Wyrwood

From the desk of Jinto Hustlefoot - While trying to discern some cure or answer to my colleague’s recent madness, I had delved into the archives. There I had seen documents regarding the art of divination by means of the stars. The original practitioners of this ancient art are, or at least were, thought to be lost to the ages of myth. They were called wyrwoods and stood as tall as the average halfling. These were constructed beings, but make no mistake these creatures were not servants. They had wills and minds of their own. They were possessed of all the boons and banes of the more traditional constructs. They had potentially infinite life, but could not heal. They did not hunger, thirst, or breathe, nor could they sleep or dream. In those dark hours they turned their eyes skywards and in the heavens they saw the future. What happened to them, to the world, was a tragedy. At the end of that red plague, some say the wyrwood were wiped out, others say they fled. I think they left this world behind and now reside on the moon, watching us… My examination of the university archives did produce a number of lunar maps. Among the craters there was a curious point at the rim of a large irregular depression. My own observations confirm what the maps depict, albeit with inferior optics. A large colossus in the form of a giant looking into the crater into a mirror of ice. I think it is clear the wyrwoods built it. Though I will need better telescopes for further observations. Portia is not funding my search for “moon men” as she calls them, so there are some delays. Ominously the charts affix a few labels to this construction: ‘pondering colossus’, ‘thinking engine’, and perhaps most ominously ‘god machine’. What it’s purpose is has yet to be seen. And while it would be great to ask a wyrwood, they are long gone, though their works remain. I have tried to follow sightings but most were poppets, or hoaxes. There has to be some answer to Branton’s madness, the truth is out there.