Sgrios Mass: Nature as Decay

I’ve been spending a considerable amount of my time in Mileth as of late; the sleepy rural community which I call home offers quaint charms unlike any of the surrounding provinces. Still, there is a sense of lonesomeness about it - the vast lantern-lined boulevards which were once choked with young ambition and beggars are now vacant dusty paths to nowhere. As our population declines, so, too, does the life of the city.


Mileth used to comprise more than a handful of farmers and artisans, before the time of the Aisling this town was an empire, and before our known history only the Old Gods could say, for this town has an infrastructure that predates any writings. When you wander the surrounding wilds you can see remnants of the span of this once mighty city, with vacant hovels reaching deep into the woodlands to the East and to the West. Slowly the land is reclaiming what we so selfishly took from it; trees intrude upon the roads that outlined the boundaries of the city and structures yield to oppressive vines or new inhabitants in the form of rats, wolves and even enterprising goblins.


As we watch this green wave consume the ever-diminishing city, we must contemplate how exactly does nature differ from decay? Whether examining the eroding expanse of a mighty city or the bloated corpse of a fallen soldier; the brunt of the work is being performed by servants of nature; weeds, worms and weather. While most hold mold and mushrooms as the harbingers of decay, these humble servants of our final purpose seek no glory and work tirelessly in the shadows, leaving the elegant curtain of verdant vegetation to soak in the Sun’s favor, toppling cabins and claiming bodies as they wrap their greedy tendrils around the corpse of our hubris.


So what, then, makes darkness evil and the light good? Both must exist if one is to, and both are equally essential to our continued existence. Nature is as much a devastating force as the rot we face in the shadows, yet one is embraced and the other shunned - lest your mind is flexible enough to flip it’s perspective and appreciate the hard work decay puts in to maintaining our world. At some point it was arbitrarily decided that light is good and dark is bad and the followers of this doctrine penned the history we follow. In this sense, our congregation has, and will continue to be, the most enlightened in the land - for we are nimble enough to see the other perspective; realize that a coin has two sides.