Ascending Spruce
Ascending Spruce is a realm of the Northeastern Threshold. It is bordered by Fenta to the northwest, Shandir Woods to the southeast, and Halta to the southwest across the Golden Leaf Canal.
Ascending Spruce is home to a number of spruce trees rather than the larger redwoods dominant further south. Its inhabitants still dwell in the trees, but their settlements are smaller than those in Halta. They are culturally connected to that land, save for the fact that the population of Ascending Spruce contains no humans.
Ascending Spruce was founded by political rebels from Halta, all ata-beasts, who decried the treatment of their kind within Halta. While they certainly did not assert the treatment of their kind was any better elsewhere in Creation, they believed Halta remained filled with discrimination against non-humans. Ata-beasts, though equal persons under the law, were expected to fulfil the dangerous jobs of flying messengers, military scouts, spies, and top-branch gatherer in much higher proportion than their human peers, and yet culture and architecture was shaped with the assumption that bipeds with opposable thumbs were the default, the 'correct' form for persons. When Halta refused to grant special rights to ata-beasts and reform its city layouts, Ascending Spruce was formed. Most of the ata-beasts are non-simian, due to such creatures having far less issue with the way of things in Halta than sapient birds and rodents.
Relations between Halta and Ascending Spruce are good, though political debates can be acrimonious. Spruce troops have been contributed to join Haltan forces battling the Linowan on a regular basis... with the exception of the War with the Bull. Ascending Spruce opposed alliance between Halta and the Bull, warning that the Icewalker could not be trusted. Their future once Yurgen Kaneko has consolidated his new territories may be bleak, for the Bull of the North is not known for letting any who speak against him live if he has strength to obliterate them.
A rising power in the democratic politics of Ascending Spruce is Akatar Blindsight, a large ata-bat. Akatar is a relative newcomer to Spruce, but is a firebrand politician, and has been able to secure support at biannual moot assemblies over the past decade. One of the driving messages in Akatar's speeches is vitriol against the god of coniferous forests, Caltia the Eternal, whom he blames for everything from failure to defeat the Linowan to food shortages during harsh winters in Ascending Spruce to the speciesist policies of Halta.
The motive behind Akatar's hatred is very personal... many years ago, when the ata-bat resided in Halta, he and his family encountered Caltia while traveling through the forest. He stood his ground in awe, but his wife and three children cowered in fear they could not control, and Caltia pursued and killed them all as is her nature, before moving on. Akatar swore vengeance that day, first approaching the Immaculate temple of Lake Kol in hopes the monks there would slay his family's killer. He found them useless, and came to realize that he could not leave it to humans to solve his problem, he would have to do it himself. Akatar has spent a great deal of time in meditation and martial excercises in order to enlighten his own essence, and now attempts to gain political power while at the same time studying the Terrestrial Martial Arts so he might some day claim vengeance.
