Myths of the Eirs

The concept of 'duty to the self' is prevalent throughout Eirsace. Communities exist for the individuals inside them to thrive. Often, people leave communities if they feel they are not getting what they want from them, be it friendship, purpose, skills, knowledge, or anything else. Leaving a community, or a community dissolving, is not perceived as failure, and rather 'just the way of things.' Impermanence is to be expected of the world. Communities and people change, disappear, and relocate. The earth itself is an individual, and it cannot be expected to stay still at the will of another.

Due to the constant relocation of communities, steady contact and good relations between neighbours were common. Historically, this was achieved using messenger birds and well-kept, intricate maps which were continually updated. Although modern communication technology made such practices obsolete, some more remote communities still use them, because of interest and occasionally faster message times.

Eirsace has a strong oral tradition, with very little written history and notions such as that the only stories worth telling are the ones that survive. Some external modern researchers have attempted to archive parts of Eirs culture and history. Many have met pushback and had limited success.

The people of the Eirs do not have strict methodology on how to practice the culture of the Eirs, and in general their methods of research come from a range of other faiths, the scepticism subfaith of evidentiality is very popular; some individuals have developed a more specialised offshoot of scepticism.

'Every person alive exists within their own universe, the universes of everyone alive today just so happen to coincide for the time being. Observed truth of someone else cannot immediately be applied to your own universe and such must be found out for yourself, certainty can only be found from first principles.'

- 'On Observation and Truth' (2006) a short collection of letters written by prominent scholar Soluomanulackim.Ir to an unknown individual.

In day to day life, a typical person of the Eirs will not consider every action they take with such detail, instead the most common factor which comes into play when making choices is the questions 'Do you want to?' or 'Will you like the outcome?'. A person of the Eirs is not likely to be influenced by any external notions of self sacrifice, if they help someone else, know that it is because they want to, not because they are obliged to.

Secondly, though arguably more importantly, is embracing the impermanence of the world, people who cling too tightly to the past are looked down upon as failing to understand what it means to be of the Eirs.

'People lost in nostalgia and longing to make the present the past will find themself stagnating, and stagnation breeds decay'

- From the documentary 'Life in the Wind' by Salar.J.Moak (2068)

Much like the communities themselves, folklore and myths are often varied, short-lived and unique, though certain stories seem to continue to be told across generations. Lacking a centralised archive, most older stories are lost to or permanently altered by time, with new mythology constantly surging to replace the old. A small, widespread collection of folktales was able to be recorded:

Shapeless Death
The Many-Legged Stranger
Rochaithe
Warding Motion
Attending the Cobbler

Young boy: “What happens after we die?”

Elder: “Well if there are others with you, you’d expect they’ll carry out whatever you asked ‘em to do with your body if you passed. And if there aren’t, you might hope that someone will happen across your body, check your chierk¹⁾ and carry them out” , of course that isn’t always the case, and the animals might get you first.”

YB: “No. I mean like, what happens to me, what comes after?”

E: “Right, well, I couldn’t tell you. You’ll meet death, sure about, everybody does, but what that’ll look like, is only something you can experience. Even if I died now and woke up tomorrow, whatever I found would be useless to anyone but me.“

YB: “Oh.”

- A conversation overheard by a follower of archivism when staying in an Eirsasi community.

- A collection of leather patches with the 4 most common chierk symbols: the top left means wanting to be left to nature, top right means wanting to be burned, bottom left means wanting to be buried or otherwise concealed, bottom right means they do not care what happens to their body.



The afterlife of a person of the Eirs is pointless to be speculated on by anyone but themself, and whilst there is lots of crossover with some eirsasi choosing to believe in the afterlife of other faiths, death is still very much a personal experience. Despite this, the possessions of a corpse are no longer seen as belonging to them anymore, and taking items from a body is perceived as normal, especially if the living performs the death rites for the dead, it can be seen as a type of payment.

Eirsasi culture has been largely unaffected by the Beginning of the End, as a whole. Shorter-lived communities are more common, and barely any of the communities from before the Beginnings of the End managed to survive without relocating. Generally, the belief in their way of living became stronger due to its adaptability to the new world. The more remote settlements, which were less reliant on modern communication technology, fared much better during the many crises in these 28 years. Lots of Eirsasi communities now find themselves bloated by people from other nations, fleeing their homes for someplace safer, and whilst the ability to create hospitable living environments quickly has always been one of Eirsace’s strengths, the demand for the technology has already rapidly outpaced its availability.

Since treating the infected does little to prevent the inevitable transformation into a mindless beast, people who know they have the contagion are left to fend for themselves.