The Song of the Veer
/Tyr Knowledge/
The song of the Veer is a song that is about a book long, and made up of wordless notes that are sung in a variety of tones. Throughout the various stanzas, there are specific stanzas that have effects on Veeran behavior.
- The Stanza of Calling - If one sings this specific stanza, it will bring all Veer who hear them to them. Can be sung without the song of Tyr.
- The Stanza of Calming - This stanza is known to tame the Veer who hear it, but not put them to sleep. Since the Song of Tyr stopped, only children under the age of 14 can sing this stanza correctly.
- The Stanza of Rest - Requires the Stanza of Calming to be sung directly before it, this stanza used to put the Veer to sleep. As such, it was sung every night from a point in Tyr that acted like a giant microphone. Since the Song of Tyr stopped, the notes required for this have not been reached by anyone within Tyr.
- The Stanza of Repulsion - Basically a bunch of squeal like notes strung together in a pattern that makes it so that the Veer will both give a larger radius than squealing will, and will not agitate the Veer outside of the repulsing zone.
- The Stanza of Protection - This stanza will call nearby Veer to the aid of those who can sing it. Since the lose of the Song of Tyr, this stanza has lost a good amount of potency. Where as it used to call 10 to 12 Veer, it now calls only 4 or 5.
- The Stanza of Threat - This stanza was meant to be a sign of invasion if the force made it past the borders of Veeran territory, or a Tyr citizen noted a large force getting closer without the Veer noticing, which has only happened once. It still is singable, but the singer must be careful to get away before the horde of Veer causes unintended harm.
The First Singer
/Common Knowledge/
As the story goes, there once, thousands of years before the current queen was even born, was a king by the name of Cirsus. He was a man who believed himself to be well above his people, and also believed that those above their people, while taking many pleasures of being higher, should work for the better of their people. And he did. He was quite well known to indulge in his power and great wealth, but also did many great things for his people. To the point where the homeless, it is believed that his capital had only 4 out of 5000 people, where clean. Most who believe the story say that this was due to public bathing houses.
The crowning achievement of his personal greed, however, was that while traveling to one of the struggling villages, he saw the most beautiful woman in the kingdom, and enslaved her. But in return for producing such a beautiful woman, Cirsus granted the little village with many animals and land rights allowing them to become a plantation town, attracting jobless people from all over the land.
Now while Cirsus was greedy and owned Tyr, the woman he enslaved, he was by no means cruel. Lustful, but not cruel. Tyr was allowed to where anything she wanted from the many royally styled clothes that Cirsus had taken her out to get, often taking her out at least once a month to get new ones as they wore out. Tyr was also allowed to travel about the kitchen, bathroom, study, royal hall, bedroom, and the dog pen room, which only held the royal dogs at night. The only thing was that the bathroom was the only room that Cirsus couldn't see fully from his throne, and the only one that he allowed Tyr to close the door of. This was the room where Tyr would cry when she was sad.
Cirsus didn't allow Tyr to go anywhere but the bathroom and right by his side when he had guests over, however. Frankly, it was probably for her better as many a slave trader had tried to by her off the king. Many came out saying that Cirsus valued Tyr more than money ruled the world.
After a few years of being enslaved by Cirsus, Tyr began to take singing lessons from the castle priest. Many who heard Tyr sing said that her voice was more beautiful than all of her body. When she wasn't singing, or 'serving' Cirsus, Tyr was either cooking or reading. Her favorite topic was the bestial race of the Veer. She was curious how they would be fighting amongst themselves, but the moment more that 5 people approached the woods they so fiercely guarded, the would all strike at the invaders.
One particular night, Tyr was practicing singing when a young boy, no older than 12, came to her. He was the priest in training and he had an odd book in his hand, saying that he and the priest found it sitting on the alter with the morning light beaming down directly on it. The pages seemed to glow, and the book itself seemed to sing. However, Tyr was the only one who could hit the notes of the book. Most believed it to be a gift from the gods to get Tyr to sing more. And one particular night, she sang three specific stanzas in a row.
Out side the walls, a large group of Veer slowly walked towards the source of the noise. Their weapons all lay in the resting positions, and the Veer seemed to almost be in a daze. A severe contrast to what the Veer have been known to be like. When Tyr got to the last stanza on the page, and the third stanza of that time she sang from the book, the Veer slowly began to drop to the ground asleep. By the end of said stanza, not a single of the Veer was awake.
The next day, one of the Veer walked into Cirsus's castle and told Tyr that should she ever need to seek safety, the Forests of the Veer, now known by her name, would always be ready for her. With that, said Veer walked out of the castle.
Over the next couple of years, Cirsus and Tyr discovered that one of them was sterile. Cirsus loyal to Tyr and protective of her, was not going to try and make kids with another woman. So instead, he took Tyr on a walk through the poor neighborhood, which was only about 4 streets. Together, they picked out five children, three female and two male, to go and live in the castle and be trained as heirs to the king. Two of the children were homeless and picked up by Cirsus and Tyr without thought, and the other three had their families be moved to work in the castle. Many of the families of the children were educated and all worked in areas of the castle were they could see the children at least once a day, but usually more like five times.
As Tyr was 32, she was 15 when she was enslaved, a rebellion had been plaguing Cirsus's land. Eventually they made it into the city walls, and as soon as Cirsus heard that, he knew that at least him or Tyr would have to die. So Cirsus went into action. Seeing as how he had always been a king who wanted the better of his people, he never bothered to make a secret escape route. So he handed Tyr her book and a bag of her clothes, and locked her in her closet. He told her that when the rebels left the castle to celebrate, to leave the locked closet and go to the Forests of the Veer. This was the last command/order/direction that Cirsus gave to his beloved Tyr. When he was done with it, he told her that he loved her more than anything he had ever known. And he was right.
As soon as the rebels had done their deeds, and Tyr no longer heard them about the castle, she followed Cirsus's orders to the letter. And when she reached the Forests of the Veer, she found the beginnings of what would become the City of Tyr. What existed when she got there was a good sized series of houses with a location that had been carved out of the mountain, which could be seen from the edges of the Forests of the Veer. When she approached the Forests of the Veer, with the remaining members of the families of the Heirs and the one homeless boy who had become an heir, the Veer began their warning growls. Tyr then read the three stanzas that she read the day the Veer entered the castle and told her that the Veer would be ever ready to accept her into their forests.
The scene was what most would have called funny, seeing furry little half sized humanoids falling from the trees and seeing giant ones dropping with but a single snore. To Tyr and her party of escapees, it was a serious scene of safety. They quickly went into the forest, heading straight for the houses on the mountain. The rebels who followed close behind found out the hard way why you never wake a sleeping Veer. They had their intestines ripped out of their stomachs and used to hang them, in a state which they were left as a warning to all who threaten the Veer, or Tyr.
Tyr quickly figured out that the hollowed out area was a stage set up by the Veer for her to sign at. While the Veer never did more than bring the occasional recent kill to the little village, Tyr felt that she needed to repay their kindness.
Over time, the village grew into a town that existed within the mountain, with a church directly under the stage with a window that let the light of the sun shine directly on the alter at sunrise. For the next 30 years, Tyr sang everyday to the Veer. And everyday the Veer slept. On the day that Tyr died, even the Veer came to the stage to see her body when the town had gathered around the woman that they all would have gladly called mother and savior. That night, the Veer stood in rings going all the way down the mountain. Holding paws, they all did a simultaneous Howl of the Dead, a ritualistic series of howls which Veer still do to this day, that was so loud that the gods and the spirit of Tyr heard it. Since then, the Forests of the Veer and the Town within the Mountain became known as Tyr and the capital city of Tyr.
At that moment, the Song of Tyr began, many saying that it was Tyr's spirit. Along with the Song of Tyr, the gods granted all humans who are born within the land of the Veer the ability to sing the Song of the Vere as Tyr once did.
The Veeran Way
/Common Knowledge/
When not in danger, the Veer are often having battles over territory. However, it is considered disrespectful, among the Veer, to attack without warning. You will always at least have a five second snarl before a Veer attack. When dealing with territory, a Veeran assault party will wait at the borders of the other Veer pack's territory, and snarl loudly in a rhythmic fashion, the Veeran battle call so to speak.
The oddest part about the territorial system of the Veer, is that a pack with less than 5 fighting members will not attack nor be attacked by other packs. The other big oddity is that Veer will never leave their forest without an extremely important reason, so Veer outside of Tyr is something that very few people will ignore. Also, if a threat comes within a certain distance of where the Veer see as the line in and out of Tyr, the first Veer to see them will howl. This will bring about one of the most feared, and rightfully so, military forces known to man, the Veeran Horde. While not an organized military, the Veeran Horde is an instinctively based system for protecting their lands. This means that every Veer has it within them, like bred protectors.
The Archive of the Veer
This is undoubtedly the Veers' only true secret. This is a library that the Veer, specifically the small breed, manage that contains all of the accumulated knowledge of the Veer. All of their history lies within these well hidden halls has only been seen by ten pairs of human eyes, none of which have ever told anyone about it.
The Archive of the Veer is also where the shaman packs are trained. These packs act as the Veers' religious system, and are often reclusive, and protected and fed by the Veer packs around them. If you ever meet a Veer that knows how to speak human, they were trained at the Archive of the Veer because they were sent on a mission of dire importance to the Veer.
