Storytime

I believe that was actually a compliment. Received in the spirit it was intended.

Myth and history are indeed different things and they serve different purposes. What is not literally fact can still be true.

Kind of like God.

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If I may be so bold, I’m going to take this thread as a chance to share a story that was often told to me as a little girl by my nanny. I suspect that opinion on the moral of the story will be mixed, but it may prove interesting even to those who disagree.

Some time ago in a small village on Amarr Prime lived an old man named Abbott. Abbot was always miserable, pessimistic, ill-tempered, and rude. He was the most miserable, unfortunate man on the planet. The entire village was so very tired of him; all he would do is complain about everything and insult everyone around him. Everyone would avoid him as it was impossible to remain in good spirits if you were in his presence. His misery and misfortune were contagious, and he became worse and worse as the years went by.

Then one day, on Abbott’s 180th birthday, a rumor spread through the village like a wildfire: Abbott was happy! He was smiling! This was unheard of. The villagers gathered together to speculate why Abbott had suddenly, after all these years, become happy for the first time they had ever seen. Eventually they decided to go seek him out and ask.

His response was, he had spent so long uselessly chasing after happiness that he finally decided he was just going to live without it and accept what he had in life. He gave up worrying about what could be, and accepted what was, and this lifted a terrible burden off his shoulders. With that burden lifted and his worries gone, happiness finally came to him.

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Thank you for sharing your esteemed nanny’s teaching.

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(As told by a local [translator: shaman, priest, wise person, mentor] to yours truly in YC107, in an attempt to convince one to leave one’s own ghosts behind.)

The Woman Who Loved A Ghost

Once upon a time before the Darkness, there lived a Shaninn woman, who so dearly loved a Sarinde man that they never had eyes for any others. The elders of the clan shook their heads at their passion, the chief tried to reason with their obsession, their families tried to introduce them to other opportunities, their cousins frowned on their indiscretion, but such was the strength of the bond between their spirits that in the end there was nothing to do but to let them marry.

Theirs was a proper and a happy marriage, but it was a short one, for after only three short years he was killed in an accident while hiking in the mountains with his cohort. The woman was devastated. When the pyre was lit, she had not slept, not eaten for three days, and had barely drank a drop of water, and had to be carried to the place. The goodbyes were said, all proper rites followed, and the clans returned to their regular lives.

At first, the woman seemed to recover. She stayed under the shadow of the grief for six days more, but on the seventh she rose, and had something to eat. In two weeks she sat evenings with her cohort, and in three she returned to work. All seemed well.

As time passed, though, she became more and more irregular. She seemed fine one day, and possessed another. She fell into dark moods: sometimes fits of temper overtook her, other times a shadow seemed to pass over her, and she never got up in the morning and never spoke to anyone. Sometimes her cohort heard her talk and laugh and sing in her room, or quarrel with someone, but when they knocked and went inside, there was no one there but her.

Then one night, they found her in the communal hall at the heart of darkness, with a knife, muttering to herself, and when they spoke to her she did not seem to see them, but raised the knife to attack, and they had to bring her down by force and confine her to her room, where she seemed to find rest, but kept on talking to spirits no one else could see.

Many doctors and shamans and priests came to see the woman, and she was prescribed many medicines and therapies, and they tried to banish whatever evil spirit tormented her, but nothing they did helped. Nothing was to be done, so she was left to her own devices, but kept a close eye on.

One afternoon, when the weather was cold, and a nice fire was burning in her room, the cousin who was supposed to keep her company fell asleep by it, and when he woke up, the mad woman was not there anymore. Alarmed, the cousin ran outside, and found her lying crushed and barely conscious on the pavement tiles, for she had climbed to the tower at the old mansion, and attempted to jump to her death. In her hand, the cousin found a ring weaved of red reeds, that he did not recognize.

Doctors and priests and shamans were called again, and the ring was shown to the elders of the clan, and they did recognize it: it had belonged to the father of the dead Sarinde man, and then to the man himself, and then given to the woman as a gift of love.

New Year was coming, and when the fires of remembrance were lit, the woman was again well enough to walk. They walked her to the fires, and they burned the ring in front of her, and as the flames took it and turned it into ashes, she let out a wail of grief, and grasped thin air in front of her, and then collapsed, sobbing.

The ghost finally gone, the woman started to recover. She grieved now, again, but like Shaninn, not like a madwoman. She no longer talked to ghosts, and no more fits of temper or depression overtook her. She became quiet and soft-spoken, and come Mid Year, she left the clan with a shaman she had befriended during her troubles, to become one of them.

Love is strong when you are young, and loss is hard when you love, but time moves on like the river, and all ghosts must be laid to rest. That is andesh.

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Sea of Tears told by @Literia 's kin.

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Also Love from Clan Ramijozana.

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While not a Minmatar story, I would like to share my favourite Caldari fable:

A villager in the mountains grew jealous of Eagle overhead. “Why can’t I fly too?” He cried. One night he became so jealous he killed all the chickens in the village and stuck their feathers to his arms with wax. Climbing up the highest cliff he threw himself off to fly like Eagle but only broke his neck upon the rocks below.

Pyre Falcon found his wandering spirit and laughed at him with Mountain Wind: “Feathers alone don’t make a man fly; and jumping off a cliff doesn’t change your fate!”

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Thank you all for sharing.

…It is written that shortly after the Reclaiming of Assimia, St. Romon of Gesht travelled across the steppe to the White Court for a religious dispute.

One night, Saint Romon and his companion, known today to us only as Alp Kilij, camped near the ruins of Kibureh, and an old man put the tents of his family nearby. That old man told St. Romon a local legend that is now written, as well.

The Shaman and the Snow Woman

…Before meeting the Amarr, before the Reclaiming, when the Khanid people lived as simple nomads all across the face of Mother Athra, there was a young shaman, the last one of a lineage, who was skilled at talking to the spirits. But he was also quite far from handsome as the fashion of young flesh went those days, and no free woman of the tribe would ever share a bedroll with him.

As the years grew, so the man grew desperate. One cold winter, when the rivers froze and the snowstorms sweeped over the endless steppe from east to west, towards the sea from which the ships carrying the holy symbols would one day emerge, he sculpted himself a woman of snow and ice, a woman of his dreams, and he pleaded to the spirits and spilled his blood as food for the daemons, and they did answer.

In a cruel joke, the daemons of the snowy void made the ice woman of his dreams come alive, feeling, curious and clueless. The shaman’s foolish dream was now made flesh; but the spirits also warned him, that she must never face the full wrath of the summer sun, or the magic might fail and she’d turn to snow again and melt like the snow should.

And so, the shaman led the newborn snow woman into the sacred cave where he, as well as his ancestors and those who came before them once dwelled, and taught her how to eat, how to sleep, how to dress herself, how to make fire, and, eventually, how to lay with him as his wife. He became obsessed with the snow woman, madly in love with her, and this seemingly innocent, so clueless, but quickly learning creature became his only reason to live on, as nothing else would bring him joy in this world, but her.

So was the man obsessed with keeping her safe, with fear that she could be gone forever, that he ordered her to stay in the cave at all times, because the sun might kill her. At first, the snow woman obeyed, but she learned fast, and her curiosity soon got better of her. One day, when the shaman was away tending to a wounded hunter, she sneaked out from the cave and into the plains near the river.

It was late spring, and the low sun was setting towards the endless horizon. And the snow woman was mesmerized by the sunset, by the clear deep sky and the endless plains below, blooming with a million flowers; and she decided that the shaman lied to her to keep her for himself in that dark, cold cave filled with bones and dried herbs, because he was jealous and didn’t want her to know the true beauty of the world.

After that day the snow woman became unruly and rebelled against her master. They spent weeks quarrelling and tossing insults at each other, and soon he resorted to force to prevent her from leaving. That didn’t help, and, finally, his snow woman packed the few belongings she had and ran away from the cave.

It was a blistering hot summer afternoon, and in less than a hour, the spirits’ magic was gone. The shaman caught up with his ex-lover only to find what’s left of her on a hill overlooking the river - a pile of quickly melting old snow laced with clay and dead grass.

Mad with grief, the shaman went to the river, where he thought most of the meltwater ran, and drowned himself to be one with the snow woman, forever.

So ends the story of the spirits’ gift.

Saint Romon says:

Woe to those who make deals with the daemons of fire, wind and water and the ghosts of the dead, for all their gifts are cursed.

Woe to those who repress people in their care, for all their good deeds will be wasted as the repressed turn against them.

Woe to those who obsess over anything in this world, for selfish desires cloud the mind and corrupt the soul, turning one away from God and towards things that will one day be gone, like the snows of last winter.

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Thank you for sharing this story from old times.

As it turns out, ship crew are a superstitious bunch, and in my spacefaring years I have derived great enjoyment from listening to the products of their collective imagination. While they aren’t particularly thought provoking or aesthetically sound, they are nevertheless a culture to their own. Below is an accounting of a story from the days of Gallente-Caldari expansion. The details show great variation from one storyteller to another, but I’ve done my best to capture the gist of it.

The Ghost Stargate

The story goes back a few centuries when the federal/corporate expansion to outer space was in full swing. An infrastructure company at the time decided to send an expedition to the northwest, in order to link the constellations Velvet and Sole to the stargate network. For those unfamiliar, those two constellations are a long string of systems that extend to the western expanse of space, from the region known as Outer Ring. While the surveys conducted had revealed little promise of wealth, these constellations were known to Gallente long before their spacefaring times, subject to tales of Old Garoun mythology. There weren’t any shortage of eager colonialists either, so before long, the colonization of this western fringe was laid out as an ambitious project.

It is said that two stargate construction ships were launched towards the outermost systems of the Sole constellation, from where they would build their way back to the stargate network. The Iora-Lennera expedition -the surnames of the two captains- departed with this plan in mind. It would be two decades before they would reach their first destinations, and at least another two before they could return to the fold. Although the dangers were abundant, the two ships silently weaved their way through the stars as New Eden carried on, and they weren’t too behind in schedule when they started the construction of the stargate that would bring them home.

If the last messages traded between the ships and the M-NKZM gate six months before were any indication, the wormhole connecting the systems could appear anytime now. The stargate crew kept their eyes peeled for the slightest sign of distortion in spacetime, and to the relatives who had been separated from their loved ones so long, the hour of reunion simply couldn’t come too soon. So the appearance of the wormhole and the first messages received in real time, must have indeed sparked a big round of cheering in the stargates and the ships alike. The connection was stabilized and all values appeared to be within normal parameters, thus Iora gave the order to jump. The stargate crew promptly let loose the connection and waited for the ship to appear.

It turns out fate is a fickle mistress however, and one needs no further proof than what happened next. Just after Iora’s folk took the plunge into hyperspace, the circuit between the gates collapsed, and the crew of M-NKZM gate were suddenly left with radio silence. After the initial shock started wearing off, the stargate operators came to realize that the short-lived connection wasn’t coming back, and what remained of it were nothing more than faint reverberations. The devastated relatives left with tears, their beloved buried somewhere far beyond their reach and imagination, most likely forever. And with the ultimate failure of the project, the already strugging company went bankrupt, bringing the future of the constellations to an uneasy standstill.

A few years later, a Federal surveying group set out to investigate what happened to the stargate, and the starships that had the misfortune of building it. Upon arrival, they discovered that neither the stargate nor Lennera’s ship were anywhere to be found. Appalled, they limped back home with the news. For twenty years no further advance was made.

Eventually, the Federal government decided to send the starship Renaitra on a mission to connect the systems and seal this debacle once and for all. Swift progress was made in building the new gate, and another connection was established. This time the first jump would be made from the M-N side, by another starship that were to pick up the crews of the stargates left behind. The jump was conducted successfully, with seemingly no one’s little finger devoured by the fabric of space-time. It took a while before the ship’s bosonic coating dissolved however, and what it revealed was not the ship they were anticipating from M-N, but a rather dated stargate constructor- none other than that of Iora. Upon inquiry, the M-N side denied having made any jump request. They were however being flooded with them, seemingly after Iora’s ship appeared on the other side. Failing to establish communications, a reluctant order to board the ghost ship was given.

According to the story, it appeared as if the whole crew of the ship had dropped dead at the snap of a finger, and their bodies had not started decaying yet. The date and time on the ship’s system indicated that it was four hours after that fateful jump request almost twenty-five years ago. The jump announcement kept repeating itself at regular intervals. The captain quickly ordered everyone back on Renaitra, vacated the stargate and made a hasty return to M-N. The incident was apparently swept under the rug and rumor has it that the connection was not reactivated for a long time. It’s speculated that Renaitra had its cryostasis bays fail in deep space five years later, resulting in the perishing of its entire crew.

Like with any horror story there are all sorts of wild speculation regarding loose ends. There are those who speak of powers that lurk in hyperspace, whose wrath can be inadvertently provoked. Some say it was Lennera’s doing, who was supposedly upset that Iora finished constructing her last stargate before he could his, and set up her demise. Many seem to agree that the ghost stargate and Iora’s ship are still out there, capturing warp tunnels headed to the new stargate to swallow those who can’t know until after the jump. Some who claim to have served in the M-N outgate in W2F-ZH, say that they have observed sudden surges of jump requests with no one coming through, seemingly coinciding with times when a ship goes missing in the system. And finally, you’ve got all sorts of experts, officials, archivians and historians going so far as to claim that very little of the story somewhat resembles the truth, that no one by the name Iora ever took a command position in an expedition, that the ship Renaitra was long ago left behind in a forgotten shipyard, that the stargates in said systems were anchored in a least incidental manner. It’s hard not to believe them, but for those who’d rather think of reality as something imagined than something that is, such claims are only the skeleton upon which all kinds of outlandish theories are built. I am always interested in hearing them, but if it ever comes down to actually taking that jump, I am afraid I won’t hesitate. Hopefully the crew will have other stories to keep us occupied in hyperspace, till our impending deaths.

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Thank you for this delightful ghost story.

The Gallente also have their share of legends and histories.

Once, there was a mid-level district office assistant to the assistant manager of some small renown. He was not a great man, but he was a man of great ambition. And so, he worked hard, he worked long, and he attended every meeting and conference call offering what networking optimization suggestions he could. Each day his secretary would bring him a schedule of prioritized meetings and folders with the various projects he could synergize, and he would dutifully attend all he could. In his family life, he had his secretary remind him of all important anniversaries, births, deaths, and the names of each member of his extended family, to whom he always assigned an appropriate cash deposit from his expense account for significant gifts, or at least a nice card, as appropriate. And it was not long before he was noticed, if for no other reason than his constant presence.

And so, when there was a vacancy, the mid-level district office assistant to the assistant manager became a mid-level district office manager (probationary) in charge of assistant-supervising supply management. And his secretary now brought him a folder of meetings that were that much more important, with more important conference calls, sometimes even catered. And his folders now included ideas for synergizing and quantifying outputs that caught the eye of more senior personnel.

And so even before the six-year probationary period was up, the mid-level district office manager in charge of assistant-supervising supply management became the mid-level assistant secretary to the divisional general operational cost oversight sub-committee secretary treasurer. His wife’s various anniversaries or birthdays or relative’s funerals or whatever had been so successfully handled that she wanted a second honeymoon. His secretary’s color-coded notes meant he always got his children’s names correct. And he finally had dental and vision coverage, which was good, because he hadn’t been able to chew quite right these past few years.

It was as if all his dreams were finally coming to fruition. He was a somebody’s assistant secretary! And it was finally time to seize everything the universe had owed him. So, late one night, digging through the financial records, he found line items for vacation pay for secretary’s secretaries listed at 4% higher than industry average, and at the next meeting, his coup de gras to save the company millions, presented the item as something to be cut.

While for a time things were good, a strange curse soon befell him, and no one could explain it. He found himself in meeting rooms with no other attendees, as if the other members of his team had been abducted. He found himself waiting for conference calls that mysteriously never came. His calls went unreturned, as if his colleagues had ceased to exist. His co-workers were being disappeared, and when he tried to find out what had happened to them, he found their names had somehow vanished from his memory.

His wife went on the second honeymoon without him, and even blamed him for not coming. Angry memos in his inbox gave way to furious performance reviews. And his children… wait, did he have children?

It was a nightmare, as pieces of his world seemed to vanish before his eyes. Seeing the end coming, he used his medical benefits and severance package to reach for psychological counseling, was hospitalized with delusions of paranoia, and was never seen or heard from again.

Meanwhile, his replacement was eager to reverse all his changes so as to position herself as a bold new direction for the firm. She restored the 4% above industry standard vacation pay benefit to her secretary’s secretaries, justified it as tax-deductible, and spent a long and happy career receiving memos about important meetings from her secretary, which she dutifully attended, offering her suggestions for brave new synergies and efficiencies from the project folders she received each morning. She spent her long years with her husband and favorite mistress both satisfied with the gifts and cards her expense account covered, which her secretary always kept up with. Until the company was liquidated and everyone was forced into early retirement by vulture capitalist hedge funds, as is traditional among my people.

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That was funny! Thank you for sharing.

A legend told by our shamans, of how the sun was tamed.

In the elder days Pator was wild and untamed. His wrath was legendary, causing great harm to the people, burning crops and turning the land into desert. Yet he could also be distant, plunging the world in darkness and cold. He had little regard for those other than himself, and would not heed the call of the other spirits, not even the Old Mother. At times he would travel quickly across the sky, making the days short and the nights long. At others, he would pace lazily, taking his time and blinding all with his light. He did what he wanted because he had no one to fear, for who could challenge the sun?

And so it was that the people suffered. Many councils were called. Man and spirit both pleaded with Pator, sacrifices or offerings were made, but all this did was feed suns pride. Then, a young warrior, looking to prove his might and end the suffering of his people rose up to challenge the Sun Spirit. Amused that one would dare challenge him, he accepted. When he arrived at the appointed hour, his radiance shone brightly and it scared those that had come to witness, All but the warrior.

For 4 days, and 4 nights, the warrior wrestled with Pator. The battle raged, and neither man nor spirit could gain the upper hand. For all his strength, Pator found that the warrior’s spirit was a match for his own. And so, on the morning of the 5th day, Pator relented, out of respect for the young warrior, and for the first time the Sun spirit regarded another as an equal. Since that day, Pator has measured his strength, and steadily walks the sky.

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Thank you for sharing. This was entirely new to me, though some storytellers beginning with “long time ago, when the sun was still young” is maybe an echo of it.

Daleet’s Hunt

Once upon a time before the Darkness, down along the road to Dokvat, there lived a man called Daleet, and he was of a fisher clan. They told then, as they still do now, stories of the great sea monsters Taniwha and Timingila that supposedly live in the great oceans to South.

One day, the seagoing fisherfolk of Daleet’s village claimed that they had spotted a great shark in the waters of Sundsele. His whole circle pronounced they would go out to see the Timingila, and Daleet proudly professed he would hunt the beast.

When they got to the deep waters on their boats, there were no sea monsters to be seen. Disappointed, the fisherfolk started to turn to their work. Daleet, too, started to let down his nets, when his sister called to her: “Hey Daleet, are you dropping cod nets for the Timingila?”

Daleet blushed, but rolled his eyes, and said “Of course not, silly sister! The Timingila is mythical! I am a responsible person, not one to run off sightseeing when there is work to do. I am fishing food for my lodge.”

During the night, a storm rose, such a heavy storm that it tore Daleet’s nets and threw them every which way. Daleet’s cousin laughed and said to Daleet: “I guess the lodge will go hungry.”

Daleet blushed, but rolled his eyes, and said “Of course not, silly cousin! I will feed them when the storm passes. It is not a good day for netting. But I am a responsible person, and today I will fish for finer catch with rod and reel, to smoke and sell as delicacies at the Sundsele market.”

Daleet went out with rods and reels, but the wind was heavy and the rocks were slippery, and he fell to the water. It was not deep, and he was not in any danger, but his tools were broken and he was done catching shore fish for the day. Some blue mussels lived where he had fallen, so he gathered some of those and returned to his village.

There, his aunts and uncles and cousins and sister were mending nets, when they saw him return with his catch, and they called out: “Fine catch you have caught for the market, Daleet!” and laughed.

Daleet blushed, but he rolled his eyes, and said: “Silly kinfolk! I will make money later. Today I quite fancy mussels.” And he went to his house, and closed his door, but could not quite shut out his circle’s laughter and songs.

“Such common entertainment,” he said to himself, and rolled his eyes. Then he baked some white bread, and cooked the mussels in wine, and took out the best inherited tableware, and sat to eat alone.

“I am a man of refined tastes,” he said, to himself.

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The Old Woman’s Advice.

Quite some time ago in a small town on Amarr Prime, there was a commoner woman named Sylvia who had a son named Ilyas who had just turned 12. Sylvia had a horse named Grace who was kept at the Holder’s public stables and would take Ilyas to the stables with her every weekend after the morning services when she went to go ride Grace.

Sylvia had for a couple years now, tried to get Ilyas to try and ride Grace by himself, but he was always too scared to try to ride the horse without his mother. Every week without fail, Ilyas would decline his mother’s offer to ride Grace, but Sylvia would ask him every single week regardless. Everyone in the family could ride the horse, so Sylvia wanted Ilyas to learn to ride her as well. Ilyas also wanted to learn; he was just frightened to ride alone.

The old woman who worked weekends at the stables would always take her break to watch while the pair visited. She would sit on a nearby bench and eat her lunch as the pair rode around the ring on Grace and she would always look disappointed when Ilyas would decline the offer to ride the horse. For all the years Sylvia and Ilyas visited the stables, though, the old woman would never speak too much beyond pleasantries.

However, on one day that was a day like any other, Sylvia and Ilyas visited the stables as per usual and went through their routine. The old woman was watching just like always. When the two dismounted Grace, and Sylvia asked Ilyas if he wanted to try to ride her today, he responded as he always did.

“Mother, I’m scared to ride her alone.” he said.

“Don’t be scared, Ilyas. Just try and ride her.” his mother replied.

“But I am scared. I can’t not be!” he responded.

With the, the older woman who always watched the pair ride the horse called out to the young boy.

“Be scared, but ride her anyway!

The mother and her son turned and looked at the old woman in surprise. The boy was especially shocked. He stared with his mouth agape, but after a moment, he nodded and turned to his mother.

“Mother, I want to try and ride Grace today.”

Sylvia beamed at her son. She was so happy. She helped Ilyas mount the horse and walked next to him as he rode slowly around the ring. When they were all done, Sylvia looked for the old woman to thank, but she had left. She wasn’t there the next week either, nor the week after. Sylvia continued to take Ilyas to the stables every weekend and he would ride the horse himself every time, but the old woman never returned.

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Good story!

Is the old woman supposed to represent something particular, like ancestors maybe?

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I’m not really sure.

She probably is supposed to represent something along those lines, now that I think about it. I’ll ask about it the next time I have a chance.

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