"Legend has it that long, long ago the gods grew angry with the world because their chosen people had not cherished the gifts that they had given them. For many ages, the gods had smiled upon them for their cleverness and the people had flourished. The people had built great cities filled with wonders unimaginable, cities that reached up into the clows. They had built marvelous machines that flew across the hvens, carrying the people from one great city to another like the wind. As they flourished, the people learned many things to bring comfort to their lives. They had great healers to bring succor to the ill and even to give them life once more when the evil seeds came upon them and caused them to wither.

"But they had also built terrible wepons to kill, wepons that were so powerful that they could level whole cities of their enemies with great fire that turned all before its wrath into ash.

"In time the People grew lazy, weak, slothful. They had raped the life giver, the mother Eirt, and taken so much from her that she became weak and sickly. The strong preyed upon the frail, the clever upon the weak of mind, the young upon the old.

"A day came when those who called themselves god sayers, who worshiped in the temples of the gods, were overcome with a fever of the mind. They began to believe themselves to be the hands of the gods. Ignoring the teachings of their gods, they took vengeance and judgment upon themselves. They killed in the names of the gods, destroyed, did all that they could to deprive those they considered unlike themselves of the right to life and liberty, for they had come to believe that only they knew the true way, only they had the right to the gifts of the gods, only they had the right to prosper. All had to believe as they believed, or it was their duty as the hands of the gods to smite them down and destroy them.

"The gods grew angry and fearful of these tortured souls, fearful for their wandering children. For, like doting parents, they had felt joyful when their children had grown wise and strong and begun to make their own way, to walk alone. They had forgiven their follies, knowing that in time they would attain the wisdom to use the gifts they had given them wisely.

"When they saw that the blasphemers, those whose minds had been eaten with a sickness that made them believe that they were higher and more favored than the other children, would inherit the Eirt with the blood of their brothers, they looked for a way to protect the people. But they could find no way pluck them from the path of destruction of those who called themselves god sayers. They saw that the only hope for their children was to wreak their anger upon all, to cleanse mother Eirt and allow the people who survived the chance to learn from their mistakes and to begin again.

"For many days, they rained fire upon the land to cleanse it. And when the great cities of the children sank beneath the sea, they blew their breath upon the land to cool the fire, making of it a frozen land. In time, when they saw that only a few of the people remained and they were miserable with cold and hunger, they took pity upon their children and blew their breath upon the land again and brought warmth to mother Eirt.

"And they wept for what they had had to do to their children, bringing green growing things to the land so that the people were no longer hungry. It was then that the people discovered that the gods had left one gift to their children on mother Eirt to show them that they were forgiven and that they would be allowed to prosper again. They placed this gift upon the lifeless plane, where none could deny that it was a gift from them, and them alone, for it sprang from the withered, lifeless soil in that place where nothing else grew. And this is why, each year, we travel to that holy place and offer prayer and wait for the sign that we are smiled upon once more. Each year, at the time of the spring solstice, the gods lift their eye upon us to see if we have learned our lesson and are worthy of the gift they left us."