Editing Sigil:Gholibin (section)

== After the Wrath ==

The generations immediately following the Great Wrath gave skur much of the meaning it possesses today. The war did not end neatly, leaving surviving Gholibin free to return to their former lives. Populations had been shattered, territories altered, old routes destroyed, and ancient relationships transformed. The Dragha themselves were diminished, while the Seylandri civilization of Tar Aerchel had been catastrophically broken. Large portions of the Sigil Lands had become a scarred country of ruins, altered landscapes, abandoned places, and surviving peoples attempting to discover what could still support life.

The Gholibin could not rebuild everything that had existed before the war, and eventually ceased trying. They made new Hollowholds, found surviving kin, joined broken Hearths, reopened old routes where possible, abandoned those that had become dangerous, and carried what memory remained into another generation. Songs changed with them. Compositions that had once directed armies became remembrances of the dead. New instructional songs taught children how to recognize dangers created by the Wrath. Ancient instruments were repaired, copied, altered, and played again beside fires in settlements that had not existed a generation earlier.

This was skur practiced on the scale of a civilization: not forgetting the old world, nor pretending its destruction did not matter, but refusing to perish merely because it could not be restored.

Their ability to establish communities quickly and organize themselves without monumental infrastructure served them well in a world where permanence had proved disastrously fragile. In later centuries, Rhone tribes wandering south encountered Gholibin populations already living among the remains of the elder world. Relations varied enormously: fighting, avoidance, exchange, curiosity, hostility, friendship, and accommodation all occurred in different places.

The gradual spread of Rhone settlement did not simply sweep the Gholibin away.

They had already survived worse.