The World Tree
According to the most ancient Elvish epic poems, the All-Father found one withered sprig of wood emerging from the broken, barren face of Aerynth. He breathed his essence and Spirit onto it, and the plant came to life, and took root. The All-Father rested, and when he awakened, the twig had become Yglandir, the World Tree, and Braialla was sitting in its boughs.
This is the same tree, according to the sagas of the Invorri, where the All-Father learned the art of Making and Unmaking - the primal power of the Runes. He carved the first runes into the tree itself with His own bloody fingers, then went and created the Giants and carved the saga once His visions had ended.
From before the beginning of Time the Druids and high priests of Braialla have taken acorns from this mighty tree, blessing them and keeping them safe. Sources of almost unimaginable power, the True Seeds have always been a cornerstone of the Druid's efforts to maintain the natural balance. More than one seed was sacrificed to restore regions blasted by Chaos in the War of the Scourge. Few outside the ranks of the Archdruids had ever heard of the Seeds, for they had seen what had happened when the Magi of the world learned the power of the Runestones - better to keep their prizes unknown.
Of course, the final fate of Yglandir is recorded in the Legend of Shadowbane: the Traitor stabbed Cambruin with the Sword of Destiny, and pinned him to the World Tree with the deadly blade. The tree, bathed in Cambruin's blood and wounded to the core, turned to stone, and its roots shook, shattering the orb of Aerynth in the cataclysm remembered as the Turning.
Guild Seeds and the New Order
At that very moment, all of the True Seeds (scattered throughout the fragments in hidden sanctuaries, jealously guarded by the wisest Druids) also turned to stone, mirroring the transformation of their parent. Their power was lost: they went from being reservoirs of magical power to being inert. The Druids were dismayed, and immediately set out to unravel the mysteries of the Turning and the transformation. The effort took decades, but in time the master Druids discovered the strange power that remained in the seeds, and devised spell that could awaken them. The shutting of the Gates of Heaven and Hell left the spirits of the slain trapped after death, with no option but to rise as foul undead. The Seeds, however, were still tied to the primal source of all life, and could serve as tethers for the dead. The Druids created new rituals which could allow the Seeds to take root again, growing into stone trees, dim reflections of Yglandir, with the power to clothe dead spirits in new bodies of flesh. The restorative powers of the Trees could also mend inanimate objects like walls and buildings.
The threat of Undeath was too dire and too absolute for the Druids to keep these inventions to themselves. After spreading their new techniques to the Druids of every fragment via magic and nature spirits, the Druids emerged from hiding for the first time in centuries, going to the scattered survivors and giving them the Seeds as a tool to fight the darkness. Greed and lust for power quickly overcame the folk of Aerynth, and many were too blinded by the flase immortality the Trees brought to listen to the Druid's warnings about what might happen if the Seeds should be mis-used. The children of the Green Mother are still hard at work, trying to find a way to restore Yglandir to true life and rebuild the broken world in the process.
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