Millenia beyond reckoning have the Reveries been hovering over the continent, standing afloat in the sky as the closest thing to the stars ever known to the people of Terra.
Terrestrians, as the people of the Reveries call most outsiders, usually refer to them in turn as High Elves, in part for their shared ancestry with the Feyland Elves, in part for the fact that they inhabit, of course, places very high in the sky.
High Elves usually do not care for such arguments, however amusing; their eyes are always and at all times pointed outward. Skyborn, they call themselves, and some never even set foot on the ground below in a lifetime.
Elvenkind from Feyland say that their distant kindred rose to the clouds a long time ago, as dissidents of their own kind. Skyborn, however, beg to differ: in their own history, they never ascended, but, in fact, descended from a higher existence.
They put their origin at the stars. There, somewhere beyond what is known to the sentient races of Terra.
Unfortunate, for them, who are so judicious and keen-eyed, there is no proof or evidence, except the old stories. Aware of their traditional sense of self-importance, Skyborn spend their lives looking for clues of their heritage, or, at least, musing about it, through their long woven, tightly narrated stories told and sung and played. Skyborn are generally known for how long they take to tell any event to another, and of how they speak with great subtleties.
Perhaps that explains why Skyborn are also generally distant, aloof, or even conceited. Their minds are bred to focus up high, and not down below. When pulled to the everyday struggle of Terrestrians, they simply try to get over with it and to return to the Reveries.
The Reveries are not a single place, but many; the gathering of fortresses in the sky built in times immemorial, connected by many bridges that connect and disconnect as its individual fortifications come and go whenever needed. It is also home to one of the most unique depositories around the continent: the Cloud.
The Cloud is a complex structure of stone and glass, used by the Skyborn to practice their arts of cloud-reading and through which they try to gaze into the history of time and space following the patterns in the clouds. What some put aside as baseless claims, glorified truth-saying and an insidious variety of pseudo-divination, others see it as a sophisticated technique of scrying that actually elevates divination to a level of unmatched precision. As a matter of fact, the Cloud manifests itself in such a way that it allows even the least gifted of the practitioners to read its patterns, effectively functioning as a library of sorts that convey all kinds of knowledge and information. In general, it is easier to read present events, with more difficult patterns being left to the past and the future, which deepens as far you venture into either of them.
Traditionally, the Reveries are ruled by their most skilled Cloudreaders, who are thought to access events with most precision and who are smart enough to know when and how to make the best choices for the Skyborn.
As with other communities, Skyborn are not all intent on figuring out the mysteries of the universe. Many pursue other goals, specially with the Dragonborn, on their high towers, the Birdfolk, in their wandering fleet, and Terrestrians in general. People from the Reveries have sympathy for their distant cousins from Feyland, but the dwindling numbers of the latter have led to less and less contact over the past few centuries.
The Reveries are not being affected by the White Eternal, and for that reason Skyborn are not quite concerned with the ramifications of the perennial winter over the continent.
No comments:
Post a Comment