Arpa-Karasa

"Silence echoed in the makeshift hall. Hearthfire crackled in the absence of speech as the gathered heads of Merienti clans looked at each other, then to Ïhwa-Antï. "Burn it? Have you lost your mind?" One of them snapped. The venerable aid of Isänie nodded. "Burn it all. The trees, the roots, flowers—leave nothing behind."

History

To burn a forest and all within it had never been the way of the northern people. To them, such a destructive act would surely gain them the wrath of the woods and all its folk. The old tales and songs from the time of the Eltiri had all but branded the importance of balance in the name of respect to the land, and the oaths their ancestors swore when they were let into the Tenwän Wilds.

When Ïhwa-Antï first suggested it, chaos ensued among the crowds around him. None of them had considered going so far against all they knew, but then, none of them had ever lived in a place where every leaf and berry of every plant proved poisonous to their minds and bodies. Even Isänie, the uncrowned ruler of the Merientei, stayed quiet that night.

During the highest months of summer of their first year in Ullonwï, the Merientei set to cutting down sections of the deep, wild forest around them and burning the remains with all the life and whatever tainted folk inhabited the area. In the fields they planted seeds of grain they had brought with them from old Tenwä. The method, though violent and destructive, proved effective and allowed the Merientei to survive another year.

In the following years these new ways would be further evolved and developed, and the Merientei found they no longer had to move around, as fish was plenty in the ocean waters behind them, and grain grew healthily before them.

Cut the Woods, Burn the Fields

Trees of Ullonwï were more than alive—they thrived beyond anything the Merientei had ever witnessed. Tall as the sky, their tops shadowed over the ground teeming with life despite the lack of sunlight. Their trunks were thick and twisted, making them difficult to cut down. Some of the Merientei carried crude iron tools traded from fishing parties of the Astuorë, but even those had trouble and the work was slow.

The cutting began before the rainy season preceding midsummer. Every able-bodied individual, adult or children, took active part. Then, right before the summer rains, the newborn fields were burned, leaving behind only ash. The destruction had to be complete and absolute, for it was also the first part of cleansing the land.

Cleanse the Land

Life could not flourish without luhtëï, the folk of nature. But the energy within Ullonwï had become corrupted by something, and Merientei had no ways to cure it. They could only purify the land by killing what luhtëï there was, and replacing it with some of their own.

Every person, the Merientei knew, had a luhtï of their own—a small shard of nature's folk embedded within as part of a whole. This part their sages found to be pure despite having consumed some of Ullonwï rich but tainted wildlife. So, their wisemen and -women took to figuring out a way to transfer that little fragment of themselves and into the purified land, so it could live again.

It was a sacrifice, for while a person could survive without their luhtï, that grounding part of themselves served as a protector and shield against many incorporeal threats and without it, not even their instincts would ever be the same. For example, fear was much harder to come by, and any instinctual warning signs one could usually gleam from their surroundings became wholly absent.