jpholding
March 27th 2006, 03:54 PM
This will be part of the next tektoonics upload in a week or so, and I'd like to post it here early for comments from those who have read the stories. I'm filling in a lot of the background for the origins of the beings whom Gen'a'too and M'l'strom represent. Surprise! They're not actually what we'd call demons, but are more like Organians or Q, but not as powerful. I'm also filling in some of the background for Hearthstone's natural citizens, up to a certain point.
Comments? Questions? Charges of personal insanity on my part? Send 'em on.
************
Eidolon's History of Hearthstone, v2 -- Our Precursors
Such is the sum of our history to this day, and I return now to offer greater details upon each stage in our history. For as this era closes, and as the destinies of the Prophesied Ones intersect and the prophecies about them come to fruition, so it is that it is meet that more should be said of the past which has influenced the course of our future.
I begin with our predecessors upon this globe, whose name has come down to us as The Legions of Almanor. The history of their origins is not known to me; only of the story of their demise may I speak with any authority, and this from what little has been handed down to me by the gift of prophecy, and elsewise, what I have been able to glean from the remains of their civilization, their inscriptions, their artifacts, and their subtle engines...as well as other sources of which I am constrained to remain silent.
The Legions created the Portals as a means to ease travel upon this world, and to enable travel to other worlds. To travel upon this world, they designed and infused certain Portals with the energies of Pr'skon, the Seraph of the Gates, whose cooperation they enlisted. To this day, I use these gates frequently in my own travels, though they are severely limited in usage. None may call upon them for use save those in whom M'kai's Sacred Fire dwells, for Pr'skon serves M'kai alone, even as he and the other Seraphs now sleep until such time as the Consummation of the Ages can be fulfilled. Moreover, the within-world Portals offer only certain of destinations upon this planet; it is possible to open a Portal of this sort at any place desired, but once opened, there remain less than a dozen destinations that are able to be chosen. For the protection of Hearthstone, I have, in the past, with others, destroyed some destination Portals; the others I have subtly concealed. One such Portal lies upon the southern coast of the continent called Nullabor, where to this day I have a place I have called my Shelter.
To use Portals to travel to other worlds, however, the Legions knew required the cooperation of the denizens of those worlds, and their own Seraphs, if indeed there were any. To this end, the Legions probed for other worlds using their instruments, and the first that they happened upon was inhabited by a race calling themselves the Trelanians.
The Trelanians were beings of pure spirit able to assume various material forms at will. They had within them the natural ability to manipulate matter; yet there were limits to these powers, such that each possessed the ability to manipulate only a certain volume of matter. The least among them could do no less than constitute a tabernacle for themselves.
At the beginning the Trelanians pledged peace to the Legions, and for a time there was trade between the two worlds. But at length the insiduous nature of the Trelanians became apparent, and all at once, through their machinations, they conspired to assemble themselves as an army, passing through the dimensional Portals around the globe all at once, seeking to conquer and dominate the Legions. It was at the head of the Trelanians that came the one called M'l'strom -- he whom I call the Perversity. At this time as well was revealed the true name of the Trelanians, who were called the K'rek'skran -- in their language, the Enslavers. They had hidden their origins from the Legions: That indeed, they had been cast out, by their fellows, from yet another world they had once portended to dominate. And, that the world they called Trelania, was, in fact, a prison into which they had been sent as punishment by their fellows. So it is that the Legions had unwittingly freed them, and given them new license to conquest.
For many cycles the war raged, with great losses by the Legions, for the K'rek'skran-- being able to transform their natures at will -- proved impervious to the Legions' weapons; while the Legions, being of great strength in their forms and in greater numbers, resisted the K'rek'skran's attempts to dominate them. Yet before all was lost, Legion technologists devised a way to force the K'rek'skran back behind the Portals and into their prison world, and in the end, victory belonged not to the K'rek'skran, but to our precursors of Almanor. Even so it was a victory obtained at a high price. So few of the Legions survived the cleansing that M'kai saw fit to begin the world anew with our peoples. Of the fate of those remaining of the Legions, I am not permitted to speak. Only know: A time shall come when they will make themselves known, and claim once again their stake in our planet.
Eidolon's History of Hearthstone, v3 -- My Offense
The technology which restrained the K'rek'skran behind the Portals drew upon the elemental powers of the Seraphs for their energies. It was I, who, in desperate foolishness, undid this technology, when I drew the energies of the Seraphs away from their proper use and channelled them into my mortal frame. In but a moment did I undo what the Legions had wrought, and it was because of my selfishness that evil again entered into our world. The K'rek'skran almost at once perceived that the gateways were slowly opening, and rushed to invade our world yet again and enslave whom they would. Had they succeeded, none of our races would have had the power or the will to resist them; for as yet our technology was unformed, and our physical strength and numbers far below that of the K'rek'skran.
Yet M'kai saw to it that the greatest evil would not come of my deed: For He had foreordained that at this time, through a different sort of Portal not designed by the Legions, would also arrive She of Infinite Heart to fulfill her destiny. Before more than a handful of the K'rek'skran could travel through the gates -- and these, only the smallest and weakest of their kind; for the openings in the gates had not yet grown large enough to let any others pass -- the Heroine, by means of an engine in her possession, destroyed the device which had once kept the K'rek'skran at bay; and she destroyed the device at such a time in its mode of functioning that the greater number of the K'rek'skran, who had rushed into the limbo between the worlds as one in order to pursue their dreams of conquest, remained trapped in the limbo between their own world and ours. For the destruction of the device by She of Infinite Heart had closed off not only the gates to our world, but also those that returned to Trelania as well. The K'rek'skran had, by their own eagerness to conquer, left themselves stranded in the limbo between the worlds.
My offense began the age when darkness would descend upon our land. The few K'rek'skran now within our world set about their machinations, desiring that the engine which drove the Portals should be rebuilt, thus allowing the whole of their wicked people to infest our world. But it would be many revolutions before the technology of our peoples would be sufficient to restore the other-world Portals to their normal function, allowing the K'rek'skran to make use of them; and they had none among their small number with the wisdom or counsel to revitalize the Portals. However, the insiduous genius of the K'rek'skran had devised other means of influence upon our peoples which required immediate attention from myself and those who aided me, and thus for many revolutions did many of the artifacts of the Legions remain undisturbed. It was not until after the shattering of the Northwest, and the lifting of the curtain of darkness that ensued, that I was able to once again turn my attention to the Portals, and work to return those few K'rek'skran to the limbo where also their comrades were imprisoned.
I will now speak briefly of the secular history of this age before the shattering. In this early age our world was greatly at peace. The many races cooperated, each with their own special talent that contributed to the harmony of the whole. It was not until the Hegemony of the Elkisi was established that the first seeds of discontent and malice were sown; and I harbor suspicions that some portion of this discontent was inspired by the K'rek'skran.
The Elkisi, a race of the Northwest, were wiser in counsel than the other races of that land, and persuaded many other races -- by reason, not by force -- to join them in the Hegemony of which they were administrators. Their influence extended even unto the Northeastern Continent, at its height. But it came to pass that some of the races of their land that declined membership cast their evil eye upon the successes of the Hegemony, and coveted their lands and possessions, such that war ensued. The Elkisi, with their allies, easily overcame these incursions, but among them a division occurred, some wishing to make peace with the hostile races, others wishing to destroy them by force to prevent further incursions. It is this conflict that compelled the judgment that would be the shattering, and plunged our world into centuries of darkness.
Of events concerning that further, I leave to another to tell at a later date.
Eidolon's History of Hearthstone, v4 -- The Age of Anarchy
Of this period in our history, even I, who have witnessed much suffering, find difficult to speak. In less than a fortnight, the shattering of the Northwest brought upon the whole of our world degrees of destruction unknown before, or since. Sky-fire did not give its light, and the green things of our world died. The waters became bitter and often poisonous. The creatures of the seas, upon which most of us satisfy our hunger, became scarce. Many of our races became extinct in this age, and many more were altered in their apperance and nature. More yet were so decimated that their extinction would become inevitable later in our history. It is even to be said that some among us resorted to the most wicked of all abominations forbidden by M'kai -- the consumption of the flesh of a fellow sentient. Even the handful of escaped K'rek'skran could barely survive in the barren wastelands.
In this age of darkness, I and others strove to bring order. But the darkness upon our lands and cultures would not be lifted until the emergence of the Empire of the Prycenes. The founding of this Empire restored again the spirit of cooperation between the races, and the tale of how this is so deserves telling.
In the midst of the age of darkness, the Prycenes survived as a race because they were learned in the art of war and possessed of a spirit of determinination unknown among many races. Thus they were utterly able to defend themselves from those who would have taken their resources; and likewise able to discover and cultivate resources to ensure their survival. From the beginning, they were loyal to M'kai's Covenant, and were a people who, by nature, were both fearless and kind-hearted. By the principles of the Covenant they sought to restore peace to our broken world; but in their numbers, they had no advantage over any other race, and few other races were willing to adhere as strictly and as widely to the Covenant; and so their efforts were most often in vain.
It was one of their tribal leaders, Pr'tann the Indomitable, who changed the course of our history. Possessed of unusual wisdom of administration, Pr'tann sought among the other races a means of advantage by alliance. He searched to and fro in the land, and found the Tilkrig -- the race of ours specially gifted in the production and use of technology. He found this people in his own lands as part of a remnant that had departed from the Northwest seeking sustenance and comfort. But of sustenance they found little, and comfort, none; for their smaller size, and unusual coloration, and their ability to create new things, made them objects of ridicule and scorn among the other races; further, rumors went with them of a deep assocation with the now-despised Elkisi, who were widely regarded as the reason our world had been subjected to judgment.
Pr'tann came among these people and recognized in them a genius that, properly cultivated, might aid in the salvation of our world. He befriended them, and spoke kindly to them, and in return they gave him their favor. With their aid were designed weapons of war that no other race could match; and so it was that in time the Prycenes were able to make and keep peace through their strength, and allow once more the promise of civilization to come to fruition. Pr'tann himself took the name of Prycus, and declared himself the first Emperor of the Prycenes; and he, with his Tilkrig advisors, the married couple J'ron and L'Nai, come down to us as the visionaries whose foresight and cooperation ended the age of darkness. I conclude this portion of my account with a select reading from the Third Decree of Prycus, which cemented a friendship between the Prycene and Tilkrig races, such that a close association between them lasts even unto our own day:
It is my determination that these tiny people should be cherished, not abused; that they should be encouraged, not persecuted; that they should be welcomed, not scorned. For they are M'kai's gift to our world: In them lies a greatness of knowledge and a humility of spirit, such that those who befriend them will be blessed beyond imagination. Do not harm the Tilkrig, nor humiliate them; I decree this upon pain of death for those who offend.
And so it is that to this day, a proverb remains with our peoples, that the peace and prosperity of Hearthstone comes of a Prycene that has a Tilkrig perched on their shoulders.
Comments? Questions? Charges of personal insanity on my part? Send 'em on.
************
Eidolon's History of Hearthstone, v2 -- Our Precursors
Such is the sum of our history to this day, and I return now to offer greater details upon each stage in our history. For as this era closes, and as the destinies of the Prophesied Ones intersect and the prophecies about them come to fruition, so it is that it is meet that more should be said of the past which has influenced the course of our future.
I begin with our predecessors upon this globe, whose name has come down to us as The Legions of Almanor. The history of their origins is not known to me; only of the story of their demise may I speak with any authority, and this from what little has been handed down to me by the gift of prophecy, and elsewise, what I have been able to glean from the remains of their civilization, their inscriptions, their artifacts, and their subtle engines...as well as other sources of which I am constrained to remain silent.
The Legions created the Portals as a means to ease travel upon this world, and to enable travel to other worlds. To travel upon this world, they designed and infused certain Portals with the energies of Pr'skon, the Seraph of the Gates, whose cooperation they enlisted. To this day, I use these gates frequently in my own travels, though they are severely limited in usage. None may call upon them for use save those in whom M'kai's Sacred Fire dwells, for Pr'skon serves M'kai alone, even as he and the other Seraphs now sleep until such time as the Consummation of the Ages can be fulfilled. Moreover, the within-world Portals offer only certain of destinations upon this planet; it is possible to open a Portal of this sort at any place desired, but once opened, there remain less than a dozen destinations that are able to be chosen. For the protection of Hearthstone, I have, in the past, with others, destroyed some destination Portals; the others I have subtly concealed. One such Portal lies upon the southern coast of the continent called Nullabor, where to this day I have a place I have called my Shelter.
To use Portals to travel to other worlds, however, the Legions knew required the cooperation of the denizens of those worlds, and their own Seraphs, if indeed there were any. To this end, the Legions probed for other worlds using their instruments, and the first that they happened upon was inhabited by a race calling themselves the Trelanians.
The Trelanians were beings of pure spirit able to assume various material forms at will. They had within them the natural ability to manipulate matter; yet there were limits to these powers, such that each possessed the ability to manipulate only a certain volume of matter. The least among them could do no less than constitute a tabernacle for themselves.
At the beginning the Trelanians pledged peace to the Legions, and for a time there was trade between the two worlds. But at length the insiduous nature of the Trelanians became apparent, and all at once, through their machinations, they conspired to assemble themselves as an army, passing through the dimensional Portals around the globe all at once, seeking to conquer and dominate the Legions. It was at the head of the Trelanians that came the one called M'l'strom -- he whom I call the Perversity. At this time as well was revealed the true name of the Trelanians, who were called the K'rek'skran -- in their language, the Enslavers. They had hidden their origins from the Legions: That indeed, they had been cast out, by their fellows, from yet another world they had once portended to dominate. And, that the world they called Trelania, was, in fact, a prison into which they had been sent as punishment by their fellows. So it is that the Legions had unwittingly freed them, and given them new license to conquest.
For many cycles the war raged, with great losses by the Legions, for the K'rek'skran-- being able to transform their natures at will -- proved impervious to the Legions' weapons; while the Legions, being of great strength in their forms and in greater numbers, resisted the K'rek'skran's attempts to dominate them. Yet before all was lost, Legion technologists devised a way to force the K'rek'skran back behind the Portals and into their prison world, and in the end, victory belonged not to the K'rek'skran, but to our precursors of Almanor. Even so it was a victory obtained at a high price. So few of the Legions survived the cleansing that M'kai saw fit to begin the world anew with our peoples. Of the fate of those remaining of the Legions, I am not permitted to speak. Only know: A time shall come when they will make themselves known, and claim once again their stake in our planet.
Eidolon's History of Hearthstone, v3 -- My Offense
The technology which restrained the K'rek'skran behind the Portals drew upon the elemental powers of the Seraphs for their energies. It was I, who, in desperate foolishness, undid this technology, when I drew the energies of the Seraphs away from their proper use and channelled them into my mortal frame. In but a moment did I undo what the Legions had wrought, and it was because of my selfishness that evil again entered into our world. The K'rek'skran almost at once perceived that the gateways were slowly opening, and rushed to invade our world yet again and enslave whom they would. Had they succeeded, none of our races would have had the power or the will to resist them; for as yet our technology was unformed, and our physical strength and numbers far below that of the K'rek'skran.
Yet M'kai saw to it that the greatest evil would not come of my deed: For He had foreordained that at this time, through a different sort of Portal not designed by the Legions, would also arrive She of Infinite Heart to fulfill her destiny. Before more than a handful of the K'rek'skran could travel through the gates -- and these, only the smallest and weakest of their kind; for the openings in the gates had not yet grown large enough to let any others pass -- the Heroine, by means of an engine in her possession, destroyed the device which had once kept the K'rek'skran at bay; and she destroyed the device at such a time in its mode of functioning that the greater number of the K'rek'skran, who had rushed into the limbo between the worlds as one in order to pursue their dreams of conquest, remained trapped in the limbo between their own world and ours. For the destruction of the device by She of Infinite Heart had closed off not only the gates to our world, but also those that returned to Trelania as well. The K'rek'skran had, by their own eagerness to conquer, left themselves stranded in the limbo between the worlds.
My offense began the age when darkness would descend upon our land. The few K'rek'skran now within our world set about their machinations, desiring that the engine which drove the Portals should be rebuilt, thus allowing the whole of their wicked people to infest our world. But it would be many revolutions before the technology of our peoples would be sufficient to restore the other-world Portals to their normal function, allowing the K'rek'skran to make use of them; and they had none among their small number with the wisdom or counsel to revitalize the Portals. However, the insiduous genius of the K'rek'skran had devised other means of influence upon our peoples which required immediate attention from myself and those who aided me, and thus for many revolutions did many of the artifacts of the Legions remain undisturbed. It was not until after the shattering of the Northwest, and the lifting of the curtain of darkness that ensued, that I was able to once again turn my attention to the Portals, and work to return those few K'rek'skran to the limbo where also their comrades were imprisoned.
I will now speak briefly of the secular history of this age before the shattering. In this early age our world was greatly at peace. The many races cooperated, each with their own special talent that contributed to the harmony of the whole. It was not until the Hegemony of the Elkisi was established that the first seeds of discontent and malice were sown; and I harbor suspicions that some portion of this discontent was inspired by the K'rek'skran.
The Elkisi, a race of the Northwest, were wiser in counsel than the other races of that land, and persuaded many other races -- by reason, not by force -- to join them in the Hegemony of which they were administrators. Their influence extended even unto the Northeastern Continent, at its height. But it came to pass that some of the races of their land that declined membership cast their evil eye upon the successes of the Hegemony, and coveted their lands and possessions, such that war ensued. The Elkisi, with their allies, easily overcame these incursions, but among them a division occurred, some wishing to make peace with the hostile races, others wishing to destroy them by force to prevent further incursions. It is this conflict that compelled the judgment that would be the shattering, and plunged our world into centuries of darkness.
Of events concerning that further, I leave to another to tell at a later date.
Eidolon's History of Hearthstone, v4 -- The Age of Anarchy
Of this period in our history, even I, who have witnessed much suffering, find difficult to speak. In less than a fortnight, the shattering of the Northwest brought upon the whole of our world degrees of destruction unknown before, or since. Sky-fire did not give its light, and the green things of our world died. The waters became bitter and often poisonous. The creatures of the seas, upon which most of us satisfy our hunger, became scarce. Many of our races became extinct in this age, and many more were altered in their apperance and nature. More yet were so decimated that their extinction would become inevitable later in our history. It is even to be said that some among us resorted to the most wicked of all abominations forbidden by M'kai -- the consumption of the flesh of a fellow sentient. Even the handful of escaped K'rek'skran could barely survive in the barren wastelands.
In this age of darkness, I and others strove to bring order. But the darkness upon our lands and cultures would not be lifted until the emergence of the Empire of the Prycenes. The founding of this Empire restored again the spirit of cooperation between the races, and the tale of how this is so deserves telling.
In the midst of the age of darkness, the Prycenes survived as a race because they were learned in the art of war and possessed of a spirit of determinination unknown among many races. Thus they were utterly able to defend themselves from those who would have taken their resources; and likewise able to discover and cultivate resources to ensure their survival. From the beginning, they were loyal to M'kai's Covenant, and were a people who, by nature, were both fearless and kind-hearted. By the principles of the Covenant they sought to restore peace to our broken world; but in their numbers, they had no advantage over any other race, and few other races were willing to adhere as strictly and as widely to the Covenant; and so their efforts were most often in vain.
It was one of their tribal leaders, Pr'tann the Indomitable, who changed the course of our history. Possessed of unusual wisdom of administration, Pr'tann sought among the other races a means of advantage by alliance. He searched to and fro in the land, and found the Tilkrig -- the race of ours specially gifted in the production and use of technology. He found this people in his own lands as part of a remnant that had departed from the Northwest seeking sustenance and comfort. But of sustenance they found little, and comfort, none; for their smaller size, and unusual coloration, and their ability to create new things, made them objects of ridicule and scorn among the other races; further, rumors went with them of a deep assocation with the now-despised Elkisi, who were widely regarded as the reason our world had been subjected to judgment.
Pr'tann came among these people and recognized in them a genius that, properly cultivated, might aid in the salvation of our world. He befriended them, and spoke kindly to them, and in return they gave him their favor. With their aid were designed weapons of war that no other race could match; and so it was that in time the Prycenes were able to make and keep peace through their strength, and allow once more the promise of civilization to come to fruition. Pr'tann himself took the name of Prycus, and declared himself the first Emperor of the Prycenes; and he, with his Tilkrig advisors, the married couple J'ron and L'Nai, come down to us as the visionaries whose foresight and cooperation ended the age of darkness. I conclude this portion of my account with a select reading from the Third Decree of Prycus, which cemented a friendship between the Prycene and Tilkrig races, such that a close association between them lasts even unto our own day:
It is my determination that these tiny people should be cherished, not abused; that they should be encouraged, not persecuted; that they should be welcomed, not scorned. For they are M'kai's gift to our world: In them lies a greatness of knowledge and a humility of spirit, such that those who befriend them will be blessed beyond imagination. Do not harm the Tilkrig, nor humiliate them; I decree this upon pain of death for those who offend.
And so it is that to this day, a proverb remains with our peoples, that the peace and prosperity of Hearthstone comes of a Prycene that has a Tilkrig perched on their shoulders.