A Grim Harvest
Preface:
Following the BTBOR release stream, a dear friend of ours known as Scribe Light on the internet wrote a fun short story for the Blackwoods Universe. We loved it so much that we decided it needed to be canon.
A Grim Harvest: The Legend of Magnum Farm
An Examination by Prof. Elias Corbizier
1. Overview
For those sailing into Port Magnum who are foreign to Easthaven, the origin of the place's namesake is a question unlikely to occur. And even if it did, the locals would themselves have only a cursory notion of the tale, which is - after an aggregation of multiple tellings that I have painstakingly recorded - variously stated thuswise:
Farmer Magnum, provider and defender of his family, one day found several of his cows slaughtered by a terrible creature that seemingly came from the forest. The neighboring farms as well suffered similar losses. Fearing for his family's safety as well as their livelihood, Magnum began three nights of escalating actions.
On the first night thereafter, he secured his cows away in a high-fenced pen; and yet the creatures somehow defeated this precaution, and killed more. On the second night, Magnum sat as a guard, flintlock in hand, and waited. And it was on this night that he spied one of the creatures making its way towards his farm: a barreling, hunched and hairy creature, whose only exclamation was a whispered, gurgling growl that by human tongue can only be expressed as “Yeet”. Magnum fired upon the creature, and his aim struck true. But as he stood over the thing’s corpse, he spied others of its kind at the tree line, retreating. The next morning, despite Magnum's personal victory, the other farms had once more been raided, with nearly every cow having been wiped out.
Magnum, now seen as a leader for his conquest, thus on the third night led a raid of the other farmers into the forests, rooting out the pack of Yeets, and destroying them utterly. Though the damage to the cow population was permanent, and eventually total, for his heroism and leadership, Farmer Magnum was immortalized with his name gracing the local port. And thus has it been so for nearly six millennia.
This strange and complex tale, as so many are, is mostly folklore; a flourish of color on the otherwise far more plain and far more stark bas relief of recorded history. For the seeds of the true story, absent the vicissitudes of details inherent to generations of passing-down such legends, come only from a single source: the Everton Stones. These are a disparate collection of stone tablets that relay information and lore from the region’s bygone eras.
Now, it must be said that my ancient predecessors gathered these artifacts together without proper recording of exactly where or under what circumstances they were found, so we know very little of how much – if at all – they may be related, one to another, save for commonalities in their base material and features of similar alphabets and imagery.
Regardless, the tale of Magnum Farm specifically provides us hints at the geography of Everton, with Port Magnum itself standing as evidence of a certain locality of events. And the references to ‘Cows’ cannot be understated, because the importance of what happened at Magnum Farm deals with a certainly un-mythical extinction. And perhaps not just one.
From the Encyclopedia Ossus, we know that at one time the creatures called “Cows” did indeed exist, and their disappearance from all of Otrad is unexplained to this day. Does the legend of Magnum Farm, in which cows play so prominent a role, provide us any clues as to why?
2. Evidence
The actual text we do have of the legend comes from Everton Stone-11A2, and translates as follows:
Near the burning waters
At the farm of Magnum
For three moons
The Yeet feasted upon the milkgivers
The fury of Magnum saw to their end
In the broad strokes, this seems to align with the legend as currently told:
“Near the burning waters” would allude to a close proximity to the Blazing Sea, coinciding with the location of Port Magnum
“At the farm of Magnum” would indicate that Magnum was indeed a real person or, perhaps more likely, the name of a family or tribe, rather than an individual
“For three moons” could mean three nights, or even three months depending on the interpretation. If the latter, it indicates something far more involved than a brief engagement with an invasive predator; a notion which I will discuss presently
“The Yeet feasted upon the milkgivers” would, as told, indicate ‘The Yeet’ slaughtered Cows; creatures which legends say did produce a kind of milk
“The fury of Magnum saw to their end” is a somewhat ambiguous description. How did Magnum’s fury manifest? Saw to “their” end. Whose? The Yeet? The milkgivers? Both?
Textual interpretations aside, there are other elements of lore found within the Everton Stones that - I believe - hint at a far more tragic tale than merely a brave farmer exterminating a pack of troublesome beasts from the nearby forest.
Save for the physical evidence and recordings in the Encyclopedia Ossus of their existence, few references exist of cows in the historical record. We know that by the scarcity and location of discovered bones that they seem to have been confined to - perhaps even originated from - the Everton region. Other ancient writings from across Otrad have variously referred to “cows”, “cattle” and the aforementioned “milkgivers” as well, but these are few and far between the further away you travel from Everton. Which is why Everton Stone-221B is so unique and, I think, overlooked, primarily due to our overall lack of familiarity with the anatomy of a cow.
Stone-221B is a broken-off portion of something likely far larger. It consists primarily of a two-panel bas relief, depicting the following:
Upper panel: on the left, the form of what can be surmised to be a cow from the general implications of anatomy; in the top center a crescent moon; to the right the figure of a squat, hairy beast with sharpened teeth.
Lower panel: on the left, a crude representation of a cow skull; in the top center an opened eye; to the right a crude figure of a person, arms raised, with a curved line above them casting out rays of light, or power, or perhaps exhalation.
For, on the bottom edge of Stone-221B are the only alphabetical characters that remain from whatever larger piece 221B belongs to. And the single, decipherable word there is as follows:
Ye-E’tha
3. Theory
That cows are extinct is a plain fact. That they were classified as “milkgivers” and seem to have at one time been domesticated stock also seems clear. All the more reason why they should have been kept and cared for, and thus thrived. So, what killed them off? I propose ritualistic hunting, and/or hunting by necessity.
Stone-221B indicates that - perhaps - the Ye-E’tha were a race of changelings. And either by nature or by curse needed to feed upon cows. 221B could indicate that cows as a food source, or as a sacrifice, provided the Ye-E’tha a temporary respite from their beastly forms, as indicated by the transition of the living cow to a dead one, and the beast figure into a celebratory humanoid. Or perhaps the feasting on cows as well provided the Ye-E’tha some kind of mental clarity, or power, symbolized by the open eye. With all of this in mind, I would therefore propose the following scenario:
An isolated tribe of changelings, driven by either ritual and/or biological necessity, hunted cows for their meat/blood/milk/power. This in turn relieved them of their monstrous forms, and/or endowed them with insight or visions of some benefit to them. The locals who depended upon cows for their well-being and economic survival thus inevitably came into conflict with the Ye-E’tha, once the cow population had been thinned to the point that the Ye-E’tha would risk invading inhabited farms to sate their hunger.
And at some point a man, or a tribe, or a village known as Magnum became the last stand for the population of the cow. Then, over three months time, Magnum systematically hunted down and killed all of the Ye-E’tha. However, it was a hollow victory as the damage to the cow population was irrecoverable. Six millenia later, Magnum is merely the name of a Port, and the Ye’E’tha are now only derogatorily remembered as ‘Yeets’. But they were a race of people with their own culture, and their own struggles. And they were made subject to genocide over want for cows.
4. Conclusion
I believe the legend of Magnum Farm is one of a dual tragedy: the end of a way of life for Magnum and the people of Everton, and an end to the existence of the Ye-E’tha. A war over limited resources ending in nothing that any rational person could call a victory. And yet, the winners become the namesake for symbols of commerce and prosperity, while the losers are relegated to mindless monstrosities of myth with which to scare children in bedtime stories.
But after 6,000 years, does anything remain of the Ye-E’tha? Did they - either at the hands of Magnum, or simply as a result of the ravages of time and fate - disappear entirely? Or did some of them survive? Did their legacy at all drift down through bloodlines to help explain some of what we see in changelings today?
I cannot help but wonder what might occur should such a descendant find themselves with the opportunity to dine upon a cow. What magics might come of such a union today, we may never know. But it would be fascinating to find out.
Submitted sincerely,
Elias Corbizier
Professor of Crypto-Magisterium