51.2 To Be In Conflict

General Summary

Days 1021 - 1025

In the morning, we begin work on the fire trees that I intend to offer Torch and their people.   As I recall from what we learned in the Crystal Spires, the cursed fire in this forest originally halted the growth of all things in the area - nothing could grow past the fire. It turned the trees into wicks that would feed the flame by supplying it with energy from the earth and the sky. The fire did not destroy the trees anymore than a candle truly burns its wick - it used the tree as a conduit, leaving no energy leftover forth fuel the tree’s growth.   With these new trees, I want to try something different. We will need to start with seeds so they will need the ability to grow and spread once they are full grown. I want these trees to grow up knowing fire as a friend and source of growth, so I bring them up from seeds using a combination of my fae growth magic and both elemental fires that are familiar to me: nurture and flow.   Collectively, we create a small sapling based on an Aspen - it can clone itself and spread into small groves. My hope is that the barrier forest will create pathways and warrens that the trolls know by heart.  

Day 1027

Then, Yneir and Vaneilli bring me to the Inferno trolls along with Aestien (and his flame spirit), Liliales and Qishali. For Qishali, it will be another opportunity to feel like she belongs in any delegation of power that we are sending out, and I’m proud to see Liliales specifically ask me to include her.   From the sky, the encampment is much larger than I expected and looks, unfortunately, very familiar - a cross between a military camp and a refugee shelter. Smoke billows out from trenches filled with coals, by which many trolls are huddled for warmth. They seem emaciated and starving in the cool air and I witness them trading places so that everyone has space near the coals as they need it. Their hunting parties are returning not with food, but with scavenged wood from the surrounding land.   As I glide over camp and they all enter my shadow, I let my presence follow the shade and the wind stills and the temperature rises in the shelter of my great wings. Once I land and shift back into my humanoid form, a group of warriors approach, led by a relatively small troll - barely 2 metres tall, especially compared to the enormous warriors around them.   This small troll greets Yneir with a smile and they clasp hands - this one is named Smolder. I get the distinct impression that Smolder has been very flirtatious with Yneir, from the quality of their smiling eyes. All of the trolls brighten at the sight of Yneir - apparently they have all been trying to get her to stay with them. I am very happy to see her welcomed as a force of good and healing somewhere like this.   Following along with Smolder, we reach a small artificial hill with a flattened top and a very large stone chair positioned atop it, surrounded by a ring of smaller chairs in an elliptical shape that clearly indicates Torch’s precedence. He sits alone at the head - a massive, young troll with walnut-like skin burning up with heat. His voice is deep and sonorous as he greets Yneir, then stretches his hands out to me. As I take them, I feel him holding back his heat so that it does not scorch me (whereas Smolder and Yneir audibly sizzled). From what Yneir has told me, these trolls have adopted the gendered pronouns that many other races use - both Smolder and Torch use ‘he’.   We take up seats around the straighter edge of the ellipses, with Torch forgoing his throne. It is a civilized act that I appreciate, and he tells me that Yneir’s description of me was so impressive that he almost didn’t believe it.  

But she didn’t even mention that you were a dragon.

  Part of me wants to just sit and get to know this interesting troll, but if I were a leader of people who were suffering, I would want to hear the proposed solution as soon as possible. So I show him the tree we’ve created in the hopes that it will sustain them. As Smolder takes it from me to bring towards Torch, he looks at me with an almost Bran-like flirtatious glance - he has a well-chosen name!   Along with the tree, I decide to push forward and explain the entirety of Trunk’s idea, with different language. I try to appeal to Torch as a king, a general, and ask him to see his position of strength once his people have shelter again. But I can see that it is not a proposal that he likes; his face is calm and neutral as he has Smolder illustrate the idea with flames in the air before us - the ancestral forest surrounded by a firewall of trees divided into twelve villages and a city to the North.  

Why does Trunk think we would find this acceptable? They would make use of us.

  Torch seems to think that Trunk is being devious, and while I might not ascribe maliciousness to the plan, I see what he means. Personally, I think the utility of this plan is more to express a willingness to be vulnerable than to create an actual solution…but Torch seems to see this more as demanding protection than baring their roots.  

The very worst thing I’ve done to my people is to treat them like an army.

  This, at least, is something I can instantly understand - I almost hear Kaide in my head.   So I back off from the diplomacy and simply follow, half-floating to keep up, as Torch leads me to where his soldiers are training. We watch for a bit in silence before he asks my opinion, as a military woman.   Individually, they’re exceptional but they are not cohesive. It is not that there is hostility or resentment; they are just very individualistic. Torch tells me that his people are driven by their inner flame, a passion that keeps them going. In the Forest of Eternal Flames, things were unchanging and they learned to exist in the constancy, where other trolls would reshape the land to suit them better. By following their own passions, Inferno trolls developed gladiators to fight for entertainment and sport - their tradition is collegial and friendly, though it might look vicious to those who misunderstand. A smile comes to my face as he speaks, thinking of the Tuskans and their tradition of striking one another upon first meeting.   In contrast to the forest trolls, I can see why they are thought to be strong soldiers rather than the athletes they are.   And it is in this spirit that I begin my second round of diplomacy. Torch’s idea is one I had fleetingly thought of myself and dismissed for simply not being part of the integrated culture I always set out to create: He wants to split the forest in half, with a hard line. The hard line is familiar to him and his people, like friendly rival villages who mind their own business. With one half oriented towards the sea and one towards the mountains and the Domain, both have plenty of room to expand outwardly.   I paint this idea in the air with illusions just as Smolder did, and we work through a few variations together. The Inferno trolls can pass through normal forest unharmed, but the forest trolls are unable to enter any areas of flame. This makes some variations impractical, and the only other one we can come up with involves small pockets of forest and fire in a wasteland around them. It is not an elegant solution.   I’m satisfied with the proposed idea of a hard line, and it is a good start to the next conversation with Trunk. I have witnessed Torch be willing to make sacrifices and choose things that are hard for his people, observing that the forest has so recently been home for them that they naturally feel like their place is being taken from them. For all the pain that the forest trolls have felt over the last centuries, there are far fewer of them who intimately remember each tree and copse.   As we return to the others, Torch tells me a little more about his position amongst the Inferno trolls. They prize five paths of skill - martial prowess, speaking and persuasion, art, song, and strategy. Any of the trolls of the high seats are exemplary in at least two of these paths, and it is constantly tested and challenged. Torch himself has been deemed the highest in all five. Amongst the forest trolls, the oldest troll around is often thought to be the wisest simply because they have had the most time to think.  

I want to live in a place where our people can be in conflict, fight, make up, and be friendly.