Aganylosh'a
"Be like the aganylosh'a, and face both ways, that the wind may never blow you over a cliff." - old Ratha S'Kra Mur saying
This slender tree has a yellow bark and broad, trifoliate leaves of silvery green. It acquired its nickname, "Tree of Peace," because heralds took the aganylosh'a as their official symbol for all matters of factional arrangement from major battles to minor tournaments, chivalric judgements to truces. Indeed, it is a fitting symbol, for the pliant aganylosh'a has been noted to bend in violent storms where other stronger, stiffer trunks simply break.
The first recorded use of the aganylosh'a was more than 2800 years ago in a ritualized border war involving two S'Kra Mur families with conflicting territorial claims. As the participants were required to wear only traditional battle grey, it was thought that heralds (who remain to this day true to their red and blue tabards) might be mistaken for combatants, and killed. Instead, the then-King of Heralds, Tashchei II, caused an aganylosh'a sapling to be uprooted, and carried it before him as a staff. Its purpose was unmistakable, and he was granted full honors.
Since then the tree has come to be recognized throughout known Elanthia as a sacred symbol of Tamsine; nor has Tamsine disdained the offering of such worship. (Indeed, when Tashchei laid that first aganylosh'a sapling on her altar, it is said to have suddenly developed a full canopy of leaves before bursting into flames-- or so at least the Somloi relate, whose quiet villages surround the altar in a countryside that seems a timeless carpet of patchquilt farms and rolling, woodland dells. What is more, the Somloi tell this to their children; and they never lie to their own, only outsiders, as any Somloi will tell you.)
For Tamsine protects civilization, and it is the heralds that maintain civilized behavior between nations, whether in times of battle or peace. Their word of blessing can make a knight of a man or woman; their word of condemnation can cause the most powerful of lords and ladies to be despised and destroyed. So it proved with Assti Madetoja, Aesry Baron Suorvato, who deliberately expressed his displeasure on the field of valor by hacking a live aganylosh'a grove to pieces. The heralds jointly cursed him, and all of Suorvato's allies deserted his cause. The Baron withdrew to his hereditary lands; but before a force formed of many nations could convene and attack, his son slew Assti. Moltes Madetoja was praised for this action by all, and acknowledged in rulership over the barony which his late father's actions had rendered forfeit. The heralds then unanimously granted him the surname of Heraldfriend-- a distinction that his subsequent career proved well-merited.