Who Are The Autumnals?
Excerpt from Curtis Rx’s “Guidebook To Traversing The October Country”-
Who Are The Autumnals?
Very little hard evidence is known about the illusive group of people called The Atumnals. I use the word people loosely, because some of the lore has them describe as the first born human inhabitants of The October Country, while other stories tell tales of roughly humanoid shaped pillars of light similar to legends of the Ignis Fatuus, or more commonly known as the Will-O'-The-Wisps. Some other references describe them more in the vein of living scarecrows, possibly even an intermingling of flesh and blood, straw and wheat. One passage engraved above a doorway in The Wayward Equinox Lodge translates to "Of The Earth, Of The Flesh, Of The Ether. Regardless of the various legends passed down through time, they all agree one two distinct ideologies, that The Atumnals were the first born October Country inhabitants and that they are more than just human.
Very few of the already limited tales of The Autumnals ever include eye witness accounts. The Autumnals always seem to travel under the cloak of darkness and have only ever been witnessed as a fleeting shape seen only in the corner of your eye. The only evidence that The Autumnals have ever passed through an area are with the sudden appearance of strange rock paintings, unusual corn husk talismans, and mysterious effigies formed out of freshly harvested wheat, corn, and hay. All of the artifacts left behind to signify The Atumnals has visited you have been said to either be tokens of protection and prosperity or a warning of impending doom and calamity.
Many of the stories from The Autumnals peculiar history have spawned the various traditions formed in The October Country and eventually making their way to our modern Halloween & Samhain traditions. In The October Country, offerings of a portion of your daily harvest are left on the doorstep to feed any weary wanderers to help them along their journey, an exchanging of corn effigies to bring luck and property in the year to come, wishes whispered into a pumpkin seed during the annual sowing that are said to come true when the pumpkins has been harvested and carved into glowing totems.
What little we know about The Autumnals only grows deeper in mystery as we uncover more information on their shadowed history.