L-O-V-E Jojobo, would jump there in a heartbeat. Also why is no one talking about Jojobo? hmm?!? only Glomberry? for shame.

I would think Jojobo to be about "the Hunt" and "Only the strong survive in the jungle". Also a VERY interesting thing to note is that in the histories, jojobo wasnt part of the "basin civilzation" heck I dont even think it was known. Jojobo is also not part of the same base cultural way the other 3 communes work since they mention how the wiccans of the BASIN forests found the fae and healed them and the BASIN druids helped the forest blah blah blah. They later go on to say that THREE and I repeat THREE great trees were raised, one in Ackle, one in Glom and one in Seren. So yeah Jojobo culture can be TOTALLY different in how they work from the other 3 communes. Not to mention that they are a jungle while the other 3 are forests.

But yeah im just blabbing on now. But I could see Jojobo having maybe sun pyramids (in the mayan style), with perhaps those that pray up to father sun named "High priestesses of the Way" and looked at like the seers to the leader. The Lion Druids could be the great warriors to them, using fang and claw. etc. The people there could probably use Spears and Bow and their warrior guild called something like "The Amazons (females only or you become an eunuch)". The flora and fauna there could be wild boars, lions, zebras, posionous mushrooms etc.

Jojobo would rock for sure

And so the experiment proved to be a great success. The Sixth and Seventh Circle discussed creating another collective spirit of lesser spirits, only this one specifically made of the spirits of the trees, in order to create ethereal moorings to the forests. This would allow forests to eventually regenerate if they suffered a fate similar to Sakarich. There was a debate I didn't quite understand about whether this Tree of Trees should create moorings on the prime plane as well, but they decided against it, saying it would make the forests too vulnerable to the Soulless. Auseklis of the Sixth commented that after the war ended perhaps the ethereal moorings could be made manifest on the prime plane. He was always the optimistic one. -- Book of Orlachmar

Apparently, the raising of the Maeve Consciousness and anchoring the forest through an ethereal manifestation of the Tree of Trees proved to be a very effective defense.

There's probably a fair argument to be made that there's little spiritual essence left in there, so I can't imagine much could be Awoken from it.

You were doing well until this bit, and now I have to go "huh?" cause I can't remember awakening being mentioned as related to the forests themselves.

Wasn't the Maeve there to bind the spirits to the forests to protect them because they were the anchors for most lifeforce?

There's inherent spiritual essence in most everything 'natural', it's what's 'awoken' by the Sixth Circle - trees have it, and that's what's made manifest when you awaken Nymphs and Dryads, much like Moon was awoken from, well, the moon, and Old Man Rock from, well, rocks. Everything is awoken to something natural in the world, and it's just a manifestation of what already exists.

I know this, but in the context it seems weird.

The current histories give me the impression that the forests existed in a... relatively mundane sense first, then the Maeve was made and the spirits were bound to the forests, then after that the essence of the trees in the forests were awakened into the tree of trees.

Right. But there's a lot of fae (nymphs, leprechauns, willowisps, dryads, etc) that were awoken in the forests long before Maeve came to be. They were what composed the mass of Maeve, and are the Faethorn. It delves into a big long discussion as to what Maeve 'is' from there, and I don't really want to get into the whole nature-of-fae thing, but - and again it's only my speculation - I'd suspect that Zenos consumed a lot of the latent spiritual energy in the Sakarich Forest, which could by why it's just a (relatively) lifeless wasteland of sand and parched earth. At least, if I were going to explain it, or argue against spirits being awoken from the skarch itself, that's the route I'd take!

I'd also argue that's why Scorpion (who just wants to be alone) is hiding there - it's a relatively 'dead' area, compared to other regions, with little/no fae running about, so she really is peacefully alone and all that. But that's really just me speculating!

I'm convinced Skarch was never possible, but I still think it'd be cool if it were. The idea of treating a desert as a special kind of forest has a deep appeal to me (and probably anyone who reads A Sand County Almanac regularly). And it really appeals to me to imagine what the spirituality would be like, what the attitudes would be like, what life would be like for people who chose to live in a forest that most of the world didn't even recognize as being a forest, and mistook for a dead, harsh wasteland. (I still don't feel like I really captured that in my play Blown Away though -- it was too much exposition to convey the feel adequately.)

~The desert is a forest with its life underground, and the perfect disguise above...~ Hmm, I may not be singing that precisely right, but it still works.

People need to get to one definition of 'tainted'. I've always ran on the belief that 'tainted' means 'corrupted by the essence of the Soulless', ie the Traitors, Orlachmar, Viravain, Sun, the Wyrd?????, etc and then there's the Taint/Tainted, which explicitly refers to Magnagora, Geomancers and that grade of corruption delivered by Kethuru, changed as it is over the centuries since its release. (Though one could, I suppose, argue that it's a whole different brand of Taint now, since Kethuru re-tainted Magnagora after the World Serpent sucked it up...)

We don't know what happened to Lion in the remaining section/s of the Elder Wars, though. For all we know Fain force-fed him the Soulless elixir and rode the now twenty foot long, flaming Lion spirit around as a warmount before it was taken down by the combined efforts of Charune and Shikari, who followed up the victory with an epic meet-in-the-air high five.

I do like the idea a lot, it would lead to some great conflict, and I'm not slamming it in any way. I'm just torn between the relative awesomeness of that and the Charune/Shikari mid-air high five, and I can see no way of that occuring without the death of taint-Lion. (I think I might be overestimating it a little, but in my minds eye the shifting morass of shadow-born tattoos that blanket Shikari's frame are forming the words "YEEEEEAH")

And then you have that Divine Scholar that states there is no evidence any of the other Soulless spread Taint, and it could be considered a byproduct of Kethuru only. Because the Taint we know is the obvious KethuruTaint. Or some such.

Even your own post gives two definitions; I think the deciding needs to start with you!