Theme Music: Joseph William Morgan - Crazy Train(Epic Orchestral)


In the time before time was, there was the Sea of Chaos. And from it rose the Precursors. Primordial forces that each embodied a concept, and from them was born Creation. But their place of stability was threatened by their Raksha cousins, the unshaped madness of wild tales and plays of stories.

They created mortal kind, and then demanded that the Great Maker transform the mortals into a swath of living weapons to use in their war with the Fae. Their Children and two of their own refused to take away mortal kind's one great gift; their free will. So were forged the Exalted, and the alchemic Bio-Booster units that elevated even simple mortals into nearly unstoppable engines of destruction.

The Precursors fled. The world grew under the eyes of the Exalted. And then five thousand years ago, the Solars gave chase after the Precursors, and only twenty-six returned. The Purge would clear those whom had stayed.

The Golden Heroes and the Dragon-Blooded have been gone for five millennia. But something has come back. A new era turns. The Third Age has come.

What legends will they tell, and what songs will be sung of you once more?
This message was last edited by the GM at 22:11, Sat 26 Dec 2020.

A NEW CREATION

Before time was time, there was the golden sea of chaos, the infinite unformed potential, the Void of what could be.

The Wyld.

Within the Wyld existed strange beings, concepts of imagination, the unshaped madness that was the Raksha. They made games of their madness, the chaos that birthed them. Told their mad stories, made each other the villains and heroes of their insane plays of fancy.

And then from the Wyld rose the Precursors. Formless, yet with form, concepts given shape and mind. They perceived the Wyld on a different scale than their Raksha cousins, and sought to drive the maddened Old Fair Ones away. Conflict would rise between them, form versus formless, order against madness. When the Precursor founded a shaped realm within the chaos, the Raksha descended upon fragile Zen-Mu and razed it, until they were driven away by the efforts of the Primordial of Invention and Machine, Autochthon ul Primus. But it left Zen-mu a lifeless world, and so the Precursors traveled far from their experiment, let the Raksha think them dejected, and started anew upon a disc of stability within the chaos.

They began to experiment with life, forging simple creatures at first, and continuing until they discovered that the Raksha were returning. Faced with their Creation being destroyed again, the Precursors turned to Autochthon for an answer, a way to fight the Raksha on a scale that would allow them to this time save their Creation.

In response, Autochthon looked at a creature that his sister Gaia had genesised. Seemingly simple and weak, yet immense potential. They had called this mortal life "human", and as a species, humans had proven adaptable, creative even, and willful. After experimenting with this lifeform, Autochthon came to discover that humans had an incredible potential for combat and warfare. Soon, as the Precursors prepared for the inevitable war with the Raksha, one of their own offspring realized that the humans were easily repurposed into biomorphic augmented living weapons. Even as the humans in their unaltered state proved to be little more than food for the Raksha, these enhanced mutations, dubbed by the Emphyrant Chaos as Zenith Organism Augments, or "Zoanoids", could resist the soul eating Fair Ones, fighting the hobgoblins and lesser Raksha on an equal level, and swarming the greater Fair Ones.

And so the Raksha retreated again, but the Precursors were not fools. They demanded that Autochthon create more of the living weapons as developed by Therion's son, Viridi sol Liger, also known as the Green Sun, turning Gaia's "children" into simple fodder for their war. In his frustration, the Great Maker confided in another among the Precursors' children who shared his passion for invention and the human spirit; Aurelia sol Invictus, daughter of Therion, known also as the Unconquerable Star. With Gaia's aid, Aurelia began to develop her own method of taking a mortal and reforming them as something far more, but not at the cost of their free will and souls. The engineers of Fate, the Five Sisters, also conspired against the Precursors' aims to take humanity's will from them, engineering their own chosen mortals who would become like demigods. Even as the children of the Creators would plot their own methods to sparing humanity from becoming nothing more than fodder against the Raksha, Gaia secretly introduced key changes in ten thousand mortals, the genesis of the Five Dragon Lines, each empowered with elemental might, but in enough of a diluted fashion that it could pass on through the blood.

This was meant to show Therion that there was another way, that humanity need not be slaves, and that there was so much more mortals had to offer. But there was another who whispered in the Emphyrant Chaos' ear, a dark being who penned the tales of tragedy and bitter betrayals. Known as the Shadow of the Dragon, this Precursor whispered warnings of treachery to Therion, filling his dreams with horrific tales of destruction at the hands of the Precursors' own Children. And when Aurelia and her allies presented their work after a century of toil, intending to show what mortal kind was truly capable of, to impress the Precursors and show them that Mortals were far more than just weapons, Therion looked at his own daughter with fear. The Exalted chosen by the Children of the Precursors proved beyond the simple control of Theion and his kind, free in their own will even from the Loom of Fate to forge destinies of their own.

Yet it was when Autochthon revealed his own creation, a strange biomechanical device he called the "Bio-Booster Unit", that the whispers of the Dragon's Shadow began to become real to Therion. Introduced to a mortal, the unit shuttered the subject off from any and all spiritual control by the Precursors, and whatever abilities seen in even Aurelia's Exalts was nothing compared to the sheer destructiveness that this mortal became capable of. What the Precursors witnessed so terrified Therion, that he commanded the Precursors to raze their Creation, igniting a horrific war between the Creators and the Created.

Under the guidance of the Incarna, Gaia, and Autochthon, the Exalts fought against the Precursors' ZOA-form armies, sometimes facing their own families as the Essences would choose new Champions as even as the heroes fell. Aurelia's Solar generals led the Dragon Blooded soldiers of Gaia into battle, the Sisters' Sidereals projecting the course of Fate to best direct their tactics, while Autochthon's bio-boosters would horrify his Precursor siblings with their incomparable weaponized power. And when one of the Exalted managed to gain access to a unit, Therion's worst fears came to pass, as a Dragon Blood's elemental might fused with the Bio-booster armor and created something even more powerful. It was not long after that the first Precursor to die in the war fell, followed by a dozen more. In response to this unprecedented event, the Tyrant King of the Primordials would command the remaining Precursors to abandon Creation and withdraw to the far Wylds. Then, in his spite, the Emphyrant Chaos hurled a small star upon Creation, intending to wipe all mortal life from the face of the realm in the inevitable nova.

He was, in the end, betrayed by his daughter as Aurelia would refuse to abandon Creation and the mortals, and placed herself between the falling star and Creation even as it erupted into a small nova. The blast could be seen across the span of Creation and into the Wyld as Aurelia struggled to contain the deadly explosion, despite the wounds and agony it caused her. In the end, she succeeded in saving Creation and all those who lived upon it, but the struggle had taken its toll, and Aurelia fell from the heavens, crashing into the seas of chaos and lost in the fathom depths of the Wyld. The Sisters and Gaia tried to find Aurelia, but no sign was found, and they resigned themselves to protecting Creation and guiding it as best they could. Autochthon himself left Creation, vanishing into the deep Wylds and closing the paths behind him. For what reasons, he did not say before departing, but some theorized was either likely a fear of the Exalts turning on him, or his immense guilt over the destruction wrought by his creations and betraying his Precursor siblings.

The Exalts eventually faded from history, the world traveled through the ages, the Zoanoids were lost to time. The Solar Exalts, Aurelia's creations, entered a cycle of incarnations as the Celestial Essences would continue to choose those worthy to wield that power, but five thousand years ago, a group of Solars chased after Precursors, then returned to gather their fellows for one final showdown with the Creators. Yet they then all vanished, three hundred Solar Essences gone without a trace. Despite the best efforts of the Sidereals to guide the world, they themselves too eventually vanished into history, not even myth as the world moved on, while the families of the Dragon bloodlines spread, and the blood thinned until it was no more. And none have remembered the Bio-Boosters, Autocthon's last great creation, since the Machine God vanished.

The world was damaged from what Therion did in the escape of the Precursors, but slowly, Creation has healed without the children of Gaia, the Chosen of Aurelia and the Sisters, or the Guyvers.


Mortals are the rulers of Creation. The Chosen are merely myth now.

This is the lie that the world has accepted as truth...

This message was last edited by the GM at 22:11, Sat 05 Dec 2020.

Since the Solars vanished five thousand years ago, mankind has slowly come to advance on its own, without the guidance of Exalted beings to oversee them. While Gaia and the Sisters continued to watch over Creation, their own champions faded from history and into legend and myth, until even they are barely remembered. On the edges of the world, humanity studies the Wyld with calculated curiosity, while they look to the stars of the deep skies, imagining what other worlds may yet wait for discovery.

This is the history that has been engineered to keep mortalkind ignorant and controlled. The Sidereals never ceased to be, nor did the Dragon Bloodlines simply fade away. The Seers hid themselves in the veils of Fate so that they could try to guide the world, but five thousand years ago, when the Solars Host was gathered to further war against the Precursors by a group of their fellows under the leadership of a Solar general named Gorol, only that small group returned, while the majority never came back. The Sidereals tried to discover what had occurred, but when they were met by a vision of chaos, and two scores of them were driven mad, those that remained were forced to release their suffering brethren from life to let the Exaltations move on to their next incarnations. It was only then that the eldest of their numbers, Chejop Kejak, realized that what was revealed to them had merely been a prelude to what would be the end of everything they had fought for, and the horrors he had witnessed as a child in the Precursor Wars were only the beginning.

Kejak gathered a half a dozen of his most trusted companions, three dozen of the greatest Dragon-Blooded in Meru, and a contingent of heroic mortals, all to set out into the Wyld in search of an answer to their coming doom. Whether it was Autochthon's distant hidden sanctuary or the missing Aurelia that they sought, none could say. But for those Sidereals who remained, Kejak and his fellowship never returned. Gorol and his fellows eventually settled into secret control of the world, the Ebon Council they dubbed themselves, and eventually brought the remaining Sidereals and their future incarnations to heel after the Sisters were bound into the distant planets that bore their names, and Gaia was chained deep under the great Meru Mountain while her chosen slowly bled away, the elemental might of the Dragon Blooded weakening with each successive generation that bred further and further with ordinary mortals. Her own children, the Great Dragons, were taken and imprisoned, forced to sleep as Gorol and his fellows revealed themselves to be not only infused with Aurelia's Solar Essences, but also with the might of the Precursors, now an abomination of Exalt and Zoaform, known as Zoalords. The Ebon Council, consisting of Gorol and his most trusted, were the supreme and unquestionable of the Zoalords, hidden behind those that were their lessors, and the mortals who served them. Over the course of five thousand years, they manipulated humanity, secretly building their hidden society while the masses were ignorant. While mortalkind indeed made incredible advancements over the millennia, the greatest of possibilities were denied them, and slowly, the Ebon Council has begun to rebuild the Zoanoids, using strange demonic creatures fused with human beings to create a new breed of monstrous shape changing living weapons.

The Third Age has turned, a digital civilization that is jaded, cynical, and driven by the secret infernalist Zoalords who meticulously plot their ambitions and reign over the world. The remaining hundred and fifty untainted Solar Essences have been imprisoned for five thousand years, under lock and key of the Ebon Council, the Sidereals brought under the leash of the infernal Zoalords, and the Dragon Blooded are but a memory.

Yet something has come back.

For uncountable ages, only the sun and the distant stars lit the day and night skies. The sun was the embodiment of golden Aurelia, the Unconquerable Star, and her purpose in protecting Creation from the Wylds, while the stars, glimmering points of infinite possibilities, were overseen by the Five Sisters. Even when Aurelia fell in her defense of Creation and was swept away into the fathom depths of the Wyld, the sun remained in watch over the world, driving back shapeless madness and the shadow world of the dead, hinting that she was still alive somewhere.

Nine hundred years ago, that all changed, as a silvery disc would appear in the skies during Calibration in the Meruvian Realm year 873. Faded during the day, this sphere would bring light to the night sky after the sun had set, giving guidance to those who traveled by dark, and keeping the borders of life and death more secure in the night. No one knows where this moon came from, but it has been welcomed and since has been merely just accepted as part of the world.

The truth is perhaps even more fantastical.

When Kejak and his group of Sidereals, Dragon-Blooded and mortals journeyed into the Wyld in search of answers to what they feared was coming, they lost all sense of time, and despite their best efforts, they lost the trail of mighty Autochthon. However, they came across a sanctum deep in the Outer Wylds, an almost infinite contained realm of its own that was stable, yet as fluid as the Sea of Chaos. There, they encountered a strange deity being, neither male nor female, yet both and either as they wished. This being called themself 'Luna', and was a being both of and not of the Wyld. It was upon finding Luna that Kejak and his entourage also learned what had happened to Aurelia sol Invictus; she had drifted into the Outer Wylds after her horrible injuries during the nova that had nearly wiped out life in Creation, and had been found by Luna, who had cared for the Unconquerable Star all these millennia, though Aurelia rarely woke from her torpor. Kejak found himself begging Luna to help them in facing the terrible coming cataclysm, though they continuously refused.

It when Kejak pressed that Aurelia had been willing to die to protect Creation and all those in it, and the sacrifices made by the Exalted for both Creation and their Incarna, that Luna finally conceded to help,  but only because they loved the Unconquerable Star, who loved the children of Creation above all else. Examining the Sidereals and their Exaltation essences, Luna crafted their own shards, a task that would take uncounted eras in the time of Creation as they had to be careful to not exhaust themselves in their task. Once their work was complete, Luna unleashed their Exaltations to find those among the mortals who still accompanied the Siderals who were worthy. These were the first of the shape changing Silver Champions, henceforth known as Lunars, and the Essences would spread themselves amongst three hundred worthy souls and raise those chosen into Exalted.

But Kejak was unaware of the horrible truth of what Gorol and his fellows had become, and just as Luna had made their bond with Aurelia, so did the Lunars carry their own bond to the Solar essences, which would draw them to those that carried the Exaltations of the Sun. This led the nascent Lunar Exalts to be confused and taken by surprise when they discovered that the councils of Erembour felt like the very Solars they were supposed to be helping and seeking, yet something was off. What's more, as Kejak and his fellows discovered, their time in the Wyld did not pass the same as in Creation, and their return was over four thousand years from when they had departed. The state of the world shocked them, to discover that many of their fellows who had remained had been slaughtered and subverted in their new incarnations by the Infernal Zoalords. The Dragon Lines were all but gone, and the world had become the play thing of the twenty-six twisted once-Solars who now commanded the same bioengineered abominations that the Exalts once had faced themselves. The only option of survival Kejak saw left was to bow to the Zoalords and use the Sidereals' gifts and management charge to the Loom of Fate in service to the Infernals. And thus, to this day, the Lunars and Sidereals have served Erembour for nine centuries.

Yet Chejop saw a chance for hope in the future...
This message was last edited by the GM at 22:08, Sat 05 Dec 2020.

When the Zoalords betrayed and murdered their once-brethren Solars, they caught as many of the Exalting Essences as they could. Twenty-four they took for themselves, to experiment and twist into more of their Infernal kind. Fifty Solar shards were lost to them, those that either did not follow, or had escaped the grip of the Zoalords,  and continued on to be a thorn in the side of the Ebon Council for five millennia. A hundred golden Essences were captured into a cage of jade and starmetal, held in the abandoned city of Yu-shan to mock them, stand forever as a monument to their failure to see the enemy within, until they vanished nine hundred years ago when the silver moon shone over the rotting city of the gods for the first time.

And then five score were encased in a prison of soulsteel and Primordial bone, trapped within a vessel of necromantic essence and the spite of the Precursors who had been slain in the war. These, Gorol would throw into the Underworld, for they were the ones he had hated the most when he chose to take Therion's desperate offer, ascending beyond Solar and into Zoalord. His pettiness would send the soulsteel cage and its contents into the deep heart of the underworld, where the dead who could not move to their next life lingered and continued from where they left things. A hundred Essences that would sleep in the dark mirror of Creation, atop the dreaming corpses of the Precursors that they had slain in life. For thousands of years, they waited. Trapped, hearing the whispers of the dead Primordials, sharing their twisted dreams and unending nightmares.

When the Zoalords would travel into the Underworld to investigate the surge of newborn shadowlands, they would find the prison of soulsteel and bone cracked open. The Solar essences once contained within it were gone, and the secret Infernal masters of Creation would discover that it was no longer just the dead who inhabited the Underworld. Within the Shadowlands, where Creation and the Underworld intersected, mortals had taken residence, and mingled with the dead. Half-ghost children had been born in the passing millennia, and something else had followed them in crossing between the realms of life and death.

They were known to the dead as the Black Stars. Living singularities, like oblivion incarnate, consuming Essence and radiating with dark power. They spoke with authority over the lands of the dead, with powers that resembled the Solars of the war, yet...inverted. While a Solar had burned with holy might, these Abyssals drew in, their voidful animas consuming Essence as of they were the Void itself. Their eyes were tainted into black windows into the nothingness, and they would leave black miracles of devastation and rot in their wake. And as the Ebon Council would soon learn, they were merely the harbingers of something more terrifying.