~Eazuqol~ - The Evolution of the Neighbortree and Lashunta Arboreal Culture

Lest there be any doubt, it is impossible to downplay the crucial symbiotic role the ~Eazue~ - Castrovellian milktree - plays in Lashunta society, even more important than their Shotalashu steeds. It is not only a source of sustenance but also a record of their lives and memories as they are imprinted within the milktree’s pshychoxilia matrix, and which thus become accessible to their descendants.

Rural Lashunta have preferred to dwell within the milktrees’ boughs and leaves since prehistoric times, which along with the benefits described above, elevate them above the Darkfloor and its nameless gastropodal horrors, carnivorous plants, and things with too many legs. While dangers still abound among the tree boughs, the treepaths’ limited fronts form defensive opportunities, especially when augmented with built blinds and networks.

The Lashunta’s earliest myths yield clues of ancestral tree-worship, and that one of their earliest names for themselves was ~Utheaza~ - the Milkree Children. This veneration has survived in the sacred association of the Milktree with Mahaere the mother world-goddess. Even contemporary myth reflects that the Milktrees were Mahaere’s first children on Castrovel, and the first Damaya was born from a Milktree’s teatwort blossom, and the first Korasha born from a knothole. No formal temple to Mahaere is complete without at least one Milktree; some have groves, and any Milktree, regardless of habitation or history, is automatically venerated as a shrine. While Lashunta agroforestry (at least as important as cereal agriculture) encompasses multiple fruit and nut-bearing megadendra, none else hold the same psycho-mystical bond.

The worst thing that can happen to a Lashunta treehome or treehold is to have its Milktree’s sap run dry, both within the sapwood and its teatworts. This most often happens when the tree is damaged or sick. Yet it may also happen if the trees feels threatened through the psychic imprints it collects (evidence suggests they may even be intelligent enough to selectively withhold or provide their milksap, in effect picking their inhabitants). The Lashunta have collected encyclopedias of taboos and rituals relating to propitiating, supplicating, and expiating the Milktree’s favor, which become the job of the ~Ialeaze~ - Treesinger, the most common priestly order on Castrovel. This is a trained role undertaken by a psychically talented Lashunta (often female), who attunes themselves to the tree, becomes responsible for interpreting its wishes, and serves as the tree’s spokeswife for the community. A sufficiently attuned treesinger can even engage in livewood architecture, encouraging the tree’s limbs to grow in specific ways, for support of decks and treehomes, growth of stairboughs, and even ornamental teatblossom patterns, thus minimizing the harm and stress done to the tree for habitation.

Within cities, the relationship with Milktrees becomes more complex, simply from the fact that cities don’t necessarily grow where the Milktrees do. However, the presence of a Milktree, even rarified, is believed crucial for the city’s spiritual welfare. The legend of the Founding of Son, the first Lashunta city, revolves around Matarasse the Sun-Goddess leading the Warrior-Queen Eieshe to a spot where a Milktree sapling grew upon a peak of the Island of Aelau, and which became a stronghold protecting her tribe and allies from the ravening Moqeva. As the tree grew, it became Son’s ~Eazuvau~ - Soul-Tree, around which was built not only Mahaere’s temple, but also Matarasse’s and the whole pantheon, and so became an urban feature shared by all Lashunta cities. While suitable space for milktree placement and growth may be limited, Lashunta gladly plant new ones wherever possible (conveniently enough, the teatwort’s miniscule, hard-hulled seeds survive passage quite well through an animal’s digestive tract). One that began as a sapling within a household’s midyard may over centuries and millennia reach megadendron size and become a neighbortree, at which the nearby buildings will yield space for its yard and form an enringing neighborhood. Treehomes may then also be built within its boughs, and if trees grow sufficiently close enough, their interweaving limbs may create an upper dimension to the cityscape, even reminiscent of the Lashunta’s rural roots.

As the city’s soul-tree continues to psychically accumulate memories (Son’s milk-tree is over ten thousand Earth/Golarion years old) and its tree-singers continue to work within its imprint matrix, a curious kind of gestalt consciousness, ~Kaozelahi~ - an Overmind - evolves within the tree. Since ancient times, their priests beseeched these Overminds’ will and wisdom, the Sage-Queens consulted them as oracles, and even today matrons, loremasters, and even trademistresses seek their counsel. They believe these trees commune with the very gods, and so share their will and auguries with their supplicants. There is even a soul-tree named Azaryau in the far northern Retaea Savannah-Moors, just south of the Shemez Desert, which the local nomad tribes worship as a living earthbound god and believe has existed since before Tess the First Queen tamed Shotaviras.

Which begs the question: are the Lashunta cultivating Milktrees, or are the Milktrees cultivating them? What influence have these psycho-intelligent trees had on the growth of Lashunta civilization, and who has benefited more in this symbiotic partnership? After all, the whole span of Lashunta History (24,000 Castrovel years / 12,000 Golarion years) has covered just a few Milktree generations. When the soul-trees’ bestow the gods’ oracles, is it really the gods’ words, or could it be their own? What do the trees know that they don’t tell?