The Animae

The Animae

The Tonk, or Tumeroks as they have been called since coming to Auberean, live in close harmony with nature. They maintain a close relationship with many of the Animae, or spirits, of the land, sky, and sea. In fact, in recent times avatars of some of the Animae (for example, the Spirit of Tanae ) have begun to follow certain Tonk as pets or companions.

The Amano-Bal that floats at the base of the Great Deru Tree offers Tonk and others of level 40 and above the opportunity to perform a ritual to cleanse the land of Burun pollution by visiting the Shrines of eleven Animae in the Spirit Guide quest. Each shrine gives the adventurer a message, or a vision, imparting some information about the Anima.

Palenqual, the Island

Palenqual is the Tonk name for the island on which the Tonk first lived on coming to Auberean. Its other names are Marae Lassel and Arramora.

You offer the wand to the shrine. For a moment nothing happens, but then a strange feeling of immanence surrounds you. You sense a weak and faded spirit that seems to be calling to you across a vast stygian abyss, but its voice is too faint to make out any words. The image of a lush and beautiful island, illuminated by a brilliant sunrise, briefly appears in your mind's eye. The image fades and you are overcome with a terrible feeling of sadness and loss. Nevertheless, a small spark of spiritual energy flares briefly around the wand.

Brother Volkama, the River

Volkama was the river that ran through the Marescent Plateau on Palenqual. Arising from three ponds beind three great dams built in Empyrean times, the river flowed southward past the city of Timaru and over a fourth dam in a splendid waterfall, then down through marshy lowlands to the sea.

You hear water trickling, flowing, rushing, falling.... Slowly, the river sounds resolve themselves into a voice: "Cleansing? Purging? Purifying? Good, good. Little one, this ritual is long overdue. Let us wash the taint from our lands." You see a vision of tiny rivulets flowing down mountains, merging together to form streams which in turn combine to form mighty rivers. Water flows from the highest peaks down to the sea. Brief impressions of leaping fish, curvetting reedsharks, and basking armoredilloes flash before your mind's eye. Finally you see a long-disused channel choked with rotting reeds. Foul mucor beasts drip slime on the polluted silt of the old riverbed, and fleshy poisonous toadstools grow everywhere. In the distance, you hear a powerful rumbling, and a huge wall of water rushes down the channel, obliterating the corrupted growths. In its wake, a vital, healthy river flows through a cleansed land.

Brother Tanae, the Tree

Trees have always been of vital importance to the Tonk, who frequently built their towns in them. In the wilds of Palenqual grew a grove of trees that whispered in the wind, telling sad stories. But the Great Deru Tree that now grows in Rakani was not known in the days before the Golden Age; Perhaps it grew from a seed blown in on the winds of portalspace from Ezheret?

You smell the rich aroma of cedar and pine needles, feel the feathery brush of fern fronds between your fingers, and see the awesome height of a Deru tree rising before you, reaching hundreds of feet above the lesser trees around it. Flashes of experience thrill through you: for a moment, you are a squirrel scampering over a branch, a raptor stooping on the squirrel, a rabbit fleeing an unseen foe, and a shreth hungrily seeking its prey. The flashes of animal lives fade, and you feel an awesome silence descend on the primeval forest of your vision. Somewhere, in the heart of the forest, you sense a source of taint, of corruption, which feels like a gaping wound in your chest, as if your heart had been ripped out of your body, leaving a painful void. After what seems an eternity, a deep voice breaks the silence: "The forests and jungles of Omishan are blighted, tainted. This must be set aright. Receive now my blessing, seeker, and cleanse the land of its poisons."

Mother Audetanga, the Mountain

You feel a clean cold wind and see a vision of snow glistening on a mountaintop. Black granite crags thrust through the snow, sheltering small outcroppings of grass. In a cleft between jagged peaks, a sun-drenched valley is filled with wildflowers. Somewhere in the distance you hear the high lonesome cry of an eagle... Then your vision plunges deep within the mountain's stone body. You sense the strength and solidity of living rock and feel a deep vital connection to the depths of Auberean. But something is not right at the heart of things... you feel a flaw, a rift, deep underground, slowly contaminating the very rock itself... As the vision fades, a crackling harsh voice resonates, so deep and slow it is felt almost as much as it is heard: "Mend the flaw.... Repair the breach.... Seal the rift.... Cleanse the taint...."

Great Sister Rain

For a moment all is quiet, then you hear thunder rolling in the distance, faint at first, then growing louder, closer... You sense a horrible emanation of corruption and decay from the earth beneath your feet, and anger and rage from above. The sky darkens as storm clouds gather overhead. Suddenly a deluge of rain slams down upon you, the violence of the storm almost overwhelming in its power and strength. Bolts of lightning lash the ground around you, momentarily throwing the landscape into stark relief, and deafening thunderclaps shake the earth. The sense of rage intensifies as you realize that the storm has failed to cleanse the poisoned land around you. After a time, the thunder and lightning cease, and the deluge diminishes into a warm, gentle misting rain. A soft female voice diffuses through the mist: "Yes, mortal, the land is tainted beyond my power alone to heal it. Take this blessed wand, and use it in my name. Oh.... Kiss my sister for me, when you meet her, if you would be so kind...."

Great Sister Wind

For a moment nothing happens, but then a breeze begins to waft around you. The wind intensifies, gusting, blowing, soon becoming a screaming cyclone. Small dust devils spin nearby, and in the distance you see a funnel cloud headed your way. The tornado grows larger, darker. Where it contacts the earth, debris flies upward, blasts of tainted earth spraying in all directions. But you can sense that the wind's action does not affect the source of the pollution deep beneath your feet. The lashing winds slowly die down, and the tornado dissipates into wispy clouds which rapidly disperse. A last dust devil dances before you, and you feel a soft breath of gentle air on your lips. You hear a breathy female voice whispering in your ears: "Mortal, you must complete your circuit. All our powers together are necessary to cleanse the land. Oh, yes.... Tell my sister that one kiss is not enough...."

Black Mother Earth

You suddenly feel yourself to be embedded in the earth. You sense myriad roots reaching down through the soil, soaking up water and nutrition. Living spores nurture themselves in the black earth, and insect and animal life burgeons around you. Countless small creatures burrow through the earth, refreshing it as they travel, and the deaths of other plants and animals renew the earth with their essence.... But there is something wrong.... Poison seeps up into the rich dark loam from below, contaminating not only the soil, but all the living creatures which depend on the soil.... Life itself is corrupted by the taint. The natural process of corruption and decay is out of control in the earth, destroying more than it renews, rendering life down into vile pollution. You can do nothing, you are completely passive and powerless to act.... A great frustration fills your heart.... Thick, slow words form in your ears: "My body is poisoned, cancerous. The taint must be purged. You must complete the circuit and finish the ritual. It is my only hope for salvation."

Blue Mother Heaven

Your vision ascends in a dizzying spiral up to the sky. You can see in all directions at once, viewing the entire expanse of Auberean from every angle. Islands, archipelagoes, continents dance beneath you. All over Auberean, monstrous Olthoi thrive, dominating almost all other life forms, save in a small group of islands you recognize as Dereth and the sad remnants of lost Palenqual. Even there, numerous Olthoi can be seen, yet these are different from the rest, somehow divorced from the million other interconnecting hives and warrens. Your attention focuses on Omishan. You can sense a deep source of contamination beneath the land, welling upward to poison everything it touches. Yet from your lofty vantage, far-seeing though it may be, you can do nothing; you cannot reach the ground, and your power cannot touch the source of corruption. A high clear voice echoes in your mind: "Sight alone avails nothing in the face of evil. Action must follow vision. Take this wand, complete the ritual, and purify the land."

Hazahtu, the Blind Eye

Ezheret, the Tonk homeworld, was not a planet directly orbiting its sun, but the satellite of a great gas giant, Hazahtu. This huge planet may have looked something like Alb'arel in the old days, before its atmosphere was stripped away, riding high in the sky like a giant eye that could not see.

Darkness descends on you, blotting out all vision. Absolute silence surrounds you, and you feel yourself floating in a vast, hot, dark, heavy medium. Somewhere, beyond the bounds of your normal senses, you know there is a place of light, of harmony, of life and vitality. You feel a great yearning for this place, but know that you cannot ever reach it.... Yet you are nevertheless content to rest here in the weight, in the silence, in the warmth, in the darkness. Merely knowing that the other place exists is enough for you. Now though, you can somehow perceive a flaw in the place of brightness, a defect which lets in a vile darkness far different from the eternal night which surrounds and nurtures you. The flaw must be repaired, the light perfected, but you cannot even see that other place, much less reach it... The memory of a voice emerges in your mind, you cannot remember how it sounds, but these are its words: "For the light which I cannot see, I bless your quest, seeker. Go and heal the realm of life."

Ezheret, Great Father Sea

The Tonk homeworld was a satellite of the gas giant Hazahtu. It was a watery world, and the Tonk lived on its shores, swimming like otters in its shallows and depths.

Your sense of place slowly dissolves as you feel yourself covering Auberean, surrounding the land, embracing all of creation. Though you can easily perceive them, you care little for the doings of the creatures which inhabit the pitiful outcroppings of soil and rock which emerge from the waves, for you are unchanging and eternal, and they are but poor small ephemeral things. Yet in the end they will return to your embrace, and they are all your children, whether you will it or not. Beneath one of those small patches of land, a source of corruption bubbles and breeds. Where it contacts the waters of the world-sea, the ocean is poisoned. You feel a slow, vast sense of outrage, yet you are powerless to prevent the spread of the contamination. Vast, crashing, roaring words resound in your head, drowning out all reason and sense, awesome in their intensity, intelligible only in retrospect: "Go, little one, take my power, combine it with the power of my children, destroy the evil, cleanse the land. GO NOW AND DO MY WILL!"

Wharu, Anima of Decay and the Olthoi

Decay is a necessary part of the life cycle, breaking down the components of the old life into the raw materials of the new. When they came to Auberean, the Tonk associated the predatory Olthoi and their fungus-based ecosystem with Wharu, and performed rituals to propitiate him and keep him at bay. But in recent times the name of Wharu has taken on a new meaning: or rather, a different and powefully destructive being has taken on the name of Wharu.

You sense vindictive amusement and a vicious spitefulness. No words are spoken from the shrine, but you hear instead a jeering contemptuous laughter which has an oddly insect-like quality to it. The wand rolls off the shrine, rejected and unchanged.

When you return to the Amano-Bal, it says:

"Ah.... Wharu's spirit is refractory as ever, I see... But no, there is a deep evil at work here, deeper than I can fathom."

(The Amano-Bal therefore sends you to fetch a Fetish of Wharu, which turns out to resemble an antique Oak Talisman.)