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Halflings - __denby - 08-19-2024 Halflings “Vessels of mortal flesh, bound by the aspect of Belonging.” It came to pass that many cycles after Narrative had produced the first clans of dwarf, the world still did not ring with a positive note. In fact, where the dwarves had been possessed of the intent to be diligent, they too possessed in spades the concept of greed, wealth, and the division of society according to those concerns. While on the surface the world was better, more diverse and filled to the brim with new concepts and materials, it too brimmed with death. War machines crafted by the insatiable hands of dwarves drove legions of men to their afterlives and ruined elven cities whose foundations had been laid at the beginnings of their age. Subdividing the aspect of Intent that had been so carefully preserved with the creation of the dwarves would cause unknown consequences for her burgeoning- albeit misled race. So, a new aspect of the Godhead would be required to emanate a new force into the creation; one unused, separate from the descension of the tree of life was Desire- and so it was chosen, like a golden berry in the seething void. Narrative then focused on a new creation, drawing within the Aspect and upon the feeling of Belonging. To the dwarf, there was the clan and there was profit, but to the halfling there would be only kin and mutual prosperity. After all, it was the clamor of children and the clinking of dishes that Narrative herself had come to so greatly enjoy in the play that acted out before the Godhead. Forming them from the straw of the field, mead of the valley and the earth of the Westcontre’s highlands, Narrative emanated the fourth race of the Grail by the aspect of Desire. Standing no more than four feet and eight inches, it is somewhat a misnomer that the halfling is ‘half’ the height of the human. Short in stature and rather thin in build, the race of halfling is not strong nor is it quick, instead having features that are almost neotenous compared to the other species of the Grail. There is equally little in the way of sexual dimorphism amongst the halfling species, their lives being long and the societies from which they descend being incredibly communal. Hair colors typically range from shades of blonde to dark brown, usually turning white or gray with extreme age. The oldest of halflings, while infirm and poorly sighted, have been known to reach almost three hundred years. Skin tones range from earthy blacks to pale linen and typically are determined by the environment that each group has called home. The first halflings drew breath within the territory of Abessia, deep within the highland forests where little interaction from the other races would be had. It was in this way that the newly formed creatures under Narrative’s watchful eye adopted a form of communal matriarchy. It was the mother that birthed them, it was the mother that fed them, and it was the mother that should rule over them. Typically the oldest and assumedly most ‘enlightened’ female of the clan was appointed as matriarch, and in this way the halflings preserved great wisdom within their culture. More important to them were the cycles of nature, the joys of great meals and succulent dishes brought about by their mastery of animal husbandry- and most of all the harmonious community that seemed to simply spring into existence around them. Theirs was a peaceful life until their first interaction with the race of men. For nearly four centuries, the halfling village of Mossvale rested like a moss-covered gem in the emerald cradle of the Verdant Vale. Beneath arching canopies of alder and rowan, generations tilled the fertile soil, lived by the rhythm of sun and seed, and honored the wisdom of their singular sovereign: Grandmother Thistleburr. Elected once in a lifetime by consensus and custom, the Grandmother was no queen, but a living archive of the halflings’ gentle, matriarchal lore—a weaver of peace, a keeper of seasons, a judge with flour on her sleeves. Mossvale had no need of gates. No wars had touched its soil. Strife was a stranger, and ambition was considered a weed—useful in tincture, poisonous in overgrowth. Then came the Abessy. They descended from the passes of the Sapphire Mountains like an answer to a riddle never asked. Tall, sun-burnished, eyes like volcanic glass, the Abessy brought more than goods: they brought spectacle. They danced before they spoke, bartered with riddles, and moved through Mossvale with the easy confidence of fire through dry leaves. Their culture gleamed with a dangerous magnetism—imperial in bearing, seductive in sound. They called Mossvale a “sleeping jewel.” They called Grandmother Thistleburr “the Crone Regent,” half in jest, half in charm. And Mossvale, in its naivety, laughed with them. The Abessy brought artifacts from their eastern coasts—iron-studded drums, fermented wines that sang through the blood, narcotic herbs that turned dreams into visions. At their fires, stories of gods with spears and queens with crocodile mouths replaced the old tales of mole spirits and orchard sprites. Their language, rhythmic and proud, slid like honey into halfling ears. The youth listened hardest. It began with the harvest rites. Where once halfling girls danced slow circles in linen and garlands, now they painted themselves in ochre and moved in fierce spirals, mimicking the Abessy rites of passage. The boys, formerly apprenticed to rootwork or oven-craft, were taught how to chant in cadence with footfalls and strikes. Fallow fields became arenas. Clay stoves stood cold as feasts turned to revelries of spectacle and flesh. Thistleburr watched in silence from her hill-cottage as the very roots of her people’s identity withered beneath the heat of the Abessy sun. She spoke, eventually. In the Meeting Hollow, she addressed all. “We are not broken, to require remaking,” she said. “A vine does not envy the tree simply because it grows tall and loud.” But her words, once enough to halt feuds and guide generations, were now met with sideways glances. The Abessy priestess Matara-Kem, newly settled in the village’s old herb hall, responded with her own parable—of rivers that stagnate if not stirred, of people who die when they do not evolve. Within a year, the Grandmother’s authority was ceremonial. By the second, openly mocked. Then came the Ember Solstice. Under banners of gold and black, Matara-Kem declared a New Compact: a hybrid culture, ruled not by one grandmother but by a triumvirate chosen through “strength, vision, and divine favor.” Thistleburr, refusing to endorse it, was escorted from her home by youths who once brought her spring flowers. Her cottage was burned, her name struck from communal record. It was said she wept, not for herself, but for the taste of smoke in the orchard air. In time, Mossvale was transformed. Spears replaced shepherd’s crooks. Songlines became war chants. Modesty turned theatrical, hospitality became transactional. The matriarchal rhythm, once slow and steady as a river’s current, had been drowned beneath a thunderous tide. The Abessy called it Renaissance. In exile, Grandmother Thistleburr named it the Withering. Years passed. In the shadows of Bramblefen, where briars grew thick as curses and even the Abessy dared not tread, Grandmother Thistleburr endured. She lived among roots and ruin, gathering strays: halfling children who had fled the New Compact, elders who would not kneel, even a handful of Abessy dissenters who found Matara-Kem’s zeal too absolute. She taught them not only how to harvest mushrooms and whisper to bees—but how to kill. She had once been the bread-keeper of her people. Now she learned the arts of breaking. From scavenged wreckage and stolen scrolls, Thistleburr fashioned a doctrine of war. She twisted Abessy tactics—scorched field maneuvers, shadow raids, ritualized deception—into something colder, more precise. The first raids were whispers on the wind: a granary burned to the ground, an armory emptied, a priestess found poisoned with wolfsbane. The triumvirate dismissed them as outlaws. But when a newly raised idol of the war-god Hamarek was felled and buried in a dung heap, the people began to murmur. When her fighters struck at the Summer Vigil—masks donned, drums drowned by screaming—Mossvale finally understood. Thistleburr had returned. The village erupted in confusion. For many halflings, Thistleburr was still a memory of warmth and sense, a ghost of balance. Yet her return was no soft spring. It was winter with a blade. Matara-Kem, shrewd and unyielding, ordered a purge of any who spoke Thistleburr’s name with reverence. Dozens vanished into the Rootcellar Prisons. In response, Thistleburr sent back their guards in pieces—ritualistically arranged, a mimicry of the Abessy funeral glyphs. Still, the turning point came not with blood, but with fire. The Fields of Loam, Mossvale’s sacred grain terraces, were razed under moonlight by Thistleburr’s own hand. She stood on a ridge and watched the harvest burn—flames dancing like mad children across centuries of memory. Her apprentice, a quiet lad named Brindlecap, wept beside her. “Why, Grandmother?” he asked, voice small beneath the crackle. “Because if they eat, they endure,” she said, eyes dry. “And if they endure, they forget what we were.” It was the moment she crossed a boundary no halfling ever had: the deliberate starvation of her own blood. The siege began that winter. Mossvale, girded in Abessy stone and pride, buckled not to force but to hunger. One by one, homes were abandoned, faiths fractured. Matara-Kem held her temple until the roof collapsed under fire set by infiltrators who sang lullabies as they torched the beams. Thistleburr walked into the ruins not as a liberator, but as a shadow. She claimed no title. She restored no council. The triumvirate lay dead, the shrines shattered, the drum circles silent. But what was left was not Mossvale. The orchard groves were stumps. The children had learned to stab before they learned to bake. Even Brindlecap, her most loyal, no longer smiled. The halflings won their village back. But they had paid with their soul. It is said rain fell from the sky slick with salt on the spring equinox that year, the tears of Narrative once again wetting the world that the unseen hand of darkness had taken too the goodness of her race and bent it into something foul. The children of the new Mossvale no longer sang. They trained. From the age of five, they learned to track without sound, to slit throats in the dark, to cook roots into poison or poultice. War had become not an exception, but inheritance. The trees had grown back crooked. The village was a fortress of alder and stone, its walls carved with the grim faces of saints who had bled. Festivals were few. Bread was bitter, and stories shorter. And yet, among the crumbling shrines and smoke-darkened hearths, the old name lingered: Thistleburr. To most, she was myth. The Pale Grandmother. The Witch-General. A name muttered when someone vanished in the woods or when fire appeared where none had been lit. Her teachings were canon and curse alike. In the Hall of War-Records, a single threadbare banner bore her sigil: a branch split at both ends, blooming and burning at once. But one young girl wanted more than fragments. Ivyroot, born of the warrior caste but possessed of a scholar’s hunger. She found the last living witness in the outer glade—a centenarian beekeeper known only as Old Brindlecap. His hands trembled, but his memory did not. “She was kind, once,” he told Ivyroot, “before she turned her kindness into a weapon.” Over weeks, Ivyroot listened. She learned of the moss-woven festivals, the long loaves passed down in peace, the orchard rites, the dance of grandmother’s bells. She learned that Mossvale had not always been a training ground. That there had been songs without screaming. “But she saved us,” Ivyroot said once, hesitant. “Didn’t she?” Brindlecap exhaled, a sound halfway between a sigh and a laugh. “She saved the body, child. But lost the heart. What we reclaimed—was it Mossvale? Or just the name?” Haunted, Ivyroot began her true work. In secret, she compiled the forbidden: lullabies, hearth-legends, even fragments of Abessy poems once outlawed. She mapped the lost groves by moonlight, sketching trees that no longer stood. Her writings, bound in bark and sealed in beeswax, would become known as The Memory Codex. It was Ivyroot who first dared to say what no warrior would: “We must choose which part of our past we carry, and which we bury with the dead.” In time, her teachings spread. Slowly. Painfully. A new generation learned to bake as well as bleed. To mourn without vengeance. They carved spoons as well as swords. Not all agreed. Not all forgave. But a balance began to emerge—not the old matriarchy of peace, nor the burning theocracy of the Abessy, but something liminal. Something earned. Halfling society has been marked by a great distrust for the other races since, seeing no good coming from anything beyond the walls of their own village now.