Beneath the Willow

One day beneath the willow

We’ll meet there as friends

One day beneath the willow

When all the fighting ends

I ask with what you carry

Could you guide me safely there

My arms have grown too heavy

And the weight is hard to bear

One day beneath the willow

We’ll drop what needn’t stay

One day beneath the willow

No bodies will there lay

- Northern Lullaby, 2nd Age of Man in the height of the Mourning War

Ask a handful of northerners what the legend behind a willow is, and each of them will give you a different answer depending on where they are from. In the northeast, they will tell you about the frozen souls starting with Gilgaren; the old warrior who had spent his life devoted to Imren who in one fateful winter slowly froze to death as he tried to escape a forest. Despite the goddess's cruel season, his tears were because he would go to the side of Tetin and pass into the great void presented to the Old-Faithers at death. It is said that his sadness moved the goddess herself to manifest and shape the frost around Gilgaren into a weeping tree, cradling him in nature itself for eternity.

If you ask the middle-north about the origin, they would tell you about how the winds of Laranth over the Ages has crafted all manner of strange trees and fungi to grow over Eroman. These are the same winds that created the legendary Harwood; trees afflicted with corrupted storm winds and the breath of the Sunfire that becomes so highly resistant to the elements and magic that it may as well be unaging stone. Even fire would need ages to kiss it, which is why only the fallen branches and loose logs may ever be gathered. Willow trees do not hold the same strength as Harwood, but even the most young green-scholar will tell you that channeling spells always seem to go smoother under the shade of a Willow. It is why many northern mages find solace there when learning new spells.

Now, if you ask the northern elves what the legends behind a willow entails, they'll tell you the story of Issan Deranna - The Place of Weeping Trees. In an Age when the Fae subjugated and bred the elves for slaughter, there was a slave named Dylar who managed to escape. But, as legends go, he did not stop there. Under the cover of darkness or personas of other slaves, Dylar would sneak into fortresses across the northern Plains and help other elves escape. Eventually, he had gathered nothing short of an army of his own people, and they took refuge in a grove of silver trees. Some elves add the embellishment that they had begun to build a city there, but most call it a haven encampment. Until the Fae managed to track them down. The elves were massacred beneath the willows. Blood saturated the soil as they fought to maintain the little freedom they had. When it was done, the silver trees wept for the poor souls, dropping their branches to shield the bodies from desecration. Those silver trees became willows, and that grove became Issan Deranna. No scholars have been able to identify the grove, but that is hardly the point of a legend.

What remains true is that, across the young races, willow trees remain a sacred symbol worthy of one reverence or another and are often associated with mourning. Perhaps this is due to the legends being borne out of tragic times - the Sunfire, the Fae occupations, the Mourning War itself, etc. Whether it is a small tragedy or a larger cultural one, the trees mark a sort of vigilance and otherwordliness associated with magic that has become less prominent in Nialios with each passing age. Tragedy and loss so profound that the gods - or even the world itself - is moved to action.