Legends of the Void :

Genesis of Elmdynir

Long ago, according to the tales of man, there was once a dancing girl who lived within the sky. This girl spent all of her time dancing and playing with the flocks of birds which covered all of the living world, as in the beginning the entire stretch of creation was nothing but the sky. The songbirds in particular were her favored friends and they sang a tune for her to dance by in the day and in the night. The dancing girl created the earth to be the stage for her performances, the clouds and the stars to be the curtains which framed the stage, and the golden sun which cast a bright spotlight down onto her moving form.

When she made these many fine things and filled the world with variety the dancing girl discovered that she did not have an audience to perform to, save for her avian friends. So, using the clay and dust from the ground she created human beings who were at first as living soulless golems, but were there to observe her dances which dictated the passing of the day and the night.

One day, the applause that the flawed humans gave to her, coupled with a bird's song for life that might be surrounded a passing flight of sparrows flitting across the stage. The song transformed the many tiny birds into a young, strong man, the first completed human being destined to become the dancing girl's suitor.

The sparrow man and the dancing girl fell deeply in love with one another and together they forged a pace and a tune so lovely and moving that it could not be described by any bard or mortal storyteller within the world. The song of the sparrow man and the movements of the dancing girl imbued all humans, who had previously been formless homunculi, with hearts, minds and souls.

For a time all was generous and good. Then, one day from another side of creation came strangers who were not the blessed children of the dancing girl and the sparrow man. They moved about the stage and hid themselves amongst the audience of innocent, pure humans. The strangers were angry at the divine couple in the sky, they were discarded exiles from their own planes of creation and they wished to use the sparrow man's powers of song for their own evil purposes.

Their bitter hearts caused them to form thin strands woven from storm clouds and they gathered themselves together into great, violent masses to wind those strands into lengths of tough rope. The strangers cast those ropes over the sparrow man singing in the sky, binding him tightly, and together as one they hurled him into the earth, the burning feathers from his body and the wailing cries that he made turning him into a falling star.

The dancing girl could do nothing to save her fallen suitor, she could only watch with sorrowful woe as he was stolen away. Her world was the sky and the only time she could ever come down to the earth was to dance, and she no longer had a desire to dance now that her beloved was gone. She fell to her knees and cried great tears of sadness and grief, the tears falling as rain and nourishing the ground upon the earth, creating the great deep forest upon mainland Void as it is known today.

Some tears from the weeping girl fell and struck a small handful of the strangers who had torn the sparrow man down from the sky. In those tears they felt the sorrow of the girl and understood what they had done, so they cried out in shared anguish and ran far away from the sky and all open places, deep into the forest that they themselves had created with their vileness. The strangers ran so far for so long until they could not take it anymore and they cast their bodies into the waiting river of Lethe, where they say their wicked hearts were washed clean by the waters of forgetfulness

The sparrow man still lies in the heart of the forest created by the weeping girl's tears, but he is now known as Elmdynir, the great tree and God of the forest. He is unable to return to the sky where the weeping girl still waits, he is destined to linger there until the end of time, lying in the life formed from the weeping girl's tears.

The strangers, cleansed by the waters of Lethe and seeking redemption for the foul deed that they have committed were both blessed and cursed by the forest, by the weeping girl, and by Elmdynir. In the domain of the forest they are the masters of the world, skilled hunters and warriors, but they are also bound as the caretakers of Elmdynir. They are known as the Elmdynirim, which in the common tongue means 'ranger'.

They are always bound to the forest, until world's end.