Templetree

In the southern parts of the Taycha, a strange tree grows. At first sight, the tree is not uncommon, it is a fir-tree with bluish green needles and long shaped cones. The resin of the tree has a very dark colour and is sometimes nearly red. Its wood, which is rather dark for a fir-tree, is seldom used, and if, to build gallows and coffins for the criminals.
This fir-tree always grows in groups of about twelve trees, forming a perfect circle. The tops of the trees form a domed roof over the inner circle, and the trees need so much food from the soil that nothing else can grow there. Many of these trees are circling a well or a pond.
To the inhabitants of the Taycha, the tree group resembles a temple. Some circles now have an altar in them, an altar to serve an ancient and forgotten deity. In the surrounding bushes (at some distance) graves have been found. In the graves, reddish Tundstains amulets were buried.

Scientists have studied these trees and came to the conclusion that the unknown deity had to be a god of the forest. The templetrees as they are called, had a natural formation in a circle and were adapted as temples. Because the dead were buried (in some cases, it is proved the buried were still alive when put under the earth) near the save and guarded temples, the trees sucked the blood from the bodies which gave its resin a reddish colour. The resin formed the specific Tundstains, which was worth a lot. Eventually, the priests may have noticed this connection, and sacrificed blood and living persons to the trees. These slaughters made the temple a feared place, and this terror still rings in the other name for the templetree, “Albsfir”.

Legends have it that the trees formed temples for the Albs, who had found their life sucking kind in tree form.