Connects to: 04.02, 10.09, 16.16.10, 22.25 and 33.04.
The builders of the Forgotten City-State (22.25) were a cunning race, some even say that they were the race of god-men who lived before elves and orcs were sundered (17.17.05) but that is a pack of lies. Their magic was great for their very homes were built from the bodies of sandlings and clay golems served their every need. But their city was dry and spare for they had no soul for beauty so to acquire artists they built a great seawater fountain and drew from it beings of salt and chalk from the cold realms of the demons down under sea.
These elementals of salt and chalk were masters of art and plucked from the peoples of the earth the most beautiful maidens and most handsome youths to adorn their masters’ city, their skin turned to alabaster and their forms molded and refined to bring out beauty that never existed in life.
When the old forgotten city-state fell, the beings of salt and chalk crumbled to dust or lurked in brackish pools but the greatest of them broke free after some few centuries of effort. One of these was blowing across the lands that are now the Freeholds, seeking out the ocean it had been severed from so long ago when it caught sight of a human girl more beautiful than any statue. It blew out of a cloud that night and, with the voice of the south wind, the being of salt and chalk called out to the girl, granted her heart’s desire and won her love. But when her lover came to embrace her it cringed away from her soft damp flesh, her gaping pores and her wet fishy eyes. If only she had the skin of true alabaster and the grace of an elemental, then it could love her.
And so the being of salt and chalk took thirteen great lizardman shamans and bound them to the drinkers mouth (04.02) and had them cry out in voices that only children and secret things can hear (50.26) for a year and a day until a being of soot and ash emerged from the fire of the earth. There they bargained in elf wings and dinosaur feathers, in dead men’s love and innocent hate, in the hearts of kindly elves the spleen of cowardly orcs until at last a bargain was struck and the being of salt and chalk won a heart of black diamond.
This it placed within the chest of its love so that she would live even after it turned her skin to alabaster. And live and sing she still does, but even a black diamond heart cannot turn a human into an elemental and as her limbs turned to stone they stiffened and moved no more (see is now the “haunted” statue of 10.09). The being of salt and chalk stays nearby in a quiet woodland pool from which he occasionally emerges to tear apart beautiful things.
Or at least so says the Sparrow Knight, but he has been known to lie (16.16.10).
Hooks:
- How much of the story is true? If it is true why has nobody broken the statue open and taken the black diamond heart?
- Who were the people of the Forgotten City-State anyway?
- There are demons down under the sea?
- Who was the girl and how did the elemental win her love?
- The voices of lizardmen are too high-pitched for (adult) humans to hear. What does this have to do with them being able to call elementals? I thought elves were the ones who usually summoned them?
- What does all this have to do with the art of pactmaking (33.04)?
