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The following sounds like Imass:
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'In this manner, the land had changed to echo the cursed sorceries of the Shamans of the Antlers, the ones who kneel among boulders, the worshippers of stone, the weapon-makers.'
I'm not so sure about the Shamans of the Antlers thing, except that bonecasters have been referred to as shamans and antler is bone.
The worshippers of stone is easier as the (T'lan) Imass have been explicitly said to be masters of stone-work and to attach quite a lot of meaning to stone (cf. the whole 'many names for stone'-talk from Tool in MoI).
The weapon-makers part, especially since it's mentioned after "worshippers of stone", could also be a reference to the Imass' stone-work (huge flint swords anyone?).
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'Shamans of the Antlers, gnarled as tree roots, those few left, those few still haunting our dreams even as they haunt this ancient plain....
Sometimes their bodies are all but gone, until only their withered faces stare out from those cracks, challenging eternity as befits their terrible curse.'
Sometimes their bodies are all but gone, until only their withered faces stare out from those cracks, challenging eternity as befits their terrible curse.'
Masarch's thoughts on this:
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Every child knew of those twisted, malevolent spirits, the husks of shamans long, long dead, yet unable to truly die.
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'The Shamans of the Antlers gathered their deathless warriors....
Abandoning this plain - and from that time, only those who fell in battle were returned here. Broken pieces. Failed and withered as the plain itself, never again to reach or even look skyward. Such was their curse.'
Abandoning this plain - and from that time, only those who fell in battle were returned here. Broken pieces. Failed and withered as the plain itself, never again to reach or even look skyward. Such was their curse.'
The first bolded text would fit any undead as a description.
The part before "challenging eternity..." fits into the next part. The bolded text itself is pretty obvious: more than one character has commented the Imass' undeath is a 'terrible curse'.
The "husks of shamans..." and "deathless" parts are, again, references to undeath. The last bolded parts are more interesting, since this custom is known to be practised by the T'lan Imass: those who fall in battle and thus failed are, if possible, brought to a place with a nice view to watch whatever happens there for eternity, and the "never again to reach or..." part fits since they (those who failed) can't move.
Assuming we're talking about the Imass the next quote can be easily interpreted:
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They drank deep, until nothing was left. For at this time, the shamans were not alone, not for that fell ritual. No, others of their kind had joined them - on distant continents, hundreds, thousand of leagues away, each and all on that one night. To sever their life from the earth, to sever this earth from its own life.
The parts in italics are allusions on the no-magic zone; it makes sense that a ritual as huge as the Ritual of Telann could create a no-magic zone (if Beak could do it...)
Now the bolded parts.
A fell ritual isn't very hard.
The next parts are interesting since it's pretty unlikely every Imass could come back to 7C*. According to these lines the Imass formed large concentrated groups in specific places to, all at the same time, do(?) the Ritual (connected to eachother with... eh spirits or something
).To sever their life from the earth" probably means they left behind their spirits, the Hold of Beasts, etc.
* I know the Barghast came too late, but that could be because they were at sea. Also, even if they didn't have to travel all the way back to 7C, they may still have had to travel, and the others couldn't wait because it was such a mass-coordination thing.
So, as you may have guessed from the title, I think all this means that Bast Fulmar is a location of the Ritual of Telann, where the Imass became T'lan. I hope you read it and agree.
Of course this could be common knowledge, meaning I just wasted some of my life typing this....
