Roanfur, Sister Scribe
The Ways and Times of the Wuulvites
The Date is Nine Hundred and Forty-Two, Season Summer.
This is the journal of myself, the ferret maiden named Roanfur. I keep this record only to remember days gone by for my young ones (should there be any) and the bairns of my comrades.
It is the fifth day of Summer 942. The weather is fine and with large rain clouds moving in the distance. The air is muddled with life-giving water and most of the Eastern Flatlands to the South and East cannot be seen for it. Mossflower is invisible today. The sea too cannot be spotted, even from the high tower atop the Royal House, the the very height and farthest north of the Fortress. Trade is up. Many caravans from the south came today bearing fabrics and tropical fruits. Guild Leader of the Servants, Speydel brown rat, paid handsomely with invaluable cured salmon and wrought silver in many shapes. The ferret traders looked on it so happily, it was as if they were small bairns again. They are staying two nights in the guest quarters on the lower level to rest and will then restock and head back to the Southern Forests.
Today in the fortress of the Wuulvites I came across one old scroll upon a shelf covered so deeply in dust that not even the villainous bookworms could get at it. Upon opening it I discovered that it was not just any scroll, but a history of how the Wuulvite nation came to be, far back from the days of the first wolverine King, Roashar. It was written in a slightly antiquated mode, but suffice it to say a scribe is not scribe for want of learning alone. I found many keys to the rarer runes and with them translated the script.
The scroll went into great detail about the founding of our free country. It first spoke of the land that Roashar King came from, by a great knarr not unlike the ones that fill our naval force and watch the shorelines and broad Northstream like a seahawk. He had come from a place known only as Land of Ice and Snow, for that was all that dwelt there comfortably. Many wildcats were embroiled in a war there with a tribe of wolves and white bears with massive strength, as tall at the head as the first branch on an old oak. The wolverines were caught in the middle of this conflict, neither numerous enough to fend off the white bears or willing to push down the old grudges and join forces with the wildcats and their arctic armies. Roashar took it upon himself to bring his family to the south, and did so with a small and loyal force of two score foxes, ermine, and gray rats, sailors who had played no part in the wars. His two brothers, grandmother, and several courtiers were all that had survived before the journey, and when they reached the shores of this, formerly the Northwestern Country, all but one young brother and two court ladies had been taken by the weather and sicknesses at sea. Half of their seacrew was also dead, many from accident and many more from the illness that had taken hold. They moored where the river inlet close to Seastone Port is now, and were met with what would soon be us-one half of the far-ranging Raddhiyan Tribe.
The scroll then spoke of the Raddhiyans, a tribe which none of us were aware existed before the discovery of this scroll. They were a powerful clan, mixed weasels, stoats, ferrets and rats of the black and brown variety. They first dwelt in the mountains direct south of the Wuulvite lands-one of these mountains is called Bat Mountpit for the mouse-tailed and faced bats that inhabit it. Raddhiyans were proud, noble, and strong warriors, and they valued their freedom and their mindfulness of nature above all else. Soon it came to be that there were two distinct Raddhiyan clans, one that lived on the West slope and the other of the East slope. Though there was no difference in their blood, the West slope Raddhiyans began to settle and farm vegetables, fruits and grain more so that the East slope Raddhiyans, who mostly foraged and hunted as such tribes are wont to do. For a long while the Raddhiyans were peaceful with their neighbors, but some sixty seasons before Roashar began his journey the creatures of the mountain called Salamandastron, hares recruited from every corner of the land, began to push their patrols into the foothills of the West slope. There they discovered the tribe of Raddhiya, some eight hundred strong warriors and double that number of babes and old ones. The scroll does not say why the war began. The hares, for whatever reason, began marching in full force upon their neighbors, killing many in the first attacks and causing much strife as the battles destroyed their terraced fields. Some of the hares were reported burning the fields by using oil-soaked stones, set alight and flung from ballista weapons. The West slope Raddhiyans began to dwindle and retreated northwards, along the way being hounded by advance forces of Long Patrol. Nobeast knew the purpose of the hares' attacks, but it had the effect of driving the West Raddhiyans out of their homes and into the Northwest, poor and destitute.
I hated reading the next passage, but I must. It is part of the Wuulvite history, though grim, and history is the memory of our great nation. May we never live as these displaced beasts did ever again. The West Raddhiyans were desperate, and began to resort to raiding and pillaging the woodlander creatures that already had settled in the Northwest. The woodlanders had no warriors but a few scattered otter holts and shrews, and they fell very quickly to the tyranny that the tribe chief began. It was not quite like the condition of those creatures called vermin, the impovershed barbarians who rob and slay to live and know not why, for the elders of the West Raddhiyans could remember times of peace and prosperity.
Thank the Just One, Vulpuz Watcher of the Hel, that Roashar came when he did. Our ancestors may not have held tight the ideas of freedom, self-reliance and nobility in battle for much longer. The wolverine, bedraggled and with his courtiers and seamen, came upon the Raddhiyans searching for healers who would cure their sick and shelter them. The elder Cheif allowed this to be done, then challenged the great wolverine to a Duel of Cheiftains, where the winner would rule the Raddhiyans and keep the spoils brought along on the knarr from the north. Roashar was puzzled. The Chief of the Raddhiyans (he remains nameless in the manuscript. And indeed, genderless. And even without species. Nobeast seems to have recorded who or what the Cheif was) explained in secret that he was failing his people by directing them to raid and loot. He would rather he die for their benefit and have the stronger and more peaceable creature rule over his creatures. Roashar understood and did go to battle with the Chief, and of course defeated him with the power given to such massive beasts. The Raddhiyans bowed to Roashar and called him King, and Roashar King did go to make his law, the same law code that we Wuulvites hold to today. Here ends the manuscript with a short verse, in honor of Roashar and the elder Raddhiyan Chieftain, though I cannot make out the rhyme in the modern tounge. A crude translation will have to do:
Roashar ours, good and eldest King
Forever we the Raddhiyans atone
Misdeeds mine I shed tears, to the sea they go
From whence he came, the Wolverine King
To judge us, our tribe, and passed the torch he
To Roashar ours, good and elder King.
That is the end of this journey into the past. Now I must attend to more immediate matters-recording the names and ranks of new recruits to our militia army. They are very many and Captain Dunnage shall be very cross if I were to leave off tallying them. Good night."
-Excerpt from the journal of Roanfur, Scribe of the Wuulvite Fortress and sister of Wanderer Cinnar. A dutiful and brave Wuulvite maiden.