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This selection of writing was retrieved through unsaintly means from one of the many flesh repositories of one of those distant and curious breeds of Sarkics. -Annotation by Sir Penderghast
This selection of writing was retrieved through unsaintly means from one of the many flesh repositories of one of those distant and curious breeds of Sarkics. -Annotation by Sir Penderghast
The Vasasoonenütä, or Old Sinew Shamans in that forced English norm, are a people more akin to us than many amongst our flock recognize. They are an old people, heavy in Will, Shepherds unparallel. Once. But that has been forgotten.
Following recent events, it has been decided amongst our Elders that this must be remedied.
So allow me to illustrate the truths of the Vasasoonenütä.
Truth the First: The Truth of Names.
For some of our number, the Old Adytite will shamefully have no meaning.
Yet, the Vasasoonenütä is known by dozens of names across dozens of nations. In the distant Americas, for instance, in each emergent state, a title was given. As the ugly American experiment continues, so do both Native and Vasasoonenütä lose their land.
Amongst the Unseeing, Bigfoot is the most common name for the honored people I discuss A fitting name if one only considers the surface and little else, as the Unseeing are so delicately trained to do by the Manipulators.
Sasquatch, Yeren, Yeti, Orang Pendak, Mapinguari. Titles all, but none they claim, and none that truly speak to the core of their being.
Their chosen names are the Mountain Keepers. Siblings of the Deep Wood.
Yet the name given to them by the Knowing, whether Heretic or Kin, has claimed them longer than any other: The Children of the Night.
Joined with the whisper of "Monsters."
La Rue Macabre
Do we Nälkä not know the power of a name?
The sting of prejudice and alienation spread by those that deign never to walk our path?
A curse spat by both heathen Mekhanite and sly Manipulator has stolen the face of our long and venerable faith, our culture!
Proto-Sarkic, Neo-Sarkic, our divisions are cataloged by the tongue of the enemy!
And so, too, have the Vasasoonenütä been given a moniker they have no wish to claim.
For as "Sarkic" is a name meant to convey the carnal "impurity" of our way of life in the eyes of those Metal-fiending Mekhanites, so too was Children of Night meant to engender fear.
In time, it would come to deem them true enemies of the Children of the Sun, but I will speak more on this later.
Instead, I say we offer them the titles our ancestors gave them in a time largely scattered to mythos: The Flesh Forgers, the Lost Shepherds, the Ozi̮rmok's1 Friends.
If, of course, they seek to claim any more titles, except the one they gave us: Vasasoonenütä.
La Rue Macabre
Truth the Second: The Truth of Flesh
The Vasasoonenütä regularly stand taller than humans not shaped by Lihakut'ak2, two-and-a-half to three meters in height, though some can grow as large as our behemoths.3
Their mein is like that of the great gorillas of Africa, domed heads seen in both sexes, though their stance is much more akin to ours. Aided, of course, by the large feet that the Unseeing have taken such a fascination with. More important are their wide eyes, most commonly tinted brown, that allow them a full breadth of vision even during moonless nights.
They are girded in fur of black, brown, grey, white, and occasionally red.
Of course, as is known to us, the environment shapes the Flesh, so particular features were adapted amongst particular Clans.
The Children of the Forest have wide feet and fur that moss takes to quickly, allowing them to hide in plain sight amongst the trunks of their homes in the Western Americas.
The Mountain Keepers have layered white fur, deep black skin, and clawed appendages to aid in their scaling of the dread Himalaya Mounts.
La Rue Macabre
And the noble Almas,4 with their thick grey hide, lacking fur, that protects them as they delve through their deep cavern homes.
I could go on for hours about the variances found amongst the clans that covered every corner of our world, minus the frozen madness that is the Antarctic. Another claims that land,5 but that is not the purpose of my writing.
From the glowing eyes of the Hibagon6to the tree-rending claws of the Amazon Clans7, to North America, where so many clans linger in the old woods and deep caves, it is a wonder they are seen as anything but a norm. There you can find the Canid-Faced Hunters8 of the Great Lakes and the headless beasts that haunt valleys of newborn West Virginia.
The keen amongst you will have noticed I chose to say adapted. Not evolved, as is the nature of most beings born of the Flesh.
For that is what they did. They adapted themselves to the world around them, shaping themselves as easily as they shaped it. See, know the truth the Elders have gleaned, and demand I share with all Kin. There was another before we Nälkä were charged with the responsibilities of the Will and the Shepherd. A powerful nation who, through Will, mastered Lihakut'ak in a manner in which we can today only dream.
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Respect must then be given to the Vasasoonenütä. And their true story must be told, as a question has arisen that we, the Kin, must answer.
For the Children of the Sun9, too, have come to our gates.
They seek to spread fear and derision of the Lost Shepherds.
Presenting what they believe to be the fact of their irredeemable nature.
I think, perhaps, these Children of the Sun do not know with whom they speak.
The Elders delved deep into the Marrow Histories10, the only history in the world not colored by opinion.
Praise be to Ozi̮rmok.
And so, now, as mentioned above, allow me to tell you the true history of the "dreaded" Children of the Night and their enemies in the Sun.
La Rue Macabre
Truth the Third: The Truth of History
Humans have long convinced themselves that they were the lone people to have the Will to drag themselves into the wisdom of sapience.
In truth, at best, we are the Sixth, as revealed by the sacred ichor within the History, and while we scrambled in caves and fought to tame fire, the Vasasoonenütä were making their mark upon our world.
A paradise written by their Will. A land untainted by the touch of the Mechanism. Flora and Fauna Sheparded into all manner of fantastical shapes.
Their cities spanned every continent, towering edifices of bone, marrow-glass, and blood-infused wood that rose ever reaching to touch the stars above. A city of Kiraaks11, living, breathing, and growing under the careful hand of the Vasasoonenütä.
And while it is fair that they reached this pinnacle not by worship or mysticism but by their own keen-minded curiosity. Their Will manifested through science, uncaring of the Gods and Demons that beckoned and bellowed as the Vasasoonenütä forced them into the far corners of their world.
La Rue Macabre
They were not beings of mysticism. This makes quite a few of the claims about their dark apotheosis and cruelty in their age laughable. But first, allow me to dictate the wonders that filled their world.
Joining the feather and sinew of hawk and eagle to sleek, seamless wood, they made ships that outpace even the fastest clippers of our day and age, let alone the fat chugging aberrations of steel and coal.
From bison and horse, they crafted thinking vehicles that, with a guiding hand, could cross the land in journeys that took hours compared to the days it takes the Mekhanite-beloved trains.
And from the simplest of life too minute to see, and the swarming masses of insects, they crafted repositories of knowledge that reach close to the grandeur of the Wanderer, storing thousands of stories and memories that the new entities could recite with perfect clarity.
Instantaneous communication continent to continent from once-birds with intertwined minds.
Vast edifice of bone, wrapped in synapses and the muscle of electric eels allowing them to capture and direct lighting.
And amongst the oceans, vast spires of coral tipped with the warped organs of Bats sent calls into the vast sea of stars and void above their heads.
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And unlike the progress that cuts open our earth and spits choking smog into our air, the world of the Vasasoonenütä was pure.
Their cities, their tools, they lived and breathed, they ate, and so the areas they kept wild they cared for expertly.
They took control of diseases and made vast beasts that could mimic the weather for better crops.
Conservation, preservation, dedication, the Vasasoonenütä cared well for the Natural World from whence they came, for each new beast discovered was not something to simply cull or gut. It was a fountain of opportunity from which to breed and shape new wonders of Flesh Forging.
They even shaped themselves to better work with the world around them. Gardners, with their pollen sacks and their pruning claws. Warriors of high stature, keen smell, and fanged maws, seeking to hunt any that would threaten their paradise.
And in these preserves, isolated and used much as any other animal on earth, could be found our Ancestors.
The Children of the Sun would lead us to believe that the Vasasoonenütä hunted us relentlessly. Culling us with cruel intent.
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I raise two points my kin, one my own, and one drawn by from the Marrow by our Elders.
Does one mourn the rat that gets into the grain?
The beef cattle sent marching to the butcher?
No, for their deaths are normal, their deaths are our right to take as those with Will.
So could the same not be said for those Vasasoonenütä that first met our species?
And what was the cruelty that they laid upon us? The Marrow reveals. No servitude was expected once they discovered we had a Will of our own. They did not make war on us. They did not enslave us. They learned what they could, and left us, preserved us, distant from their grand cities.
The Children of the Sun say that we feared them. That some came for us in the way we cull beasts like the Tiger, coin, and entertainment. But can it not be said that no people are a monolith, that good nor evil is truly set in the heart of all who walk amongst a singular culture?
We learned that from the tales of our faith's infancy.
Yet, their civilization fell, and by our ancestor's hands, it was done.
La Rue Macabre
How, even the Marrow can not say, whether Flood or Flower, a Tide came nonetheless.
Good, many will say, we freed ourselves from a caged existence. Our Will met Theirs, and we emerged Triumphant. So the Pinnacle becomes the Prey, and this is all true. All of it.
So what then, Scribe, makes you say we should turn away the Children of the Sun? Why should we respect these fallen people if it was by our hands they were cast down? These questions you seek to ask me, yes?
Well, I say, we must return first to our connection of names. Sarkic. Children of the Night.
To the folk outside the Kin, who view us through the lens of Sarkicism, we are aberrant. Monsters. Murders. Butchers. Demons. We break the mind and warp the body, stealing any and all autonomy from those we force to bear our work.
You would take affront to that, would you not? For those words speak of the Heretic, who picks and chooses the Ozi̮rmok's teachings and times of war, where none are at their best.
So then, the lens of the Children is much the same, the outlier and the brutalism of war, shaping an entire people into monsters to appease the consciousness of those they fought.
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For some, they are simply moral-less beings who broke mind and body to satiate their own curiosity.
Sounds familiar, does it not?
And amongst others, they rob them of their intelligence and their society. Instead, they are laughing butchers with the minds of children who stalked the futures, preying on any and all for their own enjoyment. Oh, and laughing all the time, they were. Giddy at their work.
Ridiculous. Demeaning. And as a look within the Marrow will tell any of you, utterly untrue.
But what is more is that it is cruelly ironic.
For, what humanity’s ancestors did to the Vasasoonenütä was more than destroy their way of life. It was more than killing them. They robbed them of their Will. Of their very minds! The defeated survivors couldn't even understand the scope of what had been taken from them. Does that not sound like the gibbering monsters that the Children of the Sun fear so much?
Again, Our Will beat theirs, some of you will say. But… that simply isn't true.
For the Will that designed Vasasoonenütä's downfall was not ours. But something else entirely.
La Rue Macabre
Truth the Fourth: The Truth of Connection
The truth we must face before we agree to heed the Children of the Sun is that our bonds with the Vasasoonenütä run deeper than many of you might be willing to accept.
As I said, their downfall was no plan of our ancestors, but another being entirely.
The Children of the Sun called it a "Trickster Forest God," the being that approached us and taught us to turn the Lost Sheperd's technology against them.
For some who have heard this message, they conflate that with the Folk Under Hill and, in some cases, even go on to claim it was the latter's revenge against their wayward creations. Dubbing the Vasasoonenütä as a terrible mistake.
Heed, not these claims. For, the Marrow has revealed a culprit that our history is long entwined with.
Those cruel and cunning slavers, the Daeva12.
The devious beings are best known for their under-cutting ways and mastery of botanical magics.
Jealous of the power the Vasasoonenütä had granted themselves through Will alone, the God-fearing, Demon-supplicating, envious Daeva sought to tear down everything the former had built. And they used Us to do so.
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And after our ancestors waged war, they stole and stole, learning more of blood and leaf than they ever could on their own. And with each theft, a vast store of knowledge would be lost, as they burned all they had no need for.
And in the end, with the Vasasoonenütä devastated and our ancestors rudderless and weakened, they struck.
From a natural paradise as close to Ikunaan13 as any might have ever seen came a corrosive, consuming force that would rise to become the Daevic Empire.
Many of our ancestors would flee or die fighting as they and the Daevas turned the Vasasoonenütä's dying weapons against each other.
Thousands died.
The numberless species and entities created by the Vasasoonenütä would all perish, unable to sustain themselves in this plenty-less world without their Shepherds to guide them.
In the end, the Daevas would be victorious, and in time, millions would be forced into bondage under them.
True Monsters, that our ancestors knew long and knew well.
A two-part downfall, writ by our ancestors' hands. Yet the ties between Nälkä and Vasasoonenütä go another step beyond.
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I need not speak of the legacy of Ozi̮rmok Ion, for without him, we would not stand here today.
But I must inform you of truth pulled not from the Marrow, but the Ozi̮rmok's own words.
Some outside the Kin and a few heathens within claim that his power came from the blood of his mother, and through his Will, he honed it into something truly magnificent.
While the latter might be true, I refute, and so do the Elders, the importance of the Daeva in his rise as anything more than enemies, for no credit should be given to such treacherous snakes as they.
Think now to the Almas of the Altais and Ion's flight into the heart of these mounts. Think of how some of the eldest blood still remain in that region, martial in mean and preternaturally protective of the caverns within their lands.
And know the truth that follows, a memory drawn clear from the Marrow and penned here for the first time at the Elder's behest, to be shared with all Kin.
La Rue Macabre
"Though I should be dead, ridden with disease and aching of hunger, somehow I survive amongst these silent mountains."
"My saviors huddle nearby, a folk utterly new to me. Large in stature, peaceful in mean, they touch my scarred form and mutter amongst themselves. I watched with rapt attention as their eldest of their number ran a finger along my forearm, sealing a gash without nary a scar."
"They speak my tongue stutteringly, yet their breadth of knowledge and wisdom exceeds anything I have known. I ask of their power, and they tell me of the Flesh and a motley of terms I have yet to grasp. But I will. "
"I mentioned the Daeva and the anger in my host's face grew as thunderous as the rage that beats within my heart. I asked for their aid. They give it gladly. I asked them to teach me. They say they can guide not teach. Show the path that I must seek for answers. By my Will, I will claim all they know as my own and more besides. Then I will bring my fury down on those that deign to think themselves Gods. I am to be a Shepherd, and so I must find my flock."
La Rue Macabre
While our Ozi̮rmok would find more power than the Vasasoonenütä, without their guidance, without the offer of their aid in a time in which they had just clawed back their own Will, felt the intelligence lost on their ancestors come flowing back to their fresh minds, where would we be today?
The Almas Clan, the caretakers of the fungal beasts and deep archives once, were the first to regain their Will. The first of the first people to regain their Will after having it torn away. They aided in Ozi̮rmok Ion's eventual ascension. And if you think me a liar, seek the Marrow yourself, and drink deep of truth!
So I say this, without the Vasasoonenütä, there may have never been Nälkä. The Almas were the first, but they were not the last. Will returns to Clans across the world, knowledge found new again.
What could they teach us? What revelations could we show them? Could we see a paradise arise once again? Together, against any and all that would deem us both monsters?
The Children of the Sun wish for us to return the Old Sinew Shamans to their exile, to rebuke them and cast them out, as we have been cast out by innumerable before.
La Rue Macabre
In a world of enemies, do we not deserve an understanding ally?
In a world once theirs, do they not deserve to stand tall once again?
In a world in need of Shepherds, should we not seek greener pastures together?
In a world where they want back in, I say we open wide the door.
And stand shoulder to shoulder against the World.
We are all Children of the Flesh.
Juo Luuydintä
Katso Totuus
Ylistys Ozi̮rmok14