Behold! From the fertile fields of the Lower Elwynn Basin, Insight!
For days and nights most numerous now, the High Priest of Lockenhasp has engaged in great spiritual toil. He has, in waves of confused revelation most disordered, been the recipent of visions divine. Of these he could make only the most limited sense, until by the grace of Meskan he received some guests: a party of elders from Cimmeria, the Priests of Quixy. From those islands, they had fled the wave of heresy that descended upon the followers of He Most Gloriously Insane and indeed of all the Celestial Temple. For in those lands they were now made to bow in the image of some Daemonic creature resembling a white bear, among other practices sure to lead them unto damnation.
And so, in the innermost chamber of the Temple of Lockenhasp these elders did confer with the High Priest, around the great slab at which the Piscatores hold eternal vigil. And at first the High Priest was confused and irritated by his visitors, disordered of mind as they were and speaking in tongues. But as he listened to their ramblings - statements which no sane man could ever understand - he began to recognise the odd word among them as fitting into his own visions. Being a wise man, he then encouraged the Cimmerians to elaborate and indulge in their crazed preachings. For many an hour this went on, the High Priest listening in meditative trance to the echoing words and half-words floating around him.
Then in a sudden movement, the High Priest raised his hand to silence his guests. His vision was complete. He rushed to the Scribe's Chamber, denying any and all who wished to follow him. And in that chamber, with nought but his quill and the silence, he frenziedly wrote the following:
The Old Farmer
Or:
The Story of
Mo'll
God of Wildfires, Rain and Agriculture
Bringer of the Elements, Vanquisher of Hunger
God of the Month of Mo'lluk, and of its Mists
Patron God of Goldshire
Etc etc.
In a time so ancient that writing was unknown, and all stories were spoken tales almost entirely forgotten today, there was a settlement. A settlement like any other of its time, with one exception. In all the other places, people were fed by the hunting of wild animals and the foraging of the local plant life. And here too it was initially the case. But this settlement had been made in an open scrubland, where the presence of game creatures was almost unknown and the spread of roots and berries was always sparse.
The people of the settlement had made their lives as best they could in this harsh place, and growing through such conditions made them formidable of spirit despite being physically malnourished. Yet even this steady state of affairs did not last, for over the generations the settlement grew into a village. More mouths needed feeding, yet the land yielded nothing more to help them.
It was at this place and this time, for the first time anywhere at all, that it was decided to tear the ground all around and move all the edible plants to one place. It had been observed that plants grew from buried seed, so many seeds were added to the soil. It had also been observed that the rains produced fast and luscious growth, so the plants were watered. These practices had hitherto been seen as the idle fidgetings of bored children, yet in this village it suddenly became essential to avoid starvation.
For two years it worked. The plants were carefully cultivated by a portion of the village's population whose craft gained them highest respect of their peers. For two years, the people of the village did not hunger. But in the third year, a great calamity came upon them.
In that year, the farmers waited for the midsummer rains to fatten their crop. They waited long and patiently, but the rains did not come. The crops slowed their growth to a halt and began to wither in the fields. The early harvest was ruled out, then the middle one. The people of the village began to waste away as they had in the older days. Parents went without food every alternate day so their children would have enough to eat. The strength to sing and dance and do anything but draw breath was slowly drained from the population.
And at the summer's height, a wildfire swept across the scrub layer - the first since the farming had begun. And where the thorny bushes ran into the village crops, the fire continued without a care. The few edible shoots remaining were burned to ash, for the villagers were too busy protecting their houses to fight the fires in the fields. All that remained for the villagers to eat were the seeds stored away for future planting.
The village elders convened a Council with the farmers, and all agreed that the seed must be eaten - except one. He was the oldest farmer. He wanted to plant his share of the seed. He told the others that the village had never seen a whole year without rain, that it would come soon, and that the seed had to be in the ground to receive it. The Council scoffed at his idea. They said it was too late in the season, that there was no hope of such a crop ripening in time before the winter. The Old Farmer told them that the wildfire's ash had brought fertility to the soil, such that the crop would grow at twice its usual speed if planted. It would be ready, he said. But the Council did not believe him, and they ruled that the seed was to be eaten. Along with the other farmers, the greater part of the Old Farmer's seed stock was confiscated from him and divided among the whole village. He was left only a small amount as a ration for his own consumption.
But the Old Farmer did not eat his own seed. He knew well that there would be nothing left to eat when the winter arrived, and that the whole village would starve. So he planted his small ration of seeds in his field, saving not a single grain to eat for himself. He went to his bed hungry that night, and for all nights hence.
He woke the next morning to a village awash with rain. He went to the Council and pleaded with them to begin the planting, but they would not. They repeated that the rain was far too late, and dismissed the Old Farmer's talk of ash fertility as unfounded superstition. He tried to protest further, but the Council grew tired of his presence and voted to dismiss him from their number. The Old Farmer returned to his cottage despondent, and still hungry. In the days afterward he watched his crop rise from the field at great speed - the ash had indeed put fertility into the soil. But his appeals to his common neighbours were met with silence. Word had spread of his banishment from the Council, and even his closest neigbours shunned him.
As the weather finally turned for the colder, the seed rations expired across the village. Not a trace of sustenance was to be found anywhere - except for the Old Farmer's field, whose crops were the tallest and ripest ever seen. Yet of the Old Farmer himself, nothing had been seen or heard for some time. In the end, they found him in his bed - as thin as a sapling and dead of starvation. His own food store was as empty as the rest of the village, for although a great bounty of food lay just behind his cottage he had not harvested a single plant for himself.
The winter set in, and the village fed themselves on the Old Farmer's crop. During this time a mysterious fog descended upon the village, a fog so thick that even the midday sun could not clear it. The villagers went about their lives in semi-darkness, fed by the Old Farmer's supply. Although his plants had been few in number, their crop was so heavy that it fed everyone. There was even enough to be preserved in pickles and sauerkrauts until the following spring.
And along with the fog, another strange occurrence touched the village. The men of the Council who had so heartlessly rejected the Old Farmer partook in his crop like the others, but unlike them the food seemed to have no effect. While the common villagers fattened once more, the Council men wasted and weakened as if they had eaten nothing at all. They decreed their own rations doubled, but they weakened twice as fast. Soon they too were all expired of starvation. The very morning that the last of their number died, a light breeze passed through the village and finally lifted the fog to reveal bright sunshine.
As the warmth of spring returned to the village, it elected a new Council whose proclamation codified the dark winter's many rumours: that the winter of fog and the starving of the old Council was the work of the spirit of the Old Farmer who, wise and selfless, had been received into the Celestial Temple itself for his deeds and gained Godly powers. And in their lost and ancient language, they gave the man a title: Mo'll. Reflecting on his life and deeds, and repentant of their treatment of him, the people of the village were the first to spread his story and his word across the land:
Trust the elements, and you will learn.
Use the knowledge, and you will eat.
Share the bounty, and you will be saved.
...and on that village of the first ever farmers, the rains never failed again.
