Arcana: Among the Spheres

Children of the Long Grass

by Mark Edwards

Knives in the long grass
Tawny shadows stalk the gloom
Weave your thorn-wall before they pass
Or surely face your doom
--Traditional Sunwing song

Listen! Here is the truth of it.

I speak with the voice of wisdom. Yes! We know the lion, who rules the plain as we rule these hills. The killer of our flocks, my children! The hunter of our hunters! Who has not wept at the loss of some sister or brother taken by the Lord of the Tall Grass?

Listen! The lion is a dangerous beast. Our enemy when we leave this palisade. Yes! But there is a greater foe! Kin to the lion. But kin to us. Having the strengths of both.

Listen! I speak of Children of the Long Grass. Some of our wisest hunters have seen them while walking on the far plain. Some of you young hunters have seen them as you test your courage in your journeys to the far hills. The tall folk who stalk the grasses, the people with long maned hair, who wear lion's skin.

Listen! It is not the skin of the lion they wear--for no Child of the Long Grass would kill a lion. It is their own skin that they wear. The skin that lets them take on lion's form. Yes!

	Typical Child of the Long Grass
	Air 3 (hunting) Water 4 (tracking) Earth 4 (quick healing) Fire 5 (Spear) Powers: Werelion 2 (F,M) The Child can change into a mighty lion. The Werelion's Water, Earth, and Fire scores are each increased by one from those when in human form.

Listen! You must fear them. For in lion form they are wiser than any lion, and in human form they are stronger than any man. And they do not hunt us to eat, my children, for we are kin too--but when we kill one of them...

Listen! Why do we live in these hills? Because our folk, who lived on the plains, long before your grandmothers were born, once warred with the Children of the Long Grass. And our folk were great warriors. Yes! Mighty warriors. Yes. And there were many of us and few of them. But they won. They hunted us in the night. And the true lions helped. And we fled to these hills.

Listen! The Children of the Long Grass live like the lion. Their women lead the hunt. They are fierce. The men fight to rule, and their leader takes all the women of the tribe as his--until he is defeated. Each generation is stronger than the last. They are few, but they are strong.

Listen! We do not hunt the lion. The lion is fierce, the lion may kill you, the lion may eat you. But what if you slay one of the Children? Their kin may slay the rest of us. Hunt all other beasts, but flee the lion--for it may not be a lion you face.

The Children of the Long Grass can be found in the realm of Sunwing on the sphere Shift. Sunwing is mostly open plains and rolling hills, and the people there live in tribal villages of less than a hundred people in each.

The Children live on the plains themselves, in the open, also in tribal groups, but of twenty to twenty-five people. Their social structure is very much like that of the lions, but a little more complex than the people around them believe. The women of the tribe are the hunters, the men are craftsmen. Both will become warriors if warfare is necessary.

They rarely change shape, for it is considered part of a religious ritual, and usually done only to celebrate the equinoxes. But a Child of the Long Grass can change shape at will, but it will be as last resort. And the Children will eat other people while in lion form--this is not considered taboo, but part of the natural inclinations of the lion.

Some Children are spherewalkers and have left their realm.

Children of the Long Grass copyright (c) 2001 Mark Edwards, used with permission.