Or: The Botanist’s Guide to Yornian Myth 2nd ed. Chapters:

• Introduction & acknowledgments, I–VII
• The climes of the Yornian isle, 1–16
• An apocryphal and unduly short reference to pre-empire agrarian beliefs, 17–24
• Local psychoactives and their traditional preparations, 25–39
• Interlude: vanishing native ecologies, 40–44
• Trees-bramble-bracken, 45-60
• Safe(r) passage through sacred lands, 61–69
• Flower Rites, 70–91
• Aquatic florae, 92–100
• Coastal life & the pools, 101–112
• Afterward, 113

An apocryphal and unduly short reference to pre-empire agrarian beliefs

Early Yornian myth holds that from the first tree—Aneir—sprang the 5 original forests of the island/world (depending on translation), aka the Aneirean Forests:

• Syldoral ferch Aneir, the ocean
• Delapthorun ferch Aneir, the fogged
• Delogorud ferch Aneir, the traveler
• Minradeth ferch Aneir, the swamp
• Delkarstoran ferch Aneir, the climber

Safe(r) passage through sacred lands

Appeasements:

• A love note never delivered
• The skull of a pet animal no smaller than an adult hare
• A pair of boots that will be missed
• The cherished stone from a piece of inherited jewelry

Aquatic florae

Like most of my colleagues, I had discounted occasional report of vibrant tropical fruits being found on northern Yornian shores. However, on one trip—ostensibly to study the rockpools there—I myself came upon such a strange gift. Not only were they fresher than could be explained by a trade ship losing its cargo but in fact these were not quite any known fruit I had studied before. The archetypes were correct, and I could in one clearly see a close relation to our own Mangifera indica, but the particulars were very unique. In this area of study I have had little luck, except this letter from a sailor sent home on his deathbed. Interestingly, Able-bodied-seaman Eisa was left on Yornian shores following the crash of the H.E.S. Attention but uniquely he refused to return to the mainland or even step foot upon a ship again… the letter is reproduced in full here:

We were four days out from Dannofer headed into that winter sea’s grip when the storm came down blowing from the north driving ice and wind abberant as if to scour the holy islands clear away into the night never to see another dawn. Waves higher than any but the Skipper had seen so in the trough none even the Barrelman could see out for the next. Charts said two hours from a couplet of Yornian barrier isles so we made for them in what haste we could with soaked canvas and 5 Able’s already consigned to Her hungry swells.

It could not have been but by St Galno’s eye that we lay a perfect line then and in what was both soon and an eternity came the cry we’d ached and labored for land ho land ho land ho land ho he shouted himself hoarse in a challenge to those winds and a warning and a prayer. The skipper himself a man of the salt ways and distrusting of our saints one and many kept checking and rechecking the traverse board and telling all around him it could not be it could not be land ho it could not be land ho no isles are here we are in open water still as none but the deranged could convey a galley at speeds to make our sights for true.

It was then that the night broke apart in those reverent and terrible lances across the skies and all us deafened and the Barrelman continuing his cries for it was all he could do in moments that try our souls and weigh our debts and show us the ledger of all we lack. Yet stranger still and none who saw it will lay any other claim against mine then these lights were then reflected refracted renewed into a glow in the froth and churn of where only darkness and death sat before. Through the next trough some part of the mystery revealed into nightmare as these sacs of pain and light and thoughtlessness came across deck with the break and those men who were made forcefully of their acquaintance came to know a new fear at least those who kept to their lines and were not carried across and out and away.

We could see them more ahead in the next wave all gathering as if making some unholy communion. And they were one and all risen like those other of nature’s most diligent supplicants the moth rising to the light that is their salvation and their death one in the same as it is with all beings in the end. The ruinous bolts from heavn seemed to know to seek to drive into these creaturous clouds and them that were struck carried their renewed light away and down in collapsing dead spirals to be hidden once more in that blackest night of the depths.

Through this all we gibbering few who had not yet found a final fate held fast and into the lee of this isle that should not could not be we sailed. No port and no lighthouse we ought to fear some shoals but no room was left for such fears in the flight and so we turned her and kept close and sent the skipper away for he kept trying to take the wheel and turn her out again. Perhaps our desperation saw us blind to the wrongness present there in the lush palms looming out across sandy beaches with no right to exist in this place and time and under these skies.

Those shores lay littered with fallen fruit thrown free by these great winds into which we tacked like madmen. On my life I can swear true that there was all manor of those great melons and citrus so desirous of import from tropic lands afar for I in another easier younger time had sailed those clear waters under other flags. Around us still the seas surged swollen with those gelatinous luminous things and in the light of the next flash drank down into the hungry tide we could see the sand’s crimson hue and the peristaltic motion of its shifting coast and some of us awoke to the skippers warnings and fought for the wheel.

Here I shall arrest this tale and opine that mutinous or not and regardless of the progenitor of the blood beneath my nails I did act that day as a man facing out into that unknown desolation with open eyes and as sound a mind as can be kept and it is with this background I tell you that a melee was in fact the necessary violence to secure our return to familiar shores. The skipped did open his rifle case to us and it is this difference that won our cause that day to turn her around and make for the lesser evil that is the worst storm I have ever sailed through.