The Oak and the Holly and the War of Champions

None of us are good at tracking the calendars that were used among the peoples of Anieth. They were based on the movements of the stars and the cycles of eclipses, but each Nation and many different Clans and sub-Clans had different calendars. This was true of the Holly and Oak. The White Holly had their calendar, the Red another and the Black a third. The Oak and Holly shared the same cycles, but named their years differently. Thus the Year of the Red Cat was a different year for the Red Holly than for the Red Oak. I thought this system stupid and shameful, but of course kept my opinions to myself. I also find chopsticks stupid, but I would never say so if I were in Asia!

The thing to remember in talking about the Holly and Oak is the order of succession. White kills Black, Red kills White, and Black kills Red. Thus the White Oak King had to have killed the Black Holly Champion or Cuilinn as he is called. The same year, the White Holly who is elected (White to White) had to have killed the Black Oak King. It's like that game of paper, scissors, stone. White wins over Black, Black over Red and Red over White. Keep repeating this to yourself. The rituals involved in choosing the contestants for the Holly Champion or the Oak King are extremely involved. I think Theron Abernathy wrote something about them on Mishka's pages on the Clans.

I thought the Holly vicious animals until I met the Oak. I then understood the phrase, "spine and needle." The Holly are the needle and the Oak are the club. The Holly worship the warrior's abilities of grace and speed, whereas the Oak are just brute strength. Despite others knowing that the Ash were the first people and the Mother the first mother, the Oak thought that they ruled the Wood. I guess it was a good thing that the Holly disagreed. Our understanding is that they had fought a war that lasted several generations until they were both brought to their knees by the years of the volcano. The Hazel then helped them to realize a different system of war in which the succession of kings was decided by the other Clan. This kept their killing instincts happy and kept them from open war, but more importantly, it kept the Oak from erupting into succession battles that tended to spread into the neighboring country. The Pine, in particular, were extremely grateful to the Hazel for arranging this complex system by which the Holly and Oak could fight a war but not kill everyone around them.

The consequence of this system is that the Oak Kings and the Holly Cuilean tended to be better than the average of their warriors. The Oak Kings were marked by their shaved heads, but there was little to distinguish a Cuilinn from his other warriors except for his manner. His life was very different from the average warrior. Like the kings of the Nations, he had extreme privilege in exchange for having to be killed rather than taking root as did the other Holly. However, he was not allowed a family. He could pretty much do what he liked with anyone he chose, beat them, order them about, but he could not attach himself to any particular mate or acknowledge his children. I thought that these champions were a haunted bunch and Valerie despised them. They had about them a fatalism that went well beyond the Holly attitudes of "spine and needle," that gave them the nickname of "the People of Pain." They seemed to regard everyone as invisible, as if they were already dead, but everyone else were ghosts. They passed a little of this attitude to their clients, the Veldonaccii who were, like the Holly, also berserks. The Holly were not berserk in the way that the Celts or Vikings were, bloodthirsty beyond humanity, but in a strange, dispassionate way, as if they were removed and everything around them was in slow motion. They bred these traits, for to go into Oak country and kill their king single-handedly required a mind set that was beyond scary. I saw for myself how the Veldonacii warriors fought with this kind of "godhood" upon them. They had superhuman strength and weird powers of endurance and mental abilities. I was forever grateful that the Holly were so caught up in their obsession with the Oak that they were no longer slaughtering humans.

In the original Game, Bob Gallanis took advantage of this obsession that the two clans had for each other to run the Invasion from the south. In Lucia's version, the Veldonaccii Alliance and the Corr of the Avena gave the Oak and Holly Alliance a chance to unite the Clans against Zelosia. As one might guess, this obsession must have been what the Hazel and the other Clans wanted. There were similar instances on Earth among barbarians where champions would fight and decide the war. The Oak knew that a Holly would kill their King. The next Oak King would be chosen from the warrior who could hunt down this Holly and kill him. They watched each contest for Cuilinn as a hunter watches his prey. Since the contests were held at An Doras in the heart of Oak country, the Holly had a chance to assess their enemies. The elaborate protocols and rituals of the contests were such that neither group of warriors could afford to be distracted by picking on each other. Yet the Bras River was lined on either side by warriors gone to root and no Cuilinn ever existed who could not listen to his ancestors. It was common for young boys to dare the other side in a kind of "counting coup." The warriors, if caught, were dreadfully punished, but the infractions were overlooked as high spirits. Once initiated as warriors, it was considered cowardly and low to continue this behavior.

Another benefit of this obsession with the championship among the Holly and Oak was that they paid little attention to the humans that were their neighbors unless they were the White Holly involved with the Veldonaccii or humans strayed into their lands with animals or unescorted. The border was clearly marked on the Dumona side, but every year farmers tried to push their lands a little bit east and north only to find their fields overtaken by woods in one night. Much of the history of the Veldonaccii is tied up in their being surrounded in the Wood by hostiles with no one on their side but the White Holly, who were strange friends and often played the role of very strict parent.

For more information on the Holly and Oak, go to the "Clans" pages and the "Religion" pages and the "History" pages.