The Moot

Late Third Season, The Outskirt: southeast near The Great Nature, Early Moon

It walks with feet so wet and cold through sunken swamp and decayed bark.

It looks backward to emerge from nothing. Darkness - thick brush of The Great Nature, an unusually living forest. Stretched in impossible lengths, covering all the land of the mid to southern world; from the southern base of Swamp Mountains and The Outskirt, too far to see.

It seemed the forest could teach - it knew existence.

Spoiled by night, it takes steps through unknown without angle, without border. Overwhelming thoughts run through its mind - traits of The Madness.

It never stops.

A fixed motion-blurred vision - a nighthawk sores without sleep across vast swamp, like the resting place of buried thought.

...Natural incense, perfect fungi, scattered placement; all around. The Great Nature somehow ceases to be and grows large, large with mountainous boulders and rancid soil. A place of pity, a place of...Remorse: The Outskirt! Rotted hillsides leading north away from Nature brings one into a zone of thoughtless decay.

The northern horizon - such a sight - past The Outskirt. Those peaks, those unnatural peaks; a sign of the land's old age, the mountains would simply rot: The Swamp Mountains. Rancid earth, decaying hillsides. A type of bird perched on stone; the song of death - a creation that mirrors itself.

Cold, so cold. The wind roars with recognition.

It selects its footing - so natural and sly.

Mindless thoughts remain and far-achieved talents reach peaks. It knows only of The Mission and The Hunger. A lesson disguised as difficulty.

It can cease only to find existence as a void - within eternity, outside reality.

It moves.

It takes position among moon-shadowed stone.

Quiet, but deadly.

Black-skinned Mootmen know nothing of so-called morals. They exist trapped in despair over constant hunger pains - those that always returned. Mootmen, maddened Assassins of the southern shores, are a people of Skin Hunger and build their Clans on ritual cannibalism. Many of the Pale-skinned have documented Moot society. Many perish in doing so.

During recent seasons, numerous tongues and fingerprints were sent back to Northtide - a Pale-skinned Grouping on the northern slopes - when Craft Spies were discovered within the largest Moot Clan just off the south western shore. Tortured, pained and ritually eaten. The Moot distaste tongue and only know each other by their Skin Design. The Moot only know The Mission and The Hunger: Skin Hunger is documented to drive one to madness and addiction - too euphoric.

The Pains. The Moot. The Torture. They are a people of scars, blood and ritual fire! Cannibalism! Ahh, The Hunger. They eat the Pale-skinned and they suffer in euphoria; an oasis of madness, controlled.

“You there! Halt!”, beyond the brush, an Outskirt Guard spots the Assassin. Wearing the traditional helm of the Pale - forged iron embedded with stone - with a silvered mail tunic. Its broadsword and blades almost surreal in this moonlight. The Pale-skinned insignia on the left shoulder is its honor. Its reason to kill.

!? Unusual ...

A Moot Assassin being spotted. A Moot! This could not be happening here.

Now! No hesitation.

The Guardsman melee marched towards the Assassin. This is my day. Thinking, swinging.

Swords flashing in lunar straining eyes, the first and fifth parries were outstanding; clinging echoes reverberate The Great Nature’s surroundings. Beside blackness and the roar of wind, the Guardsmen waged with all will. Mine! An odd determination in one’s eye. Wailing, clashing, and always focused on death, the Guardsman found himself dropping his sword and retiring to two blades - refined with Great Forge - in doing so, playing the odds and piercing skin - a Mootmen’s skin, no less! The battle would be a hard fought one ... to its Pale-skinned limits.

No mere Guardsman can death a Moot! The Assassin would be forced to sever the neck portion of the assailants artery and, with Gnilumn, poison the blood stream - Body drops: Ingenuity and the need to quiet The Hunger, The Moot harness Nature’s Poison by mixing herbals and mandrakes found throughout The Great Nature. Gnilumn mix; Moot Alchemy. Their talent. The Moot have become one with Nature.

Quiet, but deadly.

The corpse is bound with a root and taken back towards The Great Nature.

Hanging over one shoulder of the Moot, bound from head to toe in Cig root, it travels through unknown to the spot in the forest where sand eats flesh.

Within The Great Nature, vast and impossibly scouted, The Moot have learned to map the forest by recognizing the various plant life found throughout. The Pale have little knowledge of this talent and are yet to hold its power, as a determination - obsession - they send Craft Spies to dwell among Mootmen. Many perish.

Sand eats flesh.

Of all the places in The Great Nature this place set life and death apart. The way forest just becomes otherworldly design, like the Moon’s Sky - dead yet so, so consuming. Green forest slowly turning into black desert; forest ambience. The place where sand eats flesh. All around, unlit torches, stones and cloth, draped over gnilumn root. The black sand is calm, hungry. This place is no stranger to a Moot! In Moot society one experiences an environment like no other. The Madness from The Hunger seduces Mootmen into cravings, self-mutilation often so severe The Moot bleed to death. The Moot remain.

Their dead - as well as the remains of the ritually eaten - are brought to this place, where flesh becomes Nature. No name is given to this place because death has no name.

That Place...

The last of the Poisoned corpse is digested. Back to Nature.

The Moot, scar-chested and hungry, extinguishes its flame, flickers.

Back to darkness.

It trails through recognized plants and the odd Euphorbia patch, one of which finally catches the dark, hollow eyes of the Assassin.

Oval Euphorbia: used in a chemical mixture including the milky acrid poison secreted from its stems during the Third Season and, strangely, the secretion of a Moot. When mixed, the liquids cause simultaneous muscle and nerve paralysis, if ingested or veined.

During ancient alchemical practices, the early Moot - known to the people, simply, as The Start - experimented thoroughly with many of the countless plant species found in the forest. Sometimes discovering odd ways to mix death, as was the case with the Oval Euphorbia and semen mixture. Gnilumn mix is an early discovered Poison that uses the crushed roots of an Illit Mandrake and the chewed leaves of a Gnilumn Tree. They boil the liquid of the leaves and roots to finalize the poison's creation.

As a result of these - and many other - discoveries, The Moot hold Wisdom of Nature and protect this with intent and madness.

The Mootmen’s satchel, a variety of mixtures, on its back - horizontally, a small dagger no more than two of its feet in length, battle-torn, chipped, and sharp as crafted stone. The weapon craves for blood and flesh! The Madness would always leave a Moot-Assassin craving.

Moving ever north, through the forest, towards the spot where it slew the Pale fool, it can’t help but notice the Moon’s Sky: black, filled with those mysterious trinkets that are mirrored off the clear, nightly waters of the Constant Sea. It thinks of times when The Mission was only a matter of theory and practice. Then, still a child, so young and naive, it was put through hours and hours of battle-rank testing - tradition to those in Assassin-caste tribes.

There is The Moot as a whole, then there is the Assassin-caste tribes: Hunter-Gatherers, the deadly sort. In a caste tribe, one is fed daily with the Flesh of Ritual at an early age to promote intensity beyond mental measure, thus making a perfect hunter. The battle-rank testing would have young Moot hunt down captive Pale-skinned who are let loose into The Great Nature at Mid Sun every three moons past. Pained. Hunted. Ritually eaten.

So many times this Moot held High-rank, so many Pale necks have bled in its honor.

It sets camp after scouting and marking vantage points around the area, in case more Guardsmen are on Outskirt patrol. The Pale-skinned are not fond of sending a solitary guard on duty, especially to a place such as this decaying site. No more guards, it realizes. it stocks sticks and vines into the fire. Eats flesh: the food rations are not plenty when sent on a Mission. The Assassin must find its own food.

Early Sun rises soon.

The Moot, mad-eyed and hungry, unrolls a piece of leather and begins, with charred wood, a map of the land: The Great Nature, The Outskirt, then north past the mountain, The Plain and Slopes, far east the endless Northern Peaks - its ice melting south into the Constant Sea. A little dot north of The Outskirt - on the southeast base of the mountain - the small outpost for the Pale-skinned before they journey back up into the mountains toward Half-Point Gates. The Southern Outpost: A destination that would feel pain after three moons past.

It places the newly made map in its satchel and puts the bloodied blade down beside ... close enough, in case. A Moot's weapon is never cleaned, only purified by the dry blood upon its length.

It enters sleep and, without the slightest twitch, The Madness stops for only a moment, as it would seem when being awake also meant being tortured.

In the brush, eyes wide and attentive, a Shadow watches as a Moot marks territory and builds a flame to last the night. It observes the Moot: Wearing nothing but its waist satchel and weapon. The Moot know nothing of so-called morals.

The Shadow is patient. The Moot scribbles on some leather, enters sleep.

It crawls down the length of a massive Fore Tree, moonlight through branches and gaps between leaves reveal the figure now and again. There is no mistaking it now. Just some paces from The Outskirt and in the midst of a Moot. The Shadow turns into a Pale-skinned, its skin pigment almost vanishes and from dark black to a dull colored white, it mirrors souls and gazes.

A Craft Spy.

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