of Technicity, or a city in which many of the needs of the Ancient Elves were met by means of an Advanced Administrative AI, powered by reincarnations of the Ancestors.

Because of these strange environments, the cities that are long sunken are populated with many ancient, buried artifacts. These hold immense power, sitting in abandoned buildings. Liches, rats, vampire clans, and necromancers all take refuge from the prying eyes of civilization by going underground and unearthing artifacts of power. Old alchemical laboratories, and times of cobwebbed thaumaturgical libraries, with books long since ruined, sit in the dark.

The evil that lays under the civilization extends even to the trees. The tree roots extend down in an ugly network of writhing hostility.

At the top of Lux, sits an old Castle, known as the Fortress of Solitude. In olden days, it was built in a classic style, emphasizing the wide, cavernous spaces that expanded upward. In older times, after the False Dark Lord took over, this cavernous space gave extra expanse to the darkness. Inside the spaces of the old castle lay faded finery of silver and gold, having not seen the light for so long, and riddled with bacterial pestilence.

Living Gargoyles guard over the space from the other denizens of Lux. The hunter glimmer of the moonstone and ruby their bodies are carved from gives a smooth elegance to their heavy, cold forms.

And in this deep darkness, their slumber old evils, waiting to wake...

There is a dull, purple hue in the first light of early morning in all the snow coating the evergreen trees.

Long ago, these lands were a northern extension of the Mysterious East. Much of the flora and fauna that existed in these lands was an extension of this. However, in the Civil Wars, those lands that were ripped and rendered broken, as the Ancient Elves broke the laws of Nature in their Ancient Wars. The land was utterly ripped and barren, and a new coldness seeped in from areas even further North, settling in everlong. The land formed again into thickly packed, secret guarding hills.

In the dead of winter in these lands, the clouds come down to the earth, in sweeps of snow mixed with freezing clouds. The meet sometimes in sweeps of snowy gusts, taking the shape of winds of Twitter shapes of freezing cold.

Over a long time, as the desolation became more of a memory, life began to grow back, but the soil was harder, and made of the corrupted ashes of deep ancestral life that had long held sway in the region before. The life that grew out of it was changed upon its reemergence, and grew back in either hard or faded forms. And life had to contend with the long winters that now settled into the region. Only the hardiest or most intangible of lifeforms were able to cope with the new climate to last

Here became the lands of the North, or all of those forests that lay outside the girdles of the Elves.

There are a series of caves throughout the region. The snow that blows into these caves during the winter stays there all year round, due to the coldness of the Earth within.

Yet most often, the season to come to these forests was winter. The burning embers of autumn were more brilliant in this region than any other while the season lasted, but the cold of winter predominated.

Hardscrabble people live in this country, in small towns and farms. Many of the Mountain Terran (Humans) have large extended families in this land. Many keep dogs for hunting and for war. The men among these people have beards, and wield battle axes.

Some of these Terran have congregated into small towns, whose architecture is based on forgotten principles based on an ancient magic inherent to the region. Somehow, inside of all of the many variegated patterns of bell towers, roofs, chimneys, and odd brickwork, that these towns seemed to be Terran enframements of the strange, ancient energy in the region. This permeated everywhere in the form of static presence that stretched over the pathless unpopulated mountains, manifesting as the immense isolation that ran through the people and all life that lived there. And in all the land as well as through the small mountains their slumbered ancient forms in deep sleep, underground in the cold land

Many small streams also flowed through these lands, down on the mountains, from unknown sources. Old sources say it comes from the same source that is inspired by the strong moonlight when it lights up the smoke streaming out of chimneys on a bitterly cold winter night.

Most of the trees were spiny and bare, except for the jagged edges of evergreens that grew in patches of the forest. Others were the skeletal structures of birch and pines, red oak and sugar maple, which makes a delicious sweet syrup. Strange sap infused pools of everclear water, almost always cool-cold, form as perfect circles in hollows of the Wood, which are as reflective as mirrors. In the dead of winter, the green in the evergreen turned into darker shades, and the trees seemed to huddle together in patches amid their bare summer friends.

Rivers run down from the heights of higher mountains to the North. They are rough hewn, running over sharp rocks in swift gushes and short waterfalls. The River Broad is the main river that all others flow into in this region.

Caterpillars that live in these forests almost never turn to butterflies. The shadows of the forest hide many old burial mounds of old Terran cultures, covered in moss. There are hidden signs of a very old culture and land, perhaps the ruins of very old cultures and old spirits from an Ancient Days that inhabited the forest when it was unmarred. that are haunting. This aspect fills the sense, silent forests with a deep, underlying sense of fear.

In the dead of winter, it was considered lucky to have a flock of thick set wild turkeys cross your path.

Fire paths, with rusted old buckets laying along the rocky trails, line all of the mountain paths. Fire towers give very long views, as beacons here that are lit in case of sometimes.

The North South Road runs through this region for a part of it, as for a long time it was previously merely a series of roads that connect the fire paths that were made to alert officials between different Kingdoms About fires during the few summer months.

For only a few hours at the time of the full moon, a yellow moon will shine bright over the dark forests.

Because of the long distances between towns, and the characteristic shortness of the days, almost any non local triplet on the road will be conducted in considerable darkness. Villages and settlements are generally very small throughout this region, but their history runs for long marks of time. The cemeteries are quite large, and have long family histories. They exist next to villages or by isolated stretches of road in what used to be a village.

The forests are often moist due to the cold mists that proliferate throughout. So many of the rocks on the roughly been trails are long and slippery. The moss that covers the rocks and fallen logs is also moist to the touch.

All things that live in this forest are touched by the briskness of the cold in the air. The forests are cold, dark, and the trees close in around any who go into in at night. Yet, this night also allows the stars to shine almost as bright as they did in day of old, as the frigid aspect of their glow remains as undiminished as it did in days of old.

Ghosts of strange aspect appear sometimes in the misty rainfall. And all throughout the forests an echo of lost verses of the creation songs of the Ancient Elves subtly resounds, especially in the shadows of trees.

Clouds of cold fog flow through the mountain valleys.

From its earliest days, the strange weather patterns that give the Mysterious East it’s name stem in large part from what became known in latter days as The Temple of Seasons in the Forgotten Heights.

When all the land was first being made, and the casts of the Ancient Elves were working with the breaking down of the World Bones to create natural law, they installed ancient technology to create weather patterns that would raise and create immense, lush forests for growing new and variegated forms of life to seed the rest of the planet with. They appointed a class of servants, genetically engineered over time, to tend to this garden of experimental plants and animals, as well as even spiritual forms. These became known as the Bronze Elves, the Forest Tenders.

In latter days, as thought forms among the old Ancient Elves changed rapidly, and new theories came into vogue to better reflect scientific facts, those older forms and newer forms meshed together in many different strands, to create underlying currents of mysticism. These influenced those Ancient Elves who owned and operated the Station, as they became an initiative order of cultists with more rigid scientific understanding following a particular doctrine of creative evolution. This new doctrine led to things becoming more and more bizarre, in terms of the forms of flora and fauna that were emerging, and the increasing chaos in the forest caused by the influx of seeding processes that created many energetic swells to develop in pockets of the wilderness in its domains.

Their control over the station became less understood over time, until the beliefs degraded further into a formalistic religion. This began to spread outwards, influencing other remote regions. They engaged in rituals of chaos and strangeness, and then seemingly unrelated events on the Southern Continent ramified out, and all the Ancient Elves at the Station disappeared, along with the rest of their kind. The old enchantments that obscured the weather control station remained active, and so the station was lost to time.

The rest of the slave class that became known as the Bronze Elves developed their own tradition, after being abandoned by their Gods. These eventually developed some level of bulwark against the chaos, and so they established Greatwood by use of a Girdle.

One small sect that did have some remembrance of this was what would later become known as the Woodreaves. As the original sect of caretakers that carried out the orders of the Ancient Elves they retained some knowledge of the lore through religious traditions. They used their religious knowledge to exert some minimal amount of control over the Weather Machine, which they called the Temple of Seasons. They even began to regulate its flow of weather through religious invocation of their own innate understanding of the Being of the forest. Thus the weather patterns began to be more controlled and less deadly in specific areas.

Thus was born different areas of the Mysterious East, as they are known today, and why the weather can be so extremely variegated, and the life so strange and wonderful.

One perfect morning I soared up into the highest skies Climbing up beyond reflection in the earths waters

Resting in the return To the Source of Ascesis Dreaming my Reality Under ever-present Void Sun

I am for no one and no one is for me Thirsting for nothing, suspended in Abyssal Sea

Demi Divinity Has become me After countless little deaths Of everything connecting me in endless lifetimes tasted and taken

I deserve nobody and nobody is deserving of me...

I echoed histrionically in mind; a conspirator, laying down the traps drenched in false tears, hoping a hidden predator will appear to tear me apart - or was this my bait?

All things are dark, the distant stars shine behind the veil of the murk of clouds.

Leading to late desire for wisdom and knowledge to spy out the eyries of the skies.

But the gleams of deepest night Are made from corpse light where the moon is seen out on orbit

And one knows the deafness of the stars and the moon in the untouched when the light and silence combine mocking the reasoning, reaching, extending mind.

Fragments of self stitched in hollows of time reflect in diminishing patterns Bringing inner tears As refracted light in snowfall A passing reflection of myself

Retreat into the abyss of falsehood
Of self in no conviction Only somatic addiction Kiss the plasma shadows Kiss your death.

In the beginning, it was said that there was nothing but an Age of the Deep Night, when things had no names, and nothing was rendered into the form-less was caused by the sundering of disparity that characterized lived existence.

Out of the Outer Realms, the Unnameable Ones came. They were masters of technology unknown to any today, but also possessed mastery of psionic abilities and telepathy over countless generations of advanced spiritual practice. They allocated a corner of the universe and created the Pylonic concentrations, and laws which seeped into depth, and created Space and Time as we know it, and thus the Bones that underlie all the World. (The Bones that are hollowing and in the holes are growing vacancies that chaos fills)

Through the conduits of the collapsing Pylons which morphed and changed over time to be different than their original forms, they set up the process of the sacred willing itself into the profane, as an inner expression of their pathos in the will to create, and thus the laws of entropy were born. From out of these laws were created processes of life, death, and reincarnation. they wove the processes by which all beings under their creation live and die, and are re(cycled). Often, the perceptions of their slaves were shaped by their evolution such that they always reincarnated one the same terraformed planet.

Thus these delimiters of Being and Time have set the limits upon all of the lives of their subjects, molded by their Will, and doomed to life and death according to the hat has been ascribed into the holy structure of the Wheel of Rebirth.