Editing Craftworld Aylis-Nasturcane (section)

==Storytelling for The Young Ones==
”Farseer, Farseer!” A small child came running down the path, closely followed by her friends as they cheerfully laughed and played. “Can you tell the story of how you beat that nasty daemon again?” he asked, giving the older woman his biggest grin.

Farseer Nytha smiled back at him weakly, absentmindedly touching the wrinkled and scarred flesh that covered most of her left arm and face. She should feel sorrow over it, of how she was forever disfigured by that terrible daemon’s cursed plague-fire. But, she was not.

The battle had left a major foe and a threat to the Craftworld banished, and greatly increased her people’s knowledge of medicine and healing. She nodded to the young child, Farlahn, she recalled. He shone up and motioned for his friends to gather round, half a dozen young Eldar sitting down in a half-circle just to hear her old tale.

“Well, as you know our Craftworld had encountered a string of mass-infections, plagues spreading from world to world. Wherever we went, million lay dead, bloated, shriveled or rotted from the inside out. Eventually we learned of the daemon Mrakalthan and his foul followers, the architects of this disaster. They sought to carve a prayer to their thrice-cursed god with the planets left dying in their wake. We could have found them easily, back then my master Galachaen was the craftworld’s prime farseer, and his skills outclass me by far even today. But, we felt compelled to stop at each world, helping the people and learning more about Mrakalthan’s handicraft. He called it his “Ink of Bereavement”, if I recall.”

The children sat spellbound. They had heard this tale many times, but every time she told it differently, adding or rewording details in such a way that no retelling was the same.

“When we finally did find them, it was on the planet they called Hope’s Ruin, a once thriving human settlement reduced to a barren waste by the daemon’s own hand. They did not see us coming until we were in their midst, taking out their commanders and tearing apart defenses. I lead a team of Dark Reapers, using my powers to guide them to the most necessary targets. And just when they thought that they had a handle on the situation, our legions of jetbikes swooped in, causing further panic. I’m loathe to say it, but I was actually so caught up in our imminent victory that I didn’t even see the daemon before he was right behind me.”

She lowered her gaze to the ground. That was something she had never revealed before, she usually just said the daemon had attacked.

“They say Nurgle’s daemons are fat and swollen, but this one was pale, bony and thin, like translucent skin draped over a mon- over a human skeleton. The Dark Reapers opened fire, and I tried to peer into the future, to divine all possible outcomes of the battle. But the mists were too thick, and the daemon to fast. In the end I don’t even recall everything, just that we fought for what felt like days, that he wielded a sword carved from the bone of some incomprehensible beast of the warp, and that he smelled like rotting death. In the end he spat his Ink at me, and that is how I got these scars. Blindly I charged in rage, and my spear pierced his skull. The next thing I know I am back on the craftworld being tended to by Haedanar…”

They all sat quietly for a moment, before one of the children seemed to want to ask something. Nytha was quicker: “Yes Thalear, Autarch Haedanar walked the path of the healer back then.