Flockstone of Black Billy Wood

The Flockstone of Black Billy Wood is or was a reputedly impressive example of the long-standing tradition of constructing flockstones on the Alluvial Plain. Documented by reputable thaumatologists, its location has since been lost and it is unclear whether it still exists.    

Account by Kaydre Ysparo

  Noted Pholyan thaumatologist Kaydre Ysparo discusses the Flockstone of Black Billy Wood in her book A Gazetteer of the Eleven Cities. Her geographical placement of Black Billy Wood itself is uncharacteristically vague, but she claims it was a substantial, dense stretch of woodland existing on a patch of broken, badly subsided ground several days travel south of the city of Loros. She identifies a couple of small hamlets in the general vicinity, but suggests that the surrounding land is not quite fertile enough to support any large villages.    Ysparo claims that she investigated the wood thoroughly on the advice of the local peasantry, who informed her it was watched over by a goat-horned member of the folk tradition of Beast Men; she was, she claimed, hoping to meet the man or observe him. She reportedly failed to do so, though she did find human footprints deep in the wood and followed them to a clearing where she found the flockstone.   She reported it as being of prodigious size, almost nine feet high and at least two fathoms in circumference at its base, made predominantly of a grey-brown granite that certainly was not the characteristic stone of the region. Carved in high relief along its westerly face was the image of a large, heavily-muscled man whose legs were the hindlimbs of a muscular, shaggy goat, including hooves instead of feet. The image included that of a billy kid - with premature horn growth - held in the figure's left hand; the right was a slotted fist into which an eight-foot-long ash-wood spear was inserted. The figure had goat horns rising from its forehead; these were wrought from actual horn affixed to the stone of the monument in a way Ysparo could not clearly ascertain. These horns were wreathed in bright-red ribbons, clearly of urban manufacture, and the figure was garlanded with fresh flowers indicating that it had been attended to by somebody no more than a few days in the past.   Ysparo identified the image as one of Pergyad, the pre-Wesmodian god of animals. No serious thaumatologists dispute this conclusion.  

Commentary

  The unusual thing about this flockstone is that it was obviously a permanent monument being tended and maintained by somebody. Ysparo speculated that the carving alone would have taken a skilled stonemason scores of hours of work, even after the transportation of the granite - a notoriously poor choice of material for carving - the many miles to will have travelled to get there. Erecting the nine-foot-fall edifice would have been another job that must have occupied numerous people over a substantial period of time.    All of this contradicts most of what is known of flockstones, at least among thaumatologists. Flockstones are a notable feature of life on the Alluvial Plain, at least in communities whose fortunes are tied to herding the Domestic goat. The construction and decoration of temporary flockstones is a seasonal tradition in many such communities, rising to the status of a mildly esteemed folk art in some places. Such structures are temporary, however, with some communities having developed superstitions warning of grave consequences if they are left up too long or repaired over winter (the idea apparently being that they should weather and crumble over the colder moons). The fact that this flockstone was carved from a famously resilient material and had been decorated with manufactured artefacts in the immediately recent past would seem to indicate that it is a permanent idol to Pergyad, being tended right down to Ysparo's time.  

Disposition

  Ysparo's exploration of Black Billy Wood put her behind schedule on her investigation of the Alluvial Plain, which she had intended to be fairly perfunctory before she returned to the coast to investigate the remnants of the cults of Ajqyod and Ynglyas. As such she did not study the monument in any systematic or ongoing basis, instead hurrying on to her next appointment. Supposedly she was due to catch a ship in Loros; in practice it has been observed that Ysparo herself was in fact never particularly interested in what she called the 'low gods' Pergyad and Dahan and perhaps did not see the need to study the flockstone beyond observing its existence.   The interesting thing is that no subsequent thaumatologists have been able to locate this monument. The rebuilding of Loros has led to the denuding of much of the surrounding countryside of timber and many of the woodlands that might be Black Billy Wood have disappeared or been greatly reduced in extent. In this endeavour, loggers have located a small number of much smaller, predominantly wooden flockstones but nothing remotely resembling what Ysparo described. Scholars interested in the cult of Pergyad have occasionally searched for this monument but none have had any success. Ysparo is widely considered one of the most methodical and reliable of thaumatologists and it would be a wrenching break in character for her to have manufactured or exaggerated what she found; quite where the stone may be, or who may have moved it - and indeed how - are as much a mystery as that of who was tending to it a century ago.