Aisling, once a denigrating and dismissive moniker, is becoming so enticing an aspiration that sensible young Mundanes gripped with the ashlish aislinge now study for deochs to take on this name and its associated gifts.

Now held by some to be a gift of the gods, it is still reviled in areas of Temuair as a sort of communicable madness. We have accounts of so-called spiritual epidemics in ages past, but this premise offers naught to explain the ordered and potent nature of the Aisling condition. I intend to prove that these oddities are not emblems of affliction, but rather are forces channeled through our energetic allies.

Be it said that Eachann, my friend and mentor, and I were prior divided on countless issues, but this one has irreversibly cleft our partnership.

It is his unswerving belief that the powers Aislings beckon are derived somehow from within the earth, that their vital force and fraternity are allied there. He terms this relationship clannach deartháir, or earthen kin. This manuscript will show that the clannach deartháir model, as illustrated above (Figure 1), does little to clarify much of the conduct of the Aislings.

My model, which I believe a more fitting paradigm of Aisling personae and their host of birthmarks, is crudely illustrated below (Figure 2). It demonstrates a distinct ethereal essence and can account for those aspects Eachann’s model cannot.

When one examines the clannach athar, or sky kin model, one is impressed by its liberation from terran constraints; instead the aislinge scaan (or reflection or spectre) which I will hereinbelow attempt to define, dwells from without the earth in what may be a spirit plane of sorts. There may be no dependence on the body’s confines whatsoever and represents the only viable grounds I have yet found for the various phenomena we associate with the gifted Aisling.

Whether Aislings maintain absolute control of their faculties I can only stab at an answer, but unquestionably they maintain exacting control of their bodies, a control drawn as Eachann conjectured from a source detached from our material surroundings. He termed this source Scaan Prosnaich Annym Riaghail Keillit: in essence, the “unseen reflection that stirs the will.”

I offer eight proofs for the existence of Scaan Prosnaich Annym Riaghail Keillit, and where it holds advantage, I aim to apply the clannach athar model to make plain its implications.

Widely held for a generation that the Aislings had brought with them the plagues of darkness, their potency against the Dark Ones increasingly suggests that they are instead the remedy. Principal to this potency is their irrepressible appetite for the hunt and the upgrowth it affords. Smachdaich ìre agus dàn or simply ìre, occurs almost without exception as soon as an Aisling protege is inducted into the Aisling subculture.

More than a mere “coming of age”, the pressing need for a young Aisling to wrest dominion over not only the body, but also the fauna, the elements, and the future, evinces an urge to become in step with the Scaan's boundless nature and marks thenceforth an unyielding divergence from the old culture. Clannach athar theory is lent credence by the stark margin and irreversibility of this transfiguration.

“The Aisling Threat” once meant that we Mundanes (an appellation I detest) withheld the secrets of the five Paths, now all but dominated by these new savants who are on the contrary proving themselves quite the opposite: a safeguard to our way of life. While I cannot speak for the community at large, many a Mundane now accepts, yea reveres, the Aisling capacity for learning.

It has taken the greater part of my life to reach this level of proficiency in but one discipline, yet even the meekest Aisling boasts far greater flair for commanding talent after talent! In the number of moons a vintner takes turning vine to wine, an Aisling nearly masters one Path, only to take on another wholly unrelated study, a faculty known as astar aistrigh. The only explanation I can conceive for this unusual and — I must confess — enviable virtue is that it too springs from the Scaan.

We all know of mothers who, with their child beset with the spark of Aisling insight, are unable to comprehend — in scarcely the course of the moon — their own child’s sudden acquisition of foreign tongues.

For some this gift often carries the irresistible tendency to speak no other way, shaghrynys mallaich, again overnight with the onset of this inner (or outer) endowment. Ordinarily this coarse language in unintelligible dialects goes ignored, and I myself do not find it exceedingly worrisome. It is however so unsettling to many townspeople that, as I pen this, laws are being drawn up to prohibit in public this manner of speech.

It is easy to see the Scaan at work here, but only with the application of the clannach athar model do we arrive at a reasonable depiction of how this might be.

Discounted for deochs as elaborate trickery, the ability to communicate with other Aislings without the use of one’s voice, or sanas ainbi, is now widely established. Even at impossible distances, the conveyance of civil actions, the coordination of attacks, and even I speculate casual banter is all accomplished with no outward discourse of any kind.

I myself have witnessed two Aislings standing side by side staring vacantly for an hour only to depart company with an, “I agree. I will afterward meet ye there.” I can only feebly imagine the form this language takes. One need only compare the two models to settle on clannach athar as the likely basis for sanas ainbi.

This brings us to another notable if less laudable trait of Aisings, dreamal 'sy laa, the predilection to idly stand for lengthy periods in a reflective muse transfixed on some otherworldly affair without even the shifting of feet.

That any Aisling is able somehow to accomplish half his exploits, despite this languor, at once fascinates and frustrates me. To what cause can we ascribe such disembodied idleness? Both Scaan models account for certain features, but clannach athar theory holds the advantage in deriving an origin of the dreamal 'sy laa phenomenon.

It has been noted that in remote areas of Temuair, Aisling hunters can be found in dreamlike absentmindedness locked in melee with desperate beasts. The adroit Aislings toy with the animal, injuring it enough only to provoke further attacks, never undertaking to finish it off. This feat, called shelgeraght scart, would be remarkable enough outside the arresting realization that the beast is fighting with all its mettle, while the entranced Aisling barely exerts himself to fend off every blow with impassive ease!

When willing game is scarce, they may likewise duel those of their own kind under this same expressionless trance. That these Aislings can repeatedly outwit an opponent (the while themselves completely absent of wits) offers further support to the clannach athar model.

There are occasions when an Aisling’s corporeal form abruptly dissipates without so much as a wisp or a breath. “Leaving this land,” they are in the habit of saying. Look sharp for a change in an Aisling’s comportment. Ye may notice an Aisling’s usually alert aspect degrade to one of vacancy before blinking out.

If one manages to stand composed after a disquieting episode of skellal roish, he can spy the vanished Aisling’s footprints. The watchful and sober observer may catch the subject’s re-emergence on that very spot! Clearly, the Aisling has traveled nowhere, and discussions with the more mannerly of their number have confirmed what I suspected: they remember not a thing during the interlude. Given that fact, the clannach athar model is again substantiated.

Were it not for the number of citizens who witnessed eug as eugais eug, I would have hastily dismissed this so-called “dying without dying” as mere hearsay.

During a recent Goblin incursion several townsfolk were dismayed to spot a dozen Aisling conscripts, outflanked and outnumbered four-fold, perish under the weight of the attack, only to return in scant minutes from an adjacent field to retrieve their armor and carry on the fight!

Was this clannach athar in action? After rigorous questioning of the witnesses separately, I have concluded that they saw something otherwise unexplainable on the battlefield that day. To “fall in battle” to an Aisling may mean merely that!

I cannot in fair conscience proffer the following roughhewn account of rach air t'suas as impartial proof, for I have neither seen nor adequately researched this claim to gauge its legitimacy, but if borne legitimate it would constitute the single greatest Aisling endowment.

Rach air t'suas, literally “to go up”, an alleged journey through death itself, is rumored to culminate in a sort of face-to-face covenant with the gods, where an Aisling barters mind for body. I find it an objectionably contradictory notion that one must become unimaginably frail in order to become immensely powerful. Howbeit, we know the Aisling is rife with contradiction, and this astonishing potential demands further study.

If my theories are accurate, what the Aislings claim may be true; their power may in fact flow from the gods. This would mean that the gods are not only awake in Temuair, but intensifying their influence. If I am to validate these assertions, it may prove necessary to join their number in order to complete my studies. My advancement in years I am told stands in my way, but the lure of intimate understanding, which swells with every day I investigate the Aisling, will grant me passage.

(remainder of manuscript omitted)