The Great Kindling

The Great Kindling, also known as The Kindling of the Fire of Understanding, is the name given by the Bright Way to the emergence of sapience among the yinrih.

It is a matter of debate whether the earliest extant example of written language was in fact the first instance of true writing. Both yinrih ink and the steadtree leaves they wrote on are very biodegradable, lasting mere decades in all but the luckiest of circumstances.

It is also a matter of debate whether sapience was monogenic or polygenic, that is, whether a single individual was born sapient and passed the necessary traits to his or her pups, or whether the necessary precursors to self-reflection were latent in the population as a whole, and true sapience was kindled in multiple places. Polygenism is currently the most popular theory, as the traditional markers of sapience as far as monkey foxes are concerned, language and ritual, appear almost instantaneously across the yinrih’s range around 100 millennia prior to First Contact.

Whatever the case may be, the earliest writings appear well before the deaths of the last nonsapient yinrih. Text accounts seem to indicate that sophonts would be born into otherwise nonsapient litters to nonsapient childermoots, and only realize their uniqueness upon meeting other sophonts after leaving their shires and joining the interstitial nomadic teenagers.

These primordial scribes used the same glyph to refer to the tree-dwellers across the river and to their nonsapient parents and litter mates. The earliest writings already speak of taboos around sophonts and non sophonts forming childermoots, but it’s possible this wasn’t the case in the beginning.

Early monkey fox religion seems to have operated on a simple syllogism:

1. My movements are the result of an act of will.
2. Other things also move (leaves, wind, water, clouds, etc.)
3. Those things must also possess a will of their own.

And thus was born the yinrih’s natural religion upon which The Bright Way draws its most ancient rites. This is not only not scandalous to the most orthodox Wayfarer, but the Bright Way regularly defends its claim to being the rightful inheritor of the shamans’ legacy against neoshamanists who say otherwise. Claravian teaching holds that this animism was the necessary groundwork upon which their monotheism was built.

It is also a matter of Claravian doctrine that the Theophany occurred before the deaths of the first sapient yinrih. While this is a controversial claim among secular archaeologists, it is well established that the first surviving example of written language and the oldest accounts of the Theophany are dated to within a single yinrih lifetime, a fact recognized even by the staunchest opponents of the Bright Way.

As for the Theophany itself, the texts differ in minor details, but certain themes are ubiquitous:

1. Despite occurring at midday, the skies were said to darken and the stars were described as unusually bright.
2. Despite the canonical text using plurals as though the whole species was being addressed collectively, the earliest texts speak as though the voice was addressing each individual directly, although context makes it clear the whole species was given the Great Commandment.
3. The voice identifies itself as the yinrih’s Creator, and links their origin to the tree dwellers.
4. The actual Commandment itself differs slightly from text to text, which results in some minor disagreement about its meaning among Wayfarers, but it boils down to this: The Light has created other sophonts among the stars, and the yinrih are to find these sophonts. Most texts include something to the effect of “let them know they aren’t alone” or “offer them your friendship.”

One of the strongest arguments Wayfarers have supporting the supernatural nature of the Theophany is how the Bright Way shows up nearly instantly, and is nigh ubiquitous across the yinrih’s range, following the Theophany. Even those who rejected the content of the message agreed that SOMETHING happened. Modern secular scholarship, especially among the Partisans, chalks the whole thing up to mass hysteria, possibly aided by the novelty of self reflection.

Lastly, I’ll touch on why neoshamanists are called NEOshamanists and not simply shamanists. As stated before, the fledgling Bright Way was ubiquitous, but not quite unanimous. Despite claims by neoshamanists of Claravian persecutions, no such evidence exists, either among surviving Shamanist writings or among early Claravian accounts. Indeed, the closest thing we have on the matter are shamanists mistrusting the rapidly developing Claravian technology. (keep in mind this was still the monkey fox stone age, so said ‘technology’ would be things like novel fire-tending methods and food preservation strategies.)

The reason why Wayfarers outstripped their shamanist peers is that it was basically a whole religion of ADHDers hyperfocusing on the task of getting to the stars. It didn’t hurt that it helped them advance in other areas, too.

Anyway, it seems as though what few shamanist shires remained were content to remain in Newman’s Dale, while the Bright Way exploded outward to the rest of the continent. Over time, it was simply an unspoken rule that you left these primitives alone and they wouldn’t bother you. Archaeological evidence of shamanist activity abruptly ceases well before the yinrih leave their cradle continent. Two theories exist surrounding their demise. Both pin the blame on natural causes rather than internal strife or external antagonism, and both theories involve the tree dwellers.

A particularly severe drought struck Newman’s Dale immediately prior to the last shamans vanishing. I know what you’re thinking: they must have all starved from the lack of food and water brought on by the drought. Would that they were so lucky…

During the drought, the River’s water level lowered to the point that a ford developed between the northern land inhabited by the tree dwellers and the southern land where the yinrih lived. Evidence of large-scale southward migration of tree dwellers exists. It is thought that the tree dwellers brought novel diseases that were communicated to their sapient cousins, and they all died as a result.

But another theory, and currently the most widely accepted, is that the two species, occupying the same niche as they did, came to blows over the limited food available, and the sophonts were killed an eaten by their nonsapient cousins.

In any case, the next time we see non Claravian groups claiming to be descended from the original shamans is a few centuries prior to the dawn of the space age, a gap of several yinrih lifetimes, and they appear geographically far removed from Newman’s Dale.