Kevin's Watch

tonyz wrote:One thing to keep in mind -- the Old Lords knew the words to the Forestals' song (it was written in Kevin's Lore, which is where Mhoram learned the words), and they knew that it was very very dangerous. So there must have been at least some limited interaction between the humans and the Forestals way back when.

I suspect that more than one human probably got turned into a Forestal at some point. (The trees and the Colossus might have taken humans originally to make the first Forestals; I doubt that Caerroil Wildwood was the first.) And it wouldn't surprise me at all if some Unfettered ended up that way too.

variol son wrote:

tonyz wrote:One thing to keep in mind -- the Old Lords knew the words to the Forestals' song (it was written in Kevin's Lore, which is where Mhoram learned the words), and they knew that it was very very dangerous. So there must have been at least some limited interaction between the humans and the Forestals way back when.

I suspect that more than one human probably got turned into a Forestal at some point. (The trees and the Colossus might have taken humans originally to make the first Forestals; I doubt that Caerroil Wildwood was the first.) And it wouldn't surprise me at all if some Unfettered ended up that way too.

I seem to remember that Mhoram knew the words to the song because it was part of the knowledge he gained when he was touched by samadhi Sheol in the body of an ur-vile on the marge of Hatosh Slay. When Mhoram speaks of the One Forest to Covenant in The Illearth War, he does so in the context of this experience.

Hmmm, will go look in my books.

I have even heard it whispered that some Unfettered follow the legend of Caerroil Wildwood of Garroting Deep, and become Forestals.

At the end of that time, there were only four places left in the Land where the soul of the Forest lingered -- survived, and shuddered in its awesome pain -- and took resolve to defend itself. Then for many ages Giant Woods and Grimmerdhore and Morinmoss and Garroting Deep lived, and their awareness endured in the care of the Forestals. They remembered, and no human or Vile or Cavewight who dared enter them survived.

even before the dim time of the coming of men to the Land, and the cruel felling of the One Forest-the Colossus of the Fall had both power and purpose. It stood on Landsdrop like a forbidding fist over the Lower Land, and with the might of the -' Forest denied a dark evil from the Upper Land."
Abruptly, he broke into a slow song like a lament, a quiet declining hymn which told the story of the Colossus as the Lords had formerly known it, before the son of Variol had gained his new knowledge. In restrained sorrow over lost glory, the song described the Colossus of the Fall -- the huge stone monolith, upraised in the semblance of a fist, which stood beside the waterfall where the River Landrider of the Plains of Ra became the Ruinwash of the Spoiled Plains.
Since a time that was ancient before Berek Lord Fatherer lost half his hand, the Colossus had stood in lone somber guard above the cliff of Landsdrop; and the oldest hinted legends of the Old Lords told of a ' time, during the ages of the One Forest's dominion in the Land, when that towering fist had held the power to forbid the shadow of Despite-held it, and did not wane until the felling of the Forest by that unsuspected enemy, man, had cut too deeply to be halted. But then, outraged and weakened by the slaughter of the trees, the Colossus had unclasped its interdict, and let the shadow free. From that time, from the moment of that offended capitulation, the Earth had slowly lost the power or the will or the chance to defend itself.

In particular, he narrated some of the old tales about the One Forest, the mighty wood which had covered the Land in an age that -was ancient before Berek Halfhand's time, with its Forestals and its fierce foes, the Ravers. During the centuries when the trees were still awake, he said, the Forestals had cherished their consciousness and guided their defenses against turiya, moksha, and samadhi.

Wildwood wrote:"I know nothing of Lords. They are nothing to me. But I know men, mortals. The Ritual of Desecration is not forgotten in the Deep."

In the nigh-unremembered past of the place which you deem the Land, the life was not the life of men and women, but of trees. One wide forest of sentience and passion filled all the region-one mind and heart alive in every leaf and bough of every tree among the many myriad throngs and glory of the woods. And that life the Elohim loved.
"But a hate rose against the forest, seeking its destruction. And this was dire, for a tree may know love and feel pain and cry out, but has few means of defense. The knowledge was lacking. Therefore we met, and from among us Appointed one to give her life to that forest. This she did by merging among the trees until they gained the knowledge they required.
"Their knowledge they employed to bind her in stone, exercising her name and being to form an interdict against that hate. Thus was she lost to herself and to her people-but the interdict remained while the will of the forest remained to hold it."
"The Colossus," Covenant breathed. "The Colossus of the Fall."
"Yes," Findail said.
"And when people started coming to the Land, started cutting down the trees as if they were just so much timber and difficulty, the forest used what it'd learned to create the Forestals in self-defense. Only it took too long, and there were too many people, and the Forestals weren't enough, they couldn't be everywhere at once, couldn't stop the many blind or cruel
or simply unscrupulous axes and fires. They were lucky to keep the mind of the forest awake as long as they did."