Stories the Campfire: The Ceth of the Amber Empire

These will be a collection of stories from varying sources across the Mother Trees roots; tales of Spirits, the unseen, and incomprehensible.

Welcome dear readers, to the light of The Campfire. Tonight for our final visit, we venture to the Amber Empire.

We were fortunate to find a few chatty Ceth amongst the bunch, but as Human writers venturing the Ceth territories, we certainly felt an air of unease. Many early explorers, and current day criminals who try to gain access to the Ceth homeland are often welcomed with a harrowing song from an orchestral lamentation. We know now that this is a defense mechanism magically created to protect its citizens from those who would mean harm to the region’s people, especially within the capital, by haunting the minds of those who harbor dark intentions. Some fringe scholars in Arcvelt believe they have achieved telepathy with other species, while other believe that the hive Ceth, the Hex, act as the region’s Sentinels.

We by the campfire recognize that all Ceth can fight, but often as a last resort when pushed to the brink, preferring to keep to efficiency. Prey is easy to capture when it comes to your doorstep. Though the Amber Empire is not known to keep prisoners, there are rumors for what many victims have recently begun to call the Phantom Orchestra.

Many know that the Ceth are masters of string, whether in textiles, or enchanting string instrument melodies, but what if it was their dead who watch out for the wicked who sneak into their streets.

Our first story comes from a grizzled old explorer, an Eolo by the name of Monta’Aish. Allegedly the first man to escape Ceth captivity, a man imprisoned for plotting to rob the royal treasury under the guise of a Jeweller. Once inside the capital, he took residence at an inn to rest before his heist. Unfortunately for him it never would never come to pass.

When recounting his tale years later, he would go on to relay to listeners that he had barely escaped with his life that night. The Eolo would settle in for the evening, only to hear a faint hum at the back of his ear that would crescendo into a ringing at the back of his ear. In an effort to relieve an incoming headache he would try to fetch himself a glass of water, but upon looking at himself in the bathroom mirror he would see shadowy figures with glowing eyes standing behind him, only to then be assaulted by an extremely high-pitched, shrill onslaught of ear piercing notes, in a wailing chorus that allegedly made it feel like his head was about to burst. The Eolo spared no time, abandoning all of his belongings in the room as he ran for the door. Bystanders allege that Monta’Aish had dropped his tail that night as he escaped his phantasmal attackers and the Banshee-like cacophony. The owner of the inn had kept the tail as a souvenir, and now it rests above a mantle preserved in amber.

There are many who fear the Ceth species, as they, aside from Freans, are proven to be the most diverse in physical attributes. Many arguing that the Lokasta are perhaps the most terrifying. Our next story is from a Mantodean woman who told us of a Ceth ghost story, the fable of a Lokastan who supposedly still haunts the Amber Empire to this day, this is the tale of G’orm the devourer. Not many outside of the Ceth race remember this name anymore outside of old history books, with many outside of their empire calling the Lokastan a rampaging psychotic tyrant. Then there are small pockets of Ceth, particularly Lokastan, who celebrate him as a hero and liberator of their people, but all agree that it was his appetite that drove his war of attrition.

G’orm and his mighty warband, two-thousand strong, would wander the lands beneath the Mother Tree, pillaging from every settlement they came across. He and his men would ransack every village and leave no survivors, and it was said that they would leave no survivors, and left no remains. The Lokastan warband known by the end as the Centipedes March, would eventually be worn down by the efforts of the Eolo and some Freans who would join the battle to end the five year long reign of terror that was left in his wake.

Some say in the end that in his final moments, after being bisected by a mighty Ursine Frean, G’orm still made attempts to feed on the man before meeting his fate.

Ceths often tell stories of G’orm to their young, as a means to keep their young in line, or perhaps it is to act as a reminder to control their feeding habits. The Lokastan people especially in the modern age show small groups within their lineage that use the Ceth legend as a cautionary tale of greed and hunger. One in that, “Should you become as greedy as the Endless Maw, your own hunger will consume you.”  Today, it is said that G’orms spirit can still be spotted searching the battlefields of old within the deserts dunes for his last meal, and if you listen closely you may just hear his chittering teeth as he crests the dunes.

No being truly knows what happens to the living when we encounter spirits of the dead, but it is well documented that many disappear without a trace, often never to be seen again.

In the case of one Allen Moarbuckener; his camp would be found alongside an oasis, with all of his belongings having been left behind. The only reason the Eolo who found the campsite knew who went missing was because of Allen’s abandoned papers, with no signs of struggle, just an odd pool of strange liquid that bore no color, but had an intense rancid smell to it like that of a corpses congealing drool.