Sages argue over the nature of magic and spend lifetimes defining it. Yet you know it, when you see it.
Trickery! Some cry. It's all illusions and slight of hand! They also say. Yet the mystique remains.
Perhaps in this we can see the heart of it, magic is something mysterious. It is known but not understood.
No god claims dominion over the arcane. Perhaps that is because the arcane is divine?
Maybe magic itself is a god of a sort that we as yet can't begin to comprehend.
--Teryon Yll-Asban Sabodek, Magic: Is it Real?
"There are things I am going to tell you which you will find difficult or impossible to believe or understand. I know you'll have questions, but I ask that you wait until I've said my peace before asking them as there is a lot to go through and we don't have a lot of time." she said. The ruddy little umbrean looked up at her captors. Waiting only a moment for some sign of agreement then, taking a deep breath, she went ahead.
During the last days of the dragons a queen had decided to begin studying the umbreans depth. The dragons had known for ages that the umbreans had some peculiar properties foremost of which was their ability to absorb memories and experiences from others to construct their own identities around. Furthermore it was clear that umbrean colonies could somehow store and exchange those same memories and experiences.
So some dragons went to the task of cataloguing, collecting and even dissecting umbreans to discover the extent of their nature.
When a discover was made, that the greater the collection of umbreans in a colony became not only did their general intelligence, experience, and wisdom increase so did their capacity for memory and something else.
The collected umbreans began assembling memories of their collective pasts.
While the growing complexity of the large umbrean pool was an ongoing concern for the dragons the revelations of the umbreans reassembled memories was an incredible boon. Undiscovered histories, technological, magical, and psionic knowledge that far exceed anything the Dragon's had ever known. Though some gaps in the umbreans memories remained. Most of those gaps were simply the failure of memory, though one great gap existed for which no elucidation was forth coming.
That great mystery was the exact origins and history of the umbreans themselves. The umbreans simply appeared, fully formed and developed, almost exactly as they are now, on Ancerenth around 100 million years ago. While the dragons and umbreans were investigating the origins of the umbreans, the dragons themselves were struck down.
The impenetrable darkness which had driven the dragons from their own world, by devouring it, had after all these ages found a way to reach out beyond the stars and sought to not only consume the dragons themselves but any and all worlds they had fled too.
The Far Gods sent a host of angels to stop this violation, though they could not save the dragons themselves from being devoured. Many of the recently deceased dragons found themselves reborn as umbreans. Others who had either been sleeping, or meditating, or had their minds intertwined in the Dreaming magic of the citadel here on the moon found themselves disposed of body and spirit. Trapped within the complex spellwork which served the citadel.
Reduced to a status not too dissimilar from those of daemons most of the dragon minds caught in the Dreaming chose to stay within and fashion themselves an existence within the endless, malleable realms of dreams. Those that did not, along with some umbreans who refused to remain such did exactly what the living umbreans are trying to do now. Fashion themselves mechanical vessels within which to transfer their selves into.
"I am one such dragon, from the Dreaming realms. My name is Kylin Zal'Fa." she said before going on with her tale.
Over the millenia the Dreaming dragons and umbreans in the waking world grew apart, and distant until both largely no longer troubled themselves with the affairs of the other. This changed some centuries ago. When the great lich Phazion arrived on Ancerenth.
During the war against the lich the umbreans of the citadel made a discovery near the eye of the great storm at the heart of the Crystal Isles. A great stone, like a mountain in miniature made of a dark ore, dimly lit by a ruddy glow.
The stone twisted the minds of all who came in contact with it. Turning anyone without the strength of will to resist it into a thrall of the stone's will. But something was also happening to the stone. The colour of the light within changed as its collection of enslaved minds grew. Turning first orange then finally yellow.
"At first the Stone was trying to find other stones like itself, it believes there are more like itself scattered around the world. But as it's light began to change it's agenda did too. We think that it might not be as masterful a manipulator as it believes. The more thralls it gathers the more the thoughts and wishes of the thralls taints and distorts its own will."
In the past the umbreans have had the rare member with so coherent a mind as to try and pick up the life they had lost. These were incredibly rare individuals. Most umbreans are formed from the collected experience of many beings and so are distinct from those entities who's experiences gave facets to an umbrean's mind. If the umbrean could not be dissuaded the umbreans of the citadel would use their machines to make an effigy, a mechanical version of a living thing so close to being a natural, living being as to be almost indistinguishable to all but the most sophisticated healers scrutiny. With the use of a device called the
Bridge of Starlight the umbreans could transfer the mind and soul of the umbrean into the machine. Thereafter they would alter the memory of the effigy so as to remove any knowledge of the citadel or the umbreans existence and would plant the machine-man back into the world with false memories of some miraculous god's blessed resurrection.
But there were far too many twisted umbreans who believed they deserved to have their lives back. The Stone believed it could make the world right for itself and its thralls. Mistaking the threat for mere upstarts the umbreans who called the others the Restorationists fled to Ancerenth and set their temporal prison believing that the could find some way to reason with the others and bring them back into the fold.
"As long as the Stone is in control their is no hope of peace. And the dreams tell us the Stone plans something terrible. Using the umbreans of the pool and their focused, collective mental strength the Stone wants to try and extend its mental control over some if not most of the planet." Kylin finished.