It all began in the traditional merry tone of the Celesmas season.
Members of the quaint and small Tsinkin race showed at the gates of the
Aetolian cities. As a gift and a token of their arrival at the start of
the Celesmas season, they had brought mistletoe in great supply. The old
and crooked Tsinkin, Garinsh, handed out great quantities of mistletoe
and mortals to and fro gathered to receive their gift.

But dark thoughts had overtaken the little creature and a sinister plot
had been unknowingly set into motion by the living and undead alike.
Before long ritualistic drums sounded out from the snow-covered village
set down in Delos and the hollow voice of Garinsh screeched out across
the lands. Cursed with a dark and ancient power, the mistletoe that had
been hung around the realms by the mortals withered and grew black. The
cursed mistletoe began to spread, its malicious darkness attacking
anyone who dared linger underneath. As time went by, the ritual
continued and the mistletoe spread faster until at long last a large
crowd of Aetolians made their way to the snow-covered village.

"Why are you doing this!?" ,yelled the one. "Open your door or we bring
it down!" screamed another. Garinsh, imbued with power, was unafraid and
allowed the mortals to enter the morbid cellar under the joy-filled
village. "You have forgotten the true meaning of Celesmas, you've
squandered your gift of sentience long ago following your Gods as
blindly as you do!" ,Garinsh crooned. As tensions grew an unusual
alliance was formed by circumstance. Recognizing a common enemy, undead
and living rallied side by side to defeat the Tsinkin. Many of the
unwilling allies paid with their blood to defeat Garinsh, but defeated
he fell.

The Paladin Kiyotan McCloud pried a letter from the cold corpse of the
vertically challenged monstrosity and from the contents of this letter;
he learned how the mistletoe could be destroyed.

"Aneral!" spoke Kylan D'ashil, spreading his massive wings around
himself and the paladin, carrying them both to a terrace of fire that
burns in the skies over sapience. "What does the letter say, Kiyotan?"

Kiyotan cleared his throat and read the letter with a hastened mumbling
under his breath. "The mistletoe will burn when it is lit with a blessed
torch that burns with sacred fire. I know where to find a torch, meet me
at the temple."

Both men knew where they were going on account of the sacred fire, as
quickly as their steeds would ride they made their way to the Pash,
where the pillar of the Goddess Auresae illuminates the skies. Kiyotan
arrived and with a pant in his breath he blessed the wood and stuck his
arm in the fiery pillar. "Onwards, to Enorian!" Near the great gates of
the Beacon, the paladin raised his arm up and torched the blackened
mistletoe. The burning sprigs and branches receded quickly, sizzling and
cracking into nothingness.

They realized that a single torch would not suffice in the destruction
of the tainted mistletoe that had spread throughout the land. The men
headed back to the village in Delos, where the Tsinkin children Tolga
and Palka, both handy with a knife, announced their wish to assist in
carving torches from wood, to make right for unknowingly assisting
Garinsh in his scheme. So it went and the Aetolians set to foot in
cleaning up the cursed mistletoe. Celesmas was merry once more.


Penned by my hand on the 13th of Arios, in the year 264 MA.