From Hunter to Minstrel Tale : The History of Kechire Hunter
Long before I'd embarked on the massive endeavor of charting a course through history for a people who'd long eschewed the written word, I'd heard the tales of one Kechil Hunter. Man among men, he stood over a hundred ilms tall, and wielded an axe larger than a horse. He features in one tale in particular, of slaying a giant boar named Jhin terrorizing the farmers of our island. After a week of fighting non-stop, he succeeds, and in his honor, our people wish to make him a jerkin from the skin of Jhin the boar. However, since Kechir was so large, they could only make a harness, which Kechir accepted as it soon became apparent that the slaying of Jhin pleased Earth and Fire - They temporarily transferred themselves to the harness as it turned yellow before our ancestors' very eyes.
Of course, this tale is exaggeration beyond words. Who would believe a midlander being 100 ilms tall? That would wield an axe larger than a horse and fight for a week straight without rest? It is a tale crafted to remember that all can honor the elements in their own way. Kechir did not work the land, nor tend the flames, nor cultivate the sea. Kechir was a hunter, and in the end, the elements blessed him like they would bless us when service is performed.
Still, on a stroke of luck I encountered one of the minstrels peddling books as I was on my way to the city in order to find a steel joint to repair our pasture's fence door. He'd offer me a copy of a Roegadyn scholar who'd studied our people in ages past, and curious to see what I could find in this stranger's eyes upon us, I offered him shelter and good food for the book and a tale or two. Such is the way minstrels are treated in this land.
The book revealed to me much more than I thought possible. Long before we domesticated animals, farms were solely about the noble discipline of botany, and a cadre of hunters would provide meat for the community by organizing expeditions in the forest and around the uninhabited parts of the island to hunt down savage beasts. Unlike what I hear from other lands, they used melee weapons exclusively, the knowledge of the bow unknown at the time. Typically constructed as heavier, sharper versions of botany tools, the weapons took the form of a reinforced, weighted logging axe, to herb-collecting axes, to a combination of a hoe and a pitchfork, soon refined into a more deadly instrument resembling a halberd. The idea of a sword was actually alien to our people. Though we knew how to use knives and had fabricated them, the techniques to synthesize swords were never discovered.
Still, among this hunter population, a peculiar name appears - Kechire Hunter. That the legend actually existed came as a shock, much more so when I learned that the minstrels had told the story wrong. Kechire is a woman's name. She and her group of hunters concentrated on chasing off boars who'd attack the farms for an easy source of food, instead making them a good source of meat and leathers.
The incident with Jhin has roots in a particular moment that the scholar witnessed. He'd described Kechire as a woman of incredible strength, equal to his Sea Wolf mates, who'd wielded an excessively large axe, one that would never be seen on a pirate ship as it would be too unwieldy at sea, and who's grace in movement, even with such an instrument, was awe-inspiring. He'd caught her in the middle of attacking a boar of considerable size and peculiar yellow pelt. Immediately, he felt he need to chronicle the assault in his own terms, which due to my own combat ignorance, I will not repeat here in fear of misusing them. She fell the mighty beast with a graceful step and a blow worthy of an executioner, cutting the boar at the neck as it charged past her.
As the rest of her band of hunters gathered to help her cut the boar apart, she made sure to keep the pelt and use it as a trophy, and according to the scholar, the pelt had a strange reaction to the alumen, turning the yellow boarskin into a much darker hue of yellow. Where the mystical moments of this story stem from was that the boarskin was ready for synthesizing on a day of a solar eclipse, and that she did so immediately after it was ready. The eclipse was seen as a bad omen, unlike what the story claims. After a consultation with the Officiates and a cleansing ceremony where she offered the harness to Earth, they came up with a compromise - Earth would accept her offering if she were to never show her face while hunting. She started wearing a mask while performing her duties, and so did the hunters of their band. Soon, the mask and harness were seen as an iconic element of Toegisil's hunters. Until the practice of hunting fell out of use from domestication of the island's edible animals.
That the minstrels would honor Kechire's offering by obscuring her true identity in their tales, going as far as to censor her name and womanhood, can be seen as many things. I prefer to think of this as an act of respect towards the life of one of the greatest hunters the island has produced, albeit at the expense of the truth in such a way that it denatured the entire tale. This is one of the many contradictions that compose this island's history and culture as you have undoubtedly seen by reading this tome. Still, the truth is now revealed, and as I understand, Earth has long forgiven Kechire's descendents.
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OOC Comments:
Yes, this story is there entirely to explain Kell's WAR glamour. However, he dressed like that WITHOUT EVEN KNOWING ABOUT THE TALE. To him, it was a coincidence, and more importantly, I do not mention Kechire's lower part of her outfit because it was likely a LOT more decent than what Kell is wearing.
Anyway, comments, wtfs, deep hatred that I'm shitposting in the IC section go here.
