The Legends of Noriem: Sleeping Beneath the Willow Tree

Long ago, when the world was just a thought in the mind of the great goddess Gaia, magic was the foundation of the birth of life. Like a flower sprouting from a seed, the thought cracked and with it came the world, with Gaia as its mother.

Magic coursed through creation as its lifeforce, from where it pooled at the pinpoint of the centre of the world, where a single oak tree lay, its roots holding the world together in a tight but fragile game of balance.

Gaia’s world took form in five kingdoms. At the centre stood Noriem, cradle of magic and home of the Great Forest. Edratha burned beneath the southern sun, Wedora guarded the riches of the eastern earth, Traewen shaped the metals of the west, and Zovell slept beneath ice at the world’s edge. Though divided by land and nature, all were bound to the sacred oak in the Great Forest, whose roots held the world in balance.

But power is its own temptation.

The world grew, and with it, life sprouted in all its forms: plants, beasts, and humans. These creatures were not formed of magic but of nature. Gaia’s control of her own world slipped as their hearts grew with both wonder and want, and the shadows from the great high mountains of her world took the form of sin, as greed for such power gnawed at the new creatures of the world.

The humans’ urge for might led them to the oak tree. Two lovers, a woman with the crest of a crow, and a man with the crest of the hawthorn flower, braved the forest and stole from it power that no mortal was meant to wield, becoming the first warlock and witch.

The magic seeped into them, but its power overwhelmed, and when the woman fell pregnant, it curdled within her and poisoned her mind. In a fit of paranoia, what she believed to be visions clouded her sight with false witnessings of infidelity. Fear overcame love, and she wielded her fractured magic against her lover like a whip.

“Betrayed is my heart!” she wailed in her grief.

The magic released was dark and corrupt and weaved with whispers of destruction of life, and the first root of the earth snapped in retaliation, as the magic it once held, now in her veins, became poison. The earth tilted as the balance began to slip.

The man shielded the attack with his own magic, but the curse landed still. It wrapped brutally around his arm with such a crushing force that it imprinted a scar, shaped like a wing.

“You have gone mad!” he exclaimed, “By the heavens, I shall not return!” he declared in his own anguish.

He took his leave, abandoning her with their child, never to see the woman from the house of crows again.

Years passed, and the man had built a new life, with a new family, but each day he feared the woman’s return, his scar a sickening reminder of his past greed and the dangers of magic. In his final moments, he left a gift of his own. A spell to protect his family line from her wickedness.

“When dark magic calls for revenge, let our power be our guard to protect us from the sharp claws of the crows.”

As he took his final breath, Gaia forgave him of his sins, for in his life, he had only used his magic for good. But for the woman, Gaia had watched her greed sour her family as her power betrayed her mind, an illness that tainted her to unrecognisable measures. She passed down her power not with wisdom but with grievance, and began a lineage forever tainted with magic born of wounded love.

In the wake of such sin, the balance of her world became threatened, and Gaia created her guardians of peace. Small, unassuming creatures of great beauty and power, her children and the protectors of the world, each with a task to keep the heart beating like clockwork, and to protect the sacred grounds from the evil that plagued the world and its creatures so that no such events should happen again.

The balance in Noriem was restored; whenever evil would rise, it met a quick end, and the kingdom lived in harmony.

But peace is not eternal.

Hundreds of years later, the strength of love against power was once again tested, beneath the willow tree by the Great Forest.

This is where our story starts, the beginning of the legend of Noriem’s rebirth.