-Happenings in the Freeholds had long begun to affect the western neighbors and Planes of Kundra, but now these such happenings were affecting the heartlands and their surrounding territories, and even those of the lonely island chains in the deep south. The Tuatha Dé fae are blood kin to the Airgeadlámh Nuadu (Silver Dryads), the Aos Sí (The great tree spirits of the Io Sidhe Realms), and are also the royal family line to all Thrandish fairy folk on Kundra. Silver Sidhe are the people of the trees, the shepherds of the forests and jungle wilds. Aos Sí are more branch than blood and more bark than bone, often defending the faun & fauna alike. The Tuatha Dé are neither man nor tree, however, but both in eternal matrimony so long as the tree persists. Thrandkind affectionately refer to the Tuatha Dé as “nymphs,” given that they represent spring, fertility, fecundity & eros (Erotic love). The nymphs of Dé Danu are also referred to as Tree Gods by all forest kin, as their Home Trees grow to the heights of mountains with age; and light aflame with unburning, unquenchable fires, when inhabited by their makers (The fruit of such trees becomes aflame in such times as well). Alas, the lands of Dé Danu-Nay-The entire island continent of Sub-Solanus was nigh under siege. The V?rnir (Corrupted or cursed offshoots and offspring of the “Drow who chose the Dark”) had landed and made camp and beachhead on the western shores of T’Leria, while the Enkil (Albino orcs of the Gorgo Freelands) made landfall on the mainland continent (The Riverlands). Orobos Nightshade was the field commander of a small battalion of V?rnir & Enkil orcs, dispatched by sea to cut down the Riverlands and build siege engines, weapons & ships, to make ready for the coming wars.

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  Nightshade was 2 meters tall, as black as coal in color, with eyes the hue of high-heated honey. His teeth were fanged but alabaster, his head was shaved of its cobalt curls, and his ebony body was covered in gold piercings and tattoos. Miniature golden spiders coiled to and fro around his finger nails, disappearing beneath them, at times without explanation.

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  The Orcish contingent had laid waste to a quarter of the western woodland coast before dawn, setting fire to or knocking over any conifer or timber too large to fell by axe or saw. The encroaching flames were so numerous that none of the savage Orcs (Nor their Orc savagery) could delineate between the trees which had been set a flame, and the flaming trees of the Dé Danu.

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  The Eye of the World is a naturally occurring “storm drain” in the very center of the 7 planes of Kundra. All the waters of the world (Its oceans, rivers, and seas) spill out into the gigantic circular spillway, which is dammed off by the omni-centralized fork of the Rainbow Bridge network, like an enclosed embankment to levee any tides which breach passed the bodies of water connected to the 4 capital continents. At the heart of the magnificent, multicolored web of land bridges lies the magnetic mountain known as the Meru.

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

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  According to ?O-Meru-Ki legends, Mt. Meru was once a great Star Tree (The grandest of them all), which was cut down by the Hunter God far before forgotten memory. Prior to its fall, it is said that the tree bore Star Seeds (Rather than fruit) to light the day and night (i.e., the Golden Grain & the Silver Seed). As the story goes, when the great tree fell and broke the world, the Star Sprout was forever suspended above Meru by a violent eruption from the surviving tree trunk (Invisible to the naked eye). Consequent traditions demand that a tree with a star upon its summit be burned on the eve of each year.

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  It was not the first of the year, yet, many a tree had been burned alive. Many nymphs were unintentionally put to the pyre as a result. Many more were incidentally deformed and defiled while defending their forest realm. The wicked war mongers made sport of their charges, gambling their lives in games of “Sword, Shield & Spear” to determine whom among them would have the honor of committing the subsequent atrocities. Orobos, called “Shadow Walker” (In the Orcish dialect) due to his massive successes in stealth assassinations (Which he could only claim credit for due to his unique calling card), took no part in the butchery. His talents were reserved for Paladins, great knights, and members of the warrior’s gentry; and, thus, he would not sully them with any such acts which were beneath his standing. Nightshade was stopped dead in his tracks as his voice was caught in his throat, like an unseen hand had choked off his ability to speak. There was a beautiful woman in the flames, mayhaps, the flames were made shape into a beautiful woman. Whatever the case, she walked the long length of the forest behind the fires, and he followed her deeper and deeper into the flaming thicket. His men did not take long to notice his absence, and then after they trailed the king of fire and shadow, after the fiery shadow he now chased. He came into the heart of a great grove, and it was there that he was convinced that the trees themselves were made of fire, rather than set aflame by him and his brood. Dancing on the knife’s edge of the flickering flames, the Nymph Goddess laughed and giggled at the sight of the brooding brute before her. At the sight of his excitement once he had been brought before her. She sat down atop an infernal topiary dais, but her smile all but turned to ash as his troop came up behind him, unnoticed. The bewildered orc commander became belligerent, and he slaughtered the whole of his battalion before the first light of dawn had breached the now bloody branches of the nymph’s Home Tree. The Crown of his head and both eyes were awash with blood, as was his mouth, which dripped the sanguine liquid from his teeth and tongue down his chest, passed his torso & his loins to his feet. He looked up to the Nymph Goddess with a bloody lust which had all but satiated his blood-lusted outburst.