//------------------------------//
// Respite of Wisdom 
// Story: Shaman of the Zaharren 
// by Beware The Carpenter 
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In the beginning The Logos, Great Father of Light,
From Its essence formed Wisdom and created all life.
By Its will the foundations of the universe were laid
Then, as an expression of glory, the cosmos It made;
Sun, moon and stars; earth, sky and sea,
It made by Its power, whatever it pleased.

It then formed races to rule on Its behalf:
Pony and camel, griffon and giraffe
Llama, elephant, and many more it unfurled
To live by Its rulings, and rule over the world.

But to steward the stewards, came those even greater
To be dispensers of justice, and of truth be curators;
The last and the greatest, to shepherd all races
Came draconequus with powers, to govern all peoples and places.

Such was the way of the universe fair
That life carried on with hardly a care.
Until hunger and malice, deception and strife
Found place in the elders, and took over their lives.
Discontented with stewards, they sought to be masters,
In their pride and their folly, they invited disaster.

Chances were given, to repent and submit
But the draquoni were obdurate that their crimes they’d not forfeit.
They propelled the young races they were meant to lead,
Down death-holes of violence, hatred and greed;
Each trying to claim the earth for their own
Their cruelty endless, their kindness unknown.

For an age of the earth there was nothing but war
As the blood of their armies, the draquoni outpoured.
Till at last one of their number proclaimed himself king,
Emerging victorious over the bones of his kin;
Subduing all rivals, he enforced endless strife
Denying the Logos, and blaspheming life.
Using his powers that were meant to bring joy
To deceive and to torture, to cause fear and destroy.

Till six alicorns of the days long ago
Remembered this state was not always how it was so.
They remembered the Logos and cried out for aid
Repenting of wickedness and confessing they’d strayed.
Given to them was the power of amity
And with this gift of heaven they ended calamity.
Sealed in stone, the mad king was banished,
His empire fallen, his army was vanquished.

The powers of Discord were broken; divided
Among his subduers, who were by harmony guided.
A new age dawned on the earth that fair day
The earth, under the alicorns, returned to the way.
The Logos appointed them, the new stewards of earth
They became great and mighty, in wisdom and mirth
But like the draquoni, their glory would end
When upon their own power they chose to depend.

They honored the Logos, but their love for It failed
As the joy in their worship became sickly and frail.
Legalistic and crude, they became masters of bigotry
As though adoration of commoners would sap heaven’s dignity;
Claiming the joy of the Logos was not for the masses,
They discouraged Its rites in all lower classes.
They forbade Its worship to all but a few
Then fewer and fewer these vested ones grew,
Till scarcely a hundred so-called priests did remain
And these were corrupt, haughty and vain.

The effect on rectitude was as apples from locusts
Without spiritual guidance, the people lost focus
Falling away, they began worshiping demons
Without sight of their master, they lost their rhyme and their reason.

A plague was unleashed against the esteemed
And Discord unleashed to punish those fiends
To remind them they followed the path of the lost
And if they continued, what would be the cost.

Offers were made to be stewards renewed
But they were rejected; and chaos continued;
Till two pony sisters, princesses of old,
Restored relics of harmony and returned Discord to stone.

They tried to rebuild the lands of their youth;
And recapture times of virtue and truth.
But too many years had gone by between,
The releasing of Discord and of his defeat.

No one remembered the true way of the Logos,
Fragments and whispers were all that were posed,
The law of the Logos was so tainted and blurred,
That even the sisters, could not remember the word.

Any attempt to re-worship the God of their past
Was shattered when younger struck elder, in murderous craft.
What emerged from the ashes of that Solar War
Knew little, if anything, of what came before.
No stories or proverbs could one rightly account
While rumors and falsehoods and lies did abound.

Nations they fractured, one from the other,
And migrated out; son separate from mother.
No longer united under the alicorns’ rule,
Each species left, and alone became fools.

Who is the Logos, and what is Its name?
What are Its laws for whom my heart should flame?
Who is the God to whom my allegiance is owed?
I will tell you plainly; I do not know.

But all is not lost, and hope is not gone.
There yet comes the day, of a new truthful dawn.
And for that day’s coming, we watch and we pray
And prepare for its splendor, however we may.
For though the full truth is quite out of our grasp
All nature sings of Its glory, and to this we may clasp.

For this crucial task, the shamans were formed,
To study creation, that we might be informed
Of the author who breathed life into all this
Thus, somewhat rekindle, what has gone amiss.

We took to this quest with great skill and fierce passion
Studying all that we saw; in all manner of fashions.
Yet as the bodies of sentients are the jewels of creation
We chose these as the pinnacle focus of our fascinations.

We studied primarily; all of hurt and disease,
And how we could cure them with roots, vines, herbs, and trees.
We studied all flora and the effects they possessed
When brewed into potions and used to ingest.
Sleep, diet and exercise were then mastered and tamed.
To cure near all ailments we came to be trained.

Centuries passed, and our knowledge grew
Seeking not only healing, but enhancements too;
Stronger muscles, denser bones, and longevity
Heightened senses, immune systems and fertility.
Till in all manner of creature there was scarcely a limit
and not one bodily function we could not enhance or inhibit.

Then came a shaman who noticed by chance
Her patients healed faster in hypnotic trance.
So we explored not only the body, but also the mind
With redoubled passion to see what we could find.

We learned close observation, and the art of deduction;
And to remove from our learning, all harmful obstructions.
Language not just of speech, but of body and face
Then how suspicion and memory, to discreetly efface.
We learned how to hypnotize, and how to cause fear,
How to persuade, and how to bring cheer;
And truly what’s mentioned is not half the list
In short, we mastered the arts of the mentalist.

Last of our crafts; we learned about war
To fight and to kill, to maim and to gore.
Not for great conquest or the creation of strife,
(Though in defense on the innocent, we would take a life),
But to cement our knowledge of body and mind
For what is combat; but biology, fitness, and cunning combined?

For six hundred years we wandered the earth
No home and no country; we had not a berth
Till four centuries ago, a temple we raised
Whose size, strength and glory, was far and wide praised

The place of our choosing, was the vast Timbucktoo,
Jewel of the Zaharren, which from the desert is hewn.
Great lord of the trade routes, north, south, east and west
Ruled by the alicorn Ferric, who by the Logos was blessed
Stewardship over the earth’s magnetic fields
That to his wishes, all metals must yield.

From the trade of his city, we mustered great plunder
And the number of species it was a great wonder.
To the north was the ocean, and the lamas dwelt west,
Camels to south, who were most often our guests;
Save for the Equestrians who from across the vast desert did come,
To be welcomed by zebras as their most distant cousins.
For Ferric’s fine metals, it was worth the great test,
Of braving the wasteland of sunshine and death.

We hoped that by choosing such a central location,
Our teachings would spread and enlighten all nations;
We thought we would influence the world by our actions;
Alas, to our shame, quite the opposite happened.

We sought to gain wealth and prestige for our quests
These things came to us easily, through various tests.
But our tools became masters and our means became ends
We gained wealth so quickly, that with greed we grew friends.
After this folly began, many worse things did follow
For with but wealth to stand for, our hearts became hollow.

To make our teachings pleasing to everyone’s eyes
We forfeited conviction and gave way to compromise.
A little bit here; a little bit there, our temple was defiled
As we accepted false teachings which we should have reviled.
I shall not recount all that was done on our floors,
Just know that slowly but surely we opened our doors, 
To the superstitions of lamas and their pantheon of delusion,
And then could not close them to the camel’s bigot seclusions.

Then, counting from the end of the great solar war,
Came the departure of Ferric in nine-ten-and-four.
He called his officials to a royal convention
Saying trouble in the mountains, required attention.
He would go alone, and not return till he’d negated his fears
But that he knew not if this would be weeks, months or years.
So he anointed a steward, a wise servant named Appraen,
Flew into the mountains, and was not seen again.

Did he simply grow tired of the life of a king
And seek to move on to try other things?
Did secret guilt make him feel unfit to lead;
And so in heeding his conscience take lonely leave?
Did the ground open up and swallow him whole?
You should not ask me, for how should I know?

After ten years, the searches began,
to find our lord Ferric and bring him back to his lands.
Slowly at first and then quite in earnest,
As many young stallions did make this their purpose.
By thirty years; the searches had extensively grown
As, step by step, the world was combed.
Youths searching for signs of their missing master
Goading each other to search for him faster.
But at length they grew tired and returned to their homes
Their master unfound, they ended their roams.

The remaining stewards have ceaselessly pled
That they would have known if Ferric was dead.
For the death of one steward is felt by the others 
By the links they all share; one to another.
They swear he’s alive but do not know where
Nor can they tell, if he’s free or ensnared.

But although much wealth was lost without Ferric’s alloys
We kept more than enough through our banks and trade convoys.
And in government his vanishing was not such a great loss 
As aside from defense; Ferric issued few laws
And his good steward Appraen did carry on these
or at least at the start, this was how it did seem.

For although rich trade continued to pour through our gates
And war hardly touched us, or put us in straits,
Our culture, it rotted from the inside out
As we shaman gained power, and allowed greed to sprout. 
The shaman forsook the destiny for which they’d been borne
And 'twas in this time, and this place; that I was born.

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