The Ash, Thorn and the South

The culture and politics of the Clans to the East and South of Anieth was very different from that of the Oak and Holly. The Oak and Holly surrounded Dumona and were concerned with keeping its humans within the bounds of that Nation. In the East, the humans were a wall pressing up against the sparsely populated Clans. The only means of control against incursion, let alone invasion, was to interact with their rulers using fear and superstition to keep the humans out of the woods. The expert in these dealings was the Thorn King.

The Thorn were a nomadic group of several peoples that was always changing. Sometimes the groups would be full of Hawthorn shapers, at other times, Rowan. There were a very few Rose and Bramble people, many Apple people who tended to be quite shy and invisible to the humans. The Blackthorn were numerous and led by a dryad of intermittent age who seemed obsessed with helping the humans with harsh medicine. He interbred with the families of the Gwaranaccii and the Biwyllaccii and interfered in the politics of many of the other Nations patronized by the lesser Trees, and influenced those controlled by the Pine and Ash. He was a major speaker for the humans at An Doras where he opposed the Willow, Alder, Yew, River Birch, Oak and Black and Red Holly.

The Thorn group of lesser Trees, were very much like our view of Classical dryads. They were nomadic, but carried little with them, preferring to visit "stash" sites where they had previously camped and set up semi-permanent residences. They moved up into the mountains in the summer and camped on the west side of the Grey Mountains, in the more sheltered valleys in the winter. They had no uniform like many of the greater Trees, but were into various forms of personal adornment such as tattoos, jewelry, all forms of clothing and headgear. They varied according to their Tree shapes: the Hawthorn were white haired and pink skinned; the Blackthorn were golden skinned and dark of hair; the Rowan all forms of red hair from red-blond to murrey with golden skin; the Apple with ruddy skin and various color of hair; the Rose with ruddy skin and hair with a reddish cast. Although the taboo of interbreeding was still favored, the Thorn did not enforce it strictly and, for this reason, were looked down upon by the greater Trees.

Being with the Thorn was very much like being in a roving party with music and dancing and singing taking up most of their time not spent gathering food or making things for the markets at An Doras. When the arrived at any of the large festivals, the festivals often became a whirlwind of dancing and music. Many of the greater Trees claimed that the only one of them to take anything seriously was the Thorn King, and he was known to be a trickster, a liar, a riddler, and generally hard to understand. Yet the Hazel respected him and the Rowan would do nothing without consulting him. Even the Ash Mother, notorious for ignoring the Holly or the Oak would listen to the Thorn King and often take his advice.

It may not have been coincidence that the Nations under the Thorn patronage were among the most advanced, but also most vulnerable of the Nations. The Gwaranaccii fell prey to the gold fever and the Biwyllaccii at Massona ran the mines there as slave labor camps. However the observatory and college under the Green Nation's patronage was the seat of most of the collective lore of the Nations and the level of technology at Massona impressed even the Zelosians.

The Thorn King was a master of illusion and a powerful wizard. No one understood the magic at the core of Anieth better than he did. Much of what he did was not at the level of Anieth, but at the nested levels of Earth and greater yet. He was one of the two Trees to appear on Earth and not die. His choice to bury the observatory at Taranhai may have been the right choice to have saved the college from the Zelosian incursions. He certainly failed both at Taranhai and again at Massona, where the greed for trade overran both queens and left them open for Zelosian influence. He tried on two occasions to destroy the mines at Massona and underestimated the humans persistence in rebuilding even at his order that they not. It was at his insistence that the Thorn and their friends ally themselves with the White Holly and the Multi-shapers during the final wars.

There was much speculation among the players that the Thorn King was in a conspiracy with Lucia Shields to oppose the destruction of Anieth. While it seems unlikely that a character from a fantasy world would know enough to conspire with a player, it is true that the Thorn King teased every player he met after they lost their memories of Earth when Lucia broke the gate. He also led on Peter Shields and thwarted his efforts to recover the players. His heavy interactions with the multi-shapers first led Bleid to suspect that the magical rules of Anieth could be bent to his will. Other tricksters among the Thorn showed up to plague the Humans, yet did not seem to do more than tease the humans rather than making any tangled effort to "wake them up."

The Ash occupied lands between the Avena and the Snatha rivers. They were a people without any social structure except among the mothers. A woman and her children formed a family grouping and men married out of the family. The tests for a man to join into another family were rigorous and difficult, but were the only way of "weeding" out undesirable traits in the families. A daughter who showed traits that the Ash frowned upon, was merely locked away under her mother's supervision and became maiden Aunts, rather like the Victorian family structure among the rich. If a man showed traits that were considered anti-social, he was often shunned and forbidden to join any family group. However, he was not shunned out of the territory and often formed small groups with other shunned males that caused much trouble for peoples who were not Ash. The Great Ash Mother, who was so because of her great age (her name meant nine ash, or nine generations) intervened in outside relations when any of the Ash warriors attacked the other Clans. She did not punish her own, yet her judgement sometimes caused the culprits to suicide, so she was feared and obeyed. She did not respect the Oak, whom she considered upstart brutes, or most of the Holly, whom she considered to be on the wrong path. She was a great friend to the lesser Trees, especially the Elder, the Rowan and the Silver Birch.

The Ash warriors were extremely fond of personal adornment, yet it was up to their wives or sisters or mothers to provide them with their elaborate armor and linen decorations. The more elaborate a man's attire, the more his women admired him. A man in plain attire was the sign of a man without quality. Outcasts often tried to make attire for each other or went the other way and tried as much as possible to tear their clothing and wear rags to frighten outsiders whom they loved to bully. Decoration among the Ash consisted of many forms of knotting bast, or the inner bark of trees. Every part of clothing and household clothing was knitted, knotted or crocheted or the woven nettle linen for which, like the Holly, they were justly famous. They wore jewelry and carved items out of bone and antler, shunning most stone and all metal which they considered to be weakening of the mind and body.

Like the Thorn, the Ash had no law. The only answer to a crime was banishment or debt. Even though some of the men banded together when they were banished, they did not survive long. Life in ancient times was fairly brutal, so the family was more important. A family unit was usually several women and their children and grandchildren and the men that had come into the family from other families. They reckoned relation through their mothers, but the men were very free to roam as they willed and do pretty much as they willed. In practice, they enjoyed the favor of the women, so tended to be cooperative.

The warriors guarded their territories jealously and fought with poison darts, harpoon-like throwing knives attached with rope, nets and traps of all kinds. They showed no mercy to most strangers. This is understandable since they shared a large border with the more hostile Trees: Willow, Alder and the notorious Yew and River Birch. They also shared a very long border with the humans and were the first of the Great Tree Clans to encounter the Zelosians. They delighted in open warfare and were the bane of Korutos's career when he took over command of the Decian League and built the road from Nava to Massona through Ash country. He ended up losing his command because of Ash guerilla tactics along the Massona Road.