The Old World(s) ....Interludes (0.25, AEON 1)
Part One:
A short time after the last ACTs....
The Chained Mountains beckoned to King Aruun, he could see his future he had decided through Dadacar's unrelenting visions and had gained levels for years now. He had found his ARETE. He had tried to map out several vectors into the Chained mountains to best ascertain a strategy for proceeding but it seemed the best way was to swim up one of the fjords and scale cliffs to get into the northern edge of the Chained. From there it would be another three months journey he reasoned, along what he thought could be a game trail, to attain the plateau in the center of the vicious range. Finally, he felt ready. The party began their task and soon found themselves walking towards their first huge test, a draconian wyrm. The fight was brutal and the Trickster was boiled alive, but everyone else managed to live, albeit with heavy injuries, but they found the worst was yet to come as they tried to recuperate from their wounds. Finding a cave for shelter was tricky as they found two nasty creatures before they found one unoccupied except for a reddish mushroom that grew nearby. By morning the Wizard was nearly killed, completely engulfed by the carnivorous mushrooms that had moved on him while he dreamt, only the act of leveling had saved him as he recovered some of his health. They began to find that little in this harsh land did not want to kill them...they learned how to set up watch and take shifts sleeping and gathering food. The road ahead would be harsh and deadly...
A Secret skirted the edges of the Gateway to the Unknown, long had it waited in a place of negative space, one ACT or another had created several pocket universes and finally, it saw that it was time. Within one of these pocket universes, a Rend had appeared in Creation, it was filled with colors that this dark dimension did not have. From this vantage point, it could see two options, one set of worlds had a great Chessboard while another did not. It slipped from the concealment, determinations, and bravery coming with ARETE, to make its way towards the place where the least godly presence could be detected. This new world held large black Eels that nearly stretched across their oceans. Therein it found what it had saved for so long to utilize, an ACT...
One of the Great Old Eels looked up to see this new power descend upon it, investing this power into it, transforming it, and crafting a new being that can swim into the space beyond the aerosphere. An Avatar was created, the creature slipped into the Eels mind and became one with it, as it rose like a bird into the sky, breaking through the surface with ease. The creature explored its home for a time before investigating the nearby 5 moons, learning. Occasionally it cast its gaze towards the speck of the Sunstar in the distance.
The Tomeborne pause from their etchings upon the walls of the Archive. Three of the Tomeborne look up to see a large stone door appear before them. They cautiously whisper nonsensical syllables to invisible friends as they push through into the Lord's Rook Castle beyond, slipping across the intervening distance from the Archive to the Chessboard in a flash of light. Therein they were scared for a time, not wanting to go forward until new colors and shapes beckoned to them. Then they looked beyond the parapets and saw all the Chessboard before them, clouds mingling with the other chess pieces. Then with growing terror, they witnessed the silhouette of Lerret and the 9 Moons beyond it. Slowly they surveyed and drank in the new things, things they had never seen and never would. Words began to scribble upon the pages lodged where their skulls would be. Suddenly another flash as one of the Tomeborne found themselves suddenly displaced again, on a beach this time, it is night. With curling lips, the creature hissed at the world around it and began to search for a quiet dark cavern, soon it was joined by one of its sibling abominations. Here they acclimatized to the jungle. They found many things to be pleasing to their mad minds, as they babbled nonsense to each other in pursuit of their explorations, ARETE making them feel emboldened, and indeed they were more than a match for most normal creatures they came up against on the surface of the world.
Life continues much as it had this past age, life continues winding down through the generations. During this time few new creatures come to be, but here and there minor variations occur, and new things begin in small steps before the big ones. Evolution continues in sporadic bursts but not at the same clip it had through the First Age. The Great Aerosphere had become full of clouds on both Lerret and many of the other Lerret-like worlds. Storms of varying magnitudes and effects were common and sometimes potentially fierce. Volcanic activity continued within the world with the heat of the churning of the Fire Spell empowering the magnetosphere to a great extent as well. Out in the cosmos, one of the larger stars in the stellar neighborhood begins to grow into its super-giant state, while it would engulf its Lerret-version entirely, though a few of its moons could survive. However it would not be long before this star would collapse upon itself, only chance would determine the outcome after that...
The humans of 5 Pillars carried on as they had for much of their early days, salvaging food from the jungle or foothills of the Chained mountains. One of the leading scholars of these early days was a man named "Goh" who was a magus, and as it turned out, a philosopher. He reasoned that mankind must learn to mark on things in order to prevent losing any knowledge they might gain in the short term. Thus the earliest form of writing came to be, a strange cuneiform style of writing, very useful for remembering numbers out in the fields. As this began to catch on, the cities began to understand simple logic, about waste and production, and the need for new kinds of measurements such as distances, heights, and weights. Development was occurring but slower than the deities thought it should. However, it was fair to say that magic as well as such things as the Source granted powers that would potentially rival any other creatures out in creation, except perhaps the Unicorns, Dark Wolves, and Saberlions.
It was shortly after posing this theory and developing a system of writing that the first Magic Duel had occurred, for a rival philosopher-sorcerer named "Cha", had taken great offense to his theory, saying that nature was best, we must be like the animals he reasoned, take what we need and move on, together! The bull-headed pair squared off for ages it seemed...but only once did it come to bloodshed. Cha had electrified Goh and he was gravely wounded. Goh had enough focus yet though and skill to fire off one word. He yells in the OLD SPEECH, "ARCHIVE!" For a moment, they can see the pair of books that magically, ethereally, launched from the back of Cha the sorcerer as if being siphoned from him. In doing so, they disappear, and then reappear inside the Archive of Souls. Here, the hungry creatures called Tomeborne reside and they rend apart the sorcerer's books, which has the effect of making Cha, a deadman before he fell to the ground. It was a dangerously shortened incantation but had proven effective in this case. Goh is praised and invited to many feasts, after he levels, his scars are not so bad. The Warrior-Philosopher sired many children after that continuing his line and legacy, likewise, his seeds of logic began to grow and spread. Herald the Air Elemental Unicorn, found Goh and also passed to his words from the beginning of their lives when they first heard the words of making, thus a bit of new knowledge of incantation was also gained for Goh's fame.
While all of this was happening, however, humanity had begun to spread beyond the Jungle and foothills of the Southern Continent, the huge forest and salt marshes on the other side of the continent were wild beyond their wildest imaginations and many in the community sought to explore its dark depths. Those who sought to move towards the Great Forest and the salt marshes far to the East beyond the savannah, which was much too dangerous to inhabit for long periods but which they might be able to cross through quickly enough to avoid the greater dangers.
This message was last edited by the GM at 06:42, Sun 12 June 2022.
