For as long as anyone can remember, and probably long before that, there have been wooden figures in the woods. They've gone by so many names I think they'd respond to anything now but for the most part we just call them "effigies" and pretend that they are statues.
According to the local lore books - the ones you find in the very back of the library where you have to sign a book and have a librarian watch you while you read - we used to call them gods. They came from a fiery pit beneath the forests and offered us the world if we paid them in blood.
Humans do love a good sacrificial ritual and the books show that we based our entire year around the effigies and worked tirelessly to slake their thirst. In return our crops flourished, our hunts were always successful and our health never failed.
Of course a good thing rarely lasts and though we cut back on sacrificing people, there was never a year where we didn't wander into the woods knowing we'd come back with at least one less. Then an election was rigged and a new government came into power promising us a better future.
The first law they passed banned us from feeding the effigies.
The last law they passed begged us to burn the forests down.
As if fire can stop gods.
According to the local lore books - the ones you find in the very back of the library where you have to sign a book and have a librarian watch you while you read - we used to call them gods. They came from a fiery pit beneath the forests and offered us the world if we paid them in blood.
Humans do love a good sacrificial ritual and the books show that we based our entire year around the effigies and worked tirelessly to slake their thirst. In return our crops flourished, our hunts were always successful and our health never failed.
Of course a good thing rarely lasts and though we cut back on sacrificing people, there was never a year where we didn't wander into the woods knowing we'd come back with at least one less. Then an election was rigged and a new government came into power promising us a better future.
The first law they passed banned us from feeding the effigies.
The last law they passed begged us to burn the forests down.
As if fire can stop gods.
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