Over a fire and a hot meal, Ariare spins the tale of Lerxst I.

   "After nearly 1000 years passed from the beginning of human history, 
the Kingdoms of Rieznia and Twin Rivers held the majority of the human 
population of Aeryth.  The Seaward Kingdoms and Thacsmar held some 
people as well, and were both among the Old Kingdoms that were formed by 
those who pioneered beyond the sarern lands when humans came, and had 
been rising and falling since."
   {OOC: R'Mac was one of the Seaward Kingdoms long ago - the date of 
the ghostly exodus you encountered was stated as 967.}

   "The Highlands and lands vindward were remote to the humankind, and 
held the keeps and lands of the Noble and Grey Elves.  Nare of the 
Highlands went some humans who longed for gold in hard mountains and 
murky rivers, and there they found war and dark isolation for some time.  
Some adventurous others went much farther much sooner - to the cold 
Narest of the mainland, and across the seas to the island continent.

   "The land just beyond the Rieznian and Twin River frontiers, however, 
remained free.  The wide plains, the deep forests, the rolling foothills 
of the esternmost mountains - they were settled lightly and oddly.  In 
the sarernmost part, humans from Rieznia settled and began towns and 
cities.  In the plains above, the rare few roamed following the game 
that meant life in the barren lands.  In the unlit forests to the 
narest, peoples of elder human and ancient elven kind alike wandered, 
keeping to their mysterious and nomadic ways of life.  And the forests 
est, thick with lush life and wonder of the River of the Dawn, from the 
villages near the narern foothills down to the corner of Rieznia's 
estern frontier, were wandered by only few.

   "This land was free and wild by its nature, and held many a secret to 
the Old songs of the earth, some kept by the Elves, the Landfathers, and 
some by the last few peoples who had worked through the ages to study 
her ways, the Druids.  As time went a-by, though, and the human cities 
grew, the secrets of these older ways sank deeper into obscurity like 
the last rain into thirsty soil.  By the early 1100's, much of the 
wildest sides of Elven culture had become isolated or integrated into 
the human world, and the Druidic orders were all but lost history.  
That's when our ghost came.

   "The first person to ever see Lerxst was a young half-Elven woman.  
She had wandered from her own village in seek of one she'd seen in a 
dream - one made of the stone of the earth, but white like frozen milk, 
upon a river resting, and holding people from a distant place.  
Somewhere in the wood she became lost, and came upon the same cross of 
trails time and time again, even though she traveled always toward the 
rising sun.  She passed through seasons that seemed to come and go 
within a night's time, and after a long wander she came at last to the 
meeting of two rivers, and across it she saw a strange cavern.

   "Deep within the cavern she heard a strange sound, like the falling 
of a rapid rain, though she saw only a glowing mist, like the foxfire 
o'er the dark forest floor, but the color of starlight.  Out of shadows 
made by the cavern walls came a young boy, naked, wet and shivering, and 
thin and frightened as the starved lamb.  He looked one last time back 
toward the light, the glow catching the tears streaming like stars down 
his young face, and spoke a single whispered word, as if there were no 
other word in the world: 'Lerxst'.  Saying not a word, she covered him 
and took him from the place, his face buried in her Elven cloaks.  As 
they left the cavern, she sang words of a sweet and ancient prayer to 
quell the boy's fear, and touched his face, speaking the word she deeply 
felt must have been his name.

   "At that, the light inside the cavern faded, and the rain stopped.

   "Back home they traveled, and the boy grew slowly not unlike an Elven 
child might.  The maiden-mother watched him grow, and taught him of the 
ways of both her bloods and of her village, ways of peace and respect.  
He listened and learned as if he somehow already knew but loved so much 
how she taught him all the same.  All the while, though, he stood every 
morning just outside the house staring at the dawn through the forest 
leaves, as if waiting for something, or as if something was waiting.

   "After a bit of time, the woman fell in love with a human traveler 
from the sarelands named Peder iLaon.  In time they begot a daughter, 
Gwendolyn Leona, who grew beside Lerxst from the time he was becoming a 
young man.  Soon after, though, Lerxst took his leave of his new home 
and traveled sare to see more of the land.

   "For a time longer than most humans live, Lerxst traveled the lands 
between the Rieznian cities and the narern mountains, between the Old 
Kingdoms in the Vind and the ancient river est.  He traveled always by 
foot, nearly always alone, and carried nothing more than his clothing, 
means of fire, and a walking staff - not even rations.  In the first 
decade alone he walked nearly the perimeter of what was once the Union 
of Light: vind to the end of the unlit forests, sare through the wide 
windy plains to the outmost of Twin Rivers' cities, est across the 
frontiers and into deep forests to Avian, and nare along it to its 
source.  In the years that followed, he wandered the within, meeting the 
people and leaders of the lands and seeing their ways, all along with 
some goal in mind, some mission.

   "By the mid 1200's, Lerxst had befriended many of the people of the 
area.  He was known well in the land of light, Stharaio, as the keeper 
of the lands.  In Lareth, the mysterious land nare of the wide plains, 
he was respected as one who preserved and honored its memory and 
history.  He seemed to have years beyond his blood, and knowledge beyond 
his years, and heart strong beyond all.  The bards of the day sang of 
him, Lerxst the Stranger, who came from nowhere but from everywhere, and 
whose mystique was dwarfed only by his kindness.

   "By the year 1270, Lerxst had taken to the lands in the sarest of 
Lareth.  There he was beside the blessed river, close to the land of 
memory and mystery, but not too far a travel from the growing city, the 
star amidst the land of light, Stharaio Ovus Stharaii, to the sare.  
There he'd set to a new task.  Upon the cavern where he'd been found as 
a child, he'd begun to construct a small village, one where a large 
family might live, like the one his 'mother' had seen in her dream.  He 
journeyed in secrecy into the uncharted lands east of the River Avian, 
and somewhere there he found the white stone from which the village was 
to be built.  Back and forth across barren trails he somehow brought the 
stones by himself, and deep in the unknown lands he spent entire seasons 
cutting the stone from the earth in pensive solitude.

   "Before long, the lands in the sarest of Lareth were called the Lands 
of the Stranger, or in the convention of the old tongue sung by bards, 
Strangiato.  Such was the name given to the agreement Lerxst himself 
founded between the people of the three territories in 1279: The 
Strangiato Alliance.  The peoples agreed to work in concert to preserve 
the history and sanctity of the land, and the freedom of its people.  
The area was named for three territories: Lareth in the Nare, Stharaio 
on the Sare, and between, for the land that opened to the windy plains 
to the Vind, Vindland.

   "Lerxst's vision was somehow realized.  He finished his 'mother's' 
village over the years that followed, and Gwendolyn Leona came to be his 
wife in the year 1296.  Together they lived in Strangiato and founded 
the family from which six children would come, and the house that 
devoted its love to helping the allied lands and the people that lived 
within them.

   "Support from Rieznia and even from Twin Rivers followed in the 
decades to come, and it was decided between them and the provinces in 
the Alliance that a nation would be founded based on the efforts Lerxst 
began.  In exchange for his unending love, Lerxst's kin would be given 
its care, as Lerxst wanted, and the lands about their home would be 
given to them as a separate province of the nation.  On 1 Nare 1307, the 
Union of Light was declared, and the Strangiato Province was named upon 
the Stranger Lands.

   "From there, Lerxst's life was somehow soothed, and from the birth of 
his last child, his son Papij, he aged from middle-aged to death as 
would a human.  Over the last few decades of his life he devoted his 
time to the Union and his family, and prepared his eldest, his daughter 
Danu, for her place as Lady of the House.  He managed the growth of the 
lands well, and lived to see many grandchildren grow from birth, 
including Danu's eldest, his grandson Damus, heir to the House.

   "As he neared the end of his life, Lerxst I spent time traveling as 
best he could, despite age and growing illness, into the lands est of 
the Villa.  On 1 Vind, the Autumnal Equinox, of 1346, Lerxst took leave 
of his family and traveled est for the last time.  Shortly after, Damus'
wife, Rachael Elderland, conceived, and brought the next heir to the 
house into the world on 1 Vind 1347.  The baby, born exactly a year 
after the founder of the House had left, was the first of the House 
named for him: Lerxst II of Strangiato.

   "That was 79 years and 74 days ago.  On the True Calendar, the year 
is 1426."

   Ariare rests for a moment.

   "Of Lerxst's life, that is all Danu and I learned.  Of his origin, we 
believe, from his story and the vague clues the mysterious fountain gave 
us, that he came from a place far from this land through a passage of 
some kind - perhaps to the cavern where he was found.  We also believed, 
from the way he aged variably and how he was found, that he was not 
human, at least not at first, and that he somehow carried knowledge and 
memory from the life he came from into his life here.  We also were led 
to think that Lerxst I also left behind a legacy, or set some energy in 
motion, to separate the House from its origins.  Given the history of 
what has happened since, it stands to reason that Ghost of the Aragon 
was it."

   The old elf sits back, her careworn face a tribute to her travels, 
her lonliness, and the many tales like this she has yet to tell.


                                                  -JDM 14 March 1997