Hathau

Longgrass Stalk

Plant

The Longneck Beastclan chews these stalks of grass for hours as they proceed with their daily tasks.

36

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ha-thao

Ploughman

It is a tired old adage that one who works the soil must be grounded and down-to-earth, but it holds true for Hathau all the same. Though his broad back may be bent by the labor of centuries, he tends these lands ever diligently, as he has since the Valari first set foot upon the dusted plain. Come war or famine, plague or drought, he has never shirked in the planting nor the harvest. This cycle is his charge, and he is bound to it.

It is also broadly assumed that those who work the land must have no lofty thoughts or feelings, their souls as coarse and base as the earth they till. For Hathau, this is not true. Of all the arrogant and learned acolytes of Val-ar-Aion, there are few that can yet match him in wit. Hathau's memory is like the enduring stone- every notch upon it lasting for a life-age. His acumen is unmatched even among Lightkeepers- he remembers every seed he has ever planted, every day of rain since the earliest dawn. When the clan's records fail, Hathau is the one they call upon. It is a pity he could not have committed the Library Annex to memory, before it burned to ash.

Yet this life of toil is the one that Hathau chose. For all his keen intellect, he would not be a scholar. He has made the turning of the seasons his heartbeat, and thus escaped the trap that others with such gifts so often face: drifting away into memory, forever doomed to live in the past. No- this would not be for him. The present is a gift, and the land is ever-bountiful. High ambitions are well and good, but in time all must return to the earth.




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"Long ago, the City of Lamps lay locked in a hundred-year drought that decimated the wetland and reduced the great river to a stagnant trickle. Many older Valari that survived it recall that the hills surrounding the Summer Country had been taller in their youth; indeed it is believed that the soil grew so parched during those years that the land blew away in great swathes, settling in the valleys and evening the terrain into the gently rolling country that we know today. It was the last great drought before the wood was brought to Val-ar-Aion. That period came to be known as the Century of Summer- an ironically paradisaical name for the Valari, considering the affectionate place that season holds amongst our kindred."
hath . thau - steppes dust