The City of Olyn
The Olynois spend half their life in the Eastern Half of town toiling not only at their own everyday jobs, but also carefully tending special plants for the embyli that they are entrusted with upon maturity, so they can’t stay away from town too long. At some point of their life (usually after a very long time) the plant bears a single fruit that is given to the embyli. The fruit has strong magical properties (though it’s useless for non-embyli). The Olynois then become Full Citizens and are allowed into the Western, secret Half of town, where they at last experience paradise on earth after so many years’ hard work.
In the second part of their life, the Blessed Citizens of Olyn are confined into a one-meter-wide circle which they can never leave again. They are tended by special animals, nature spirits and runners, as if they had become plants themselves. They live much longer afterwards and experience Oneness with Aldrya, which is quite a blissful experience even though they can’t move. I don’t think the people of the outside know what to expect once they become Full Citizens, save that it’s paradise.
The counterpoint to this is that they haven’t done much to improve the world, and really that’s not what Elamle-ata wished. For example, they cannot fight the Mother of Monsters efficiently. Actually if someone realizes that going on like this is going nowhere, and does pluck out his special plant before it bears fruit, he finds the plant dies and gets freed from the strange Olyn obsession with paradisiac citizenship. However, not many Olynois people ever dare pluck their special plant, because they want to go to paradise and think this is breaking the Oath anyway. It is not, since the act of plucking out the plant forbids them the promised vegetable paradise.
I think the founders of the Olynois clan swore to provide the embyli with the special fruit they required (and that for some reason they cannot grow by themselves). But Elamle-ata has already provided the elves with what her people could not provide: lifelong dedication to their own depends. When the embyli don't need it they needn't bother their human fellows.
NOTE: That plant and fruit stuff isn’t official. I thought it was a cool idea, and actually the part 2 of my stuff is what came out of it.
Weeell. I guess that's all for now.
Cheers
Jerome
End of The Glorantha Digest V8 #553
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