It has been a while since I have commented on the mechanisms of the Earthmother. I write to you all now, however, as a warning and a call to action.

During my absence I communed with nature directly. My vines enwrapped me, I became naught but leaves and roots in the red fog, I felt the pulse of the earth itself, and the shifting of nature and balance.

I felt the rot that has taken root in the form of Earthmother and Eleusis. I felt the formation of the Hollowheart seed, the planting of it, and the tremors of the earth and the rain-like falling of the tears as the vines grew and overtook the lower levels of Ashtan. As it shattered lives and families throughout the city. Druidic vines have always been capable of devouring corpses, but eating living beings is a new trick.

In this oneness with nature, I also felt through the leaves of the Black Forest the lack of movement and care, the coldness and slow pulses of dispassionate reaction from those gathered under the boughs, watching as rot overtook the City.

Not soon after that, I felt the piercing decay of the root and vine network in the infernal realms themselves. A convulsing grove belonging to the Queen of decay, not houses in a forest, but in a swamp in the hells.

At first I was confused, given the infernal Queen of Rot and the Earthmother championing the same gloriousness of decay. Not to mention the swamp grove itself, when mortals are bound to forests and trees.

But through it I felt fully that the core of Sapience itself has been shaken.

As I told Winston Oxmiller over the earthy tons of his whiskey, Balance has been completely lost. Druids used to be completely neutral, no cities or villages at all beyond informal ties, because we were the bulwarks of balance. We counterbalanced all.

However, with all forestalls now centered only in Eleusis, balance has tilted incorrectly in the other way entirely. Yet, there is nature inside of cities, there is nature inside of each of us, the definition of nature is not only what Eleusis says it is, and their recent embrace of rot is all the more reason that balance must be returned.

While the Oak and Stone organization is primarily for rogue and city-based forestalls, I would encourage any who feel that balance has been lost to share their voice in support.

Rot is naught but death if all that exists is rot. It will infect all life like a gangrenous infection. Fire, as we have seen from the rising of the Pheonix and the efforts of Targossas can bring life once it cauterizes the rot. All fire though, is death, just as all rot is death.

The Balance of the world has been lost, and it is up to mortals to restore it. You forestalls who disagree with the loud propaganda of rot, you are the first line of defense. Join me in the fight, if we win, we all win, if we lose, we will be naught but rot anyway.


In Strength,
Keeper Jems Aristata, Druid of the Red Isle

Penned by my hand on the 5th of Scarlatan, in the year 969 AF.