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Starting [[Statpack]]: Intelligent | Starting [[Statpack]]: Intelligent | ||
==The Origins of the Grook== | |||
As told by the Grooks: | |||
It was the time of the great unknowing. All was dark, and yet our people showed | |||
wisdom even before they could think or feel. For their homeland, they chose the | |||
River. | |||
They did not live beside the River, nor near the River, but within the rushing | |||
streams did they find safety. Even before we could think to give the River a | |||
name, it blessed us with good health and fortune. In its waters we found | |||
nourishment and companionship and relief from the summer sun. We could not | |||
conceive of anything else we could need. One among us, the most learned, | |||
developed an evening song that he enjoyed burbling into the setting sun. | |||
"Goruk rik. Goruuuuk!" he called, and though he could understand neither joy | |||
nor worship, he delighted just the same to sing his nonsense song. The waters | |||
heard and they, too, delighted. They swept around his feet, submerging his form | |||
in a gentle embrace. When again he stood from the River, he had been changed. | |||
Smooth and moist was his skin, to carry with him the River always. Wide was his | |||
mouth, to better catch the fish and insects to fill his belly. Better-shaped, | |||
too, were his fingers and toes, to more easily swim. Soon enough, all the | |||
children of the River sang his song in twilight, "Goruk, goruk, rik!" and all | |||
were changed. This was the River's greatest boon, for we have since been known | |||
as the Goruk, in the Old Tongue, better known as Grook. | |||
Yet there were those who saw our blessing, and wanted it for their own. Imagine | |||
the frog, with her newly-caught dragonfly, eating delightedly. Like the bird | |||
who comes upon the frog and snaps, hoping to scare the frog away from her | |||
prize, so did these people hurl rocks at us from the shore to drive us from our | |||
sanctuary and take it when we had gone. | |||
The River, however, had not forgotten us. It again demonstrated its | |||
appreciation for our ignorant, accidental loyalty and worship, and the will of | |||
the Divine took hold. It burbled in the waters against the pebbles, and in the | |||
roar of waterfalls from the mountains, intoning, "These are My best-loved, and | |||
you shall not not walk here again. Away with you, mistaken, ill-intentioned | |||
creatures, away." | |||
And cast away were the attackers, swept by a flood past the sandy beach and | |||
into the depths of the ocean. Never again were they to tread upon the Riverbed, | |||
for their legs had become awkward tails and deeply did they begin to breathe | |||
the nasty salted waters of the sea. They are the Mistakes, and I urge you even | |||
now not to trust those the Humans have named "merfolk", for their ill will is | |||
not the sort to fade with years. | |||