|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 Posted: Wed Jan 03, 2007 11:08 pm
Part One
This is a story that starts in a time so far back that life was barely crawling out of the primordial soup. Well life as we know it. Because there were at this time the old ones.
To understand the old ones one must understand the nature of magic and leylines. Magic is an energy like nuclear or solar or kinetic and certain creatures feed on it like we feed on on air and sunlight. Some say the old ones came from another planet. Others say the old ones came from another dimension. The truth is hard to know and this story only goes as far back as to when the old ones came to ascendancy on the planet.
The old ones worked a very strange sort of magic. Their spells created things. The name commonly used to describe the things the old ones created is Celestials. Celestials are creatures formed entirely of magic. Modern mages use a magic that echoes off of the age old spells of the old ones. When the old ones wanted a fire they'd speak into being a fire elemental or djinn that would exist forever to light fires for the old one. Bigger spells bigger spirits. Their most useful servitors were their house servants creatures of great power who did the old one's bidding and acted as their messengers.
Other creatures were made for other purposes. Some to protect them from each other some to tend their grounds some to bring them food. Some to help them spy on each other.
One of the strongest of the old ones was a beast named Yogasorath. Yogasorath was obsessed with the new dumb life that was growing and especially their idea of procreating. It amazed him how two amphibeans could get together and make more.
Yogasorath became obsessed with the idea that he too could procreate with the correct spell. So he gave gender to a spy of his named Yin Gui. She of the fiery tail and pointed ears, and worked out a spell to imbue half his essence into her womb. Two children were born to Yin Gui but the essence it costs her to birth them turned her into a spirit.
Yogasorath trained his children in the ways of old magic punishing them harshly for any failure. The twins mere children by developmental standards studied for hundreds of thousands of years to learn the things their father knew since birth.
Finally they reached a level equivalent to many of the old ones in magical power and they believed they'd finally be allowed to go off on their own and build their own domains but their father wanted prodigy so that he would have more power than any other old one in a single domain.
The twins had learned from their father the ways of old ones and not those of the herd animals he thought they would emulate merely from having been born of him. They willed into being a wind spirit to search the world for a way out of their predicament. He was made quietly so he didn't have the grandeur of the servants or the bulk of the war spirits but he was born of the joy of wind and flying and the fearlessness of a breeze. They named him Mule Dear.
Mule Dear flew through the skies and looked and looked using his sharp green eyes to scan the world beneath him. Mule Dear followed the lines of magical energy that create a webwork over the world and found a race of proto-dinosaurs who had adapted to absorb the magical energy. He dropped down to view them more carefully and being a creature of wind Mule Dear instantly understood their language. That they had a language meant they were intelligent. Mule Dear went down and talked to the dragons as they called themselves and discussed the terms of a war pact. The dragons agreed to protect the twins from their father in exchange for training in the art of magic.
Mule Dear followed more ley lines and found more and different dragons and made the same deal with all of them. He then told them a place to meet that was on a nexus of ley lines but not held by any of the old ones. This would be Ratholin and Ratholina's domain.
Finally Mule Dear returned to Ratholin and Ratholina and told them of what he had arranged. The twins laughed and plotted their escape from their father's domain. They rode inside their shadows out of their fathers domain and then flew on the winds to their new domain.
The dragons kept to their word as did the twins. Ratholin found himself very impressed by the broadchested dragons of the west and gifted them with the magic of fire. Ratholina fell in love with the grace of the eastern dragons and gifted them with the magic of water. neither particularly liked the winged serpents who after learning the basest fundamentals of magic ran off too a far off part of the world to rule their own land.
This land of dragons was the first kingdom not ruled by the old ones and it stood for a hundred thousand years while Yogasorath plotted how best to get his children back.
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Thu Jan 04, 2007 12:02 am
Part Two
Yogasorath went to work building an army of his own. He created two whole races of bipedal creatures. The first a tall and fast and thin with sharp pointed ears. The second a short broad strong race. Then because three is a good number he built a third race of bipeds who were twenty feet tall and mountainously muscled. He gave them all the ability to breed among themselves and waited for their numbers to become great. In the meantime he went back to eating sleeping studying and those things the old ones did.
Yogasorath sent his armies out after many thousands of years had made them very numerous and they had had time to design warfare as they would know it. He personally culled all of them born weak or sickly so that all of the members of the three races had extremely long lifespans and epitomized what he wanted the race to be like. Thus we learn that even with magic evolution is a key factor.
The three races. Elves, Dwarves and Giants came to the dragon strongholds and there were many battles. The dragons were by far superior to these inferior races but the bipedal celestials outnumbered and outbred the dragons.
I won't go into all the details but in the end ratholin and ratholina and a small troup of dragons managed to sneak into yogasorath's palace and destroy him. The bipedal races without his orders couldn't figure a reason to keep getting killed in huge numbers to kill the dragons in small numbers.
They decided to go make themselves a home in the world which was now plentiful with dinosaurs.
The dragons extended their kingdom to include that of Yogasorath as well. Ratholin and Ratholina who no longer needed protection had mule dear find them a new domain and he found them one in near a volcano the smell was pretty awful but it was free of natural predators and the heat from the volcano kept it green all the time. There the twins set up a beautiful palace.
The dragons soon grew restive after all the years of war they'd had and wanted more land. Those dragons who'd been with Ratholina and Ratholin to kill Yogasorath told the others of how an old one could be killed. They raised up arms and flames and steam against the old ones.
The dragon and old ones fought for a long time. The old ones made many new servators and demons as well as ogres, bogwobbles, trolls, merfolk, yeti, sasquatch, redcaps, fey, kraken, leviathon, roc, thunderbird, and phoenix. (though when phoenix came into being he just looked at the dragons and said "hi dragons I've gotta fly" and flew off to be immortal by reincarnating as his own child.) the dragons of the east were so impressed by phoenix that they wrote a poem about him in the old tongue and that poem became kirin who always follows phoenix.
The old ones were lowered to perhaps a thousand in number. A cabal of them got together (always a rare thing for the old ones to do) and they worked a spell that brought a huge rock down on the heart of the dragon kingdom smashing their king, Tien Lung, and causing the air to be so full of dust that many dinosaurs died and many dragons and so did many of the other animals and plants. The mammals and birds became more dominant. The clever elves made hide robes. The Dwarves dug deep into the earth. The Giants who had so much more surface area suffered very badly from the cold. They started wandering the mountains of the north dying in droves. One tribe of giants found their way to the warmth of Ratholin and Ratholina's volcano palace.
At first the twins thought that the giant's were being visited on them by their father's ghost or something but when they saw them suffering. they had mule dear bring the giants food and water and they had a talk. The giants settled in to the pleasure garden but at their great size they started stripping the gardens of food too quickly. The twins had to send the giants away but first out of compassion they gave the giants the word of frost which gave them an immunity to cold.
And then the amazing happened. The mammals evolution made them capable of a strange sort of magic. Worship. The birds and mammals and such began to worship the rivers and wind the sun the moon and these things became personified by a new type of celestial. Gods. These beings gained power from belief and varied in strength from very low. The god of bird nests and snake holes to very strong. The sun the moon the wind. As these gods were imagined by animals they tended to have animalistic natures and appearances.
The sun was a hawk or a lion or a great wild dog that chased down the moon which liked to think of itself as a fat round rabbit. The sun would take a bite of the moon each night until the moon was entirely gone then it would realize it had eaten too much and vomit the moon back up a little bit each day till the moon was full again and the sun was hungry again.
The night and day were two great beasts who wrestled each other. Night beat day most easily and held it down most of the day in the cold months. Day beat night more easily in the hot months.
This ability spelled the end of the age of the old ones.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Thu Jan 04, 2007 12:41 am
Part Three
The Celestials were always out hunting in those days. Most hunted for the larders of the old one they served. But most voracious were the bipedal celestials who have no masters anymore. So a race of monkeys began to look more and more like the celestials. (It's a thing known as baitsian mimicry. The Dwarves and Elves would go hunting and they'd pause to figure if these monkeys were elves or dwarves and that would give them time to get away live and breed.) Over time they got better at looking like them till we had the first anthropod.
The anthropods developed more spacial and time concepts due to the fact they had arms to carry and manipulate things while they moved around. This also made them more fun for the celestials of all sorts to hunt. Which helped them evolve as a smarter race.
The old ones had quite a love for the flavour of human flesh as humans being intelligent had a higher level of magical energy than many other creatures. So humans were encouraged to travel in groups for protection and to work together to survive. To the celestials it was like free range sheep or cattle. You just went out and collected them after subduing them a little.
After a good long time the anthropods discovered their own god. A god that needed them in order to survive. That was when they became men. The men began to worship Fire. The humans sacrificed the juices of all the creatures they killed to Fire. they sacrificed the bones too and they tore down trees and grasses and gave that to Fire too. And Fire told them that to truly gain protection from the celestials they would have to sacrifice men to it. Some found other tribes of men and fought and took prisoners to give to fire. Some sacrificed of their own tribe. These men carried fire with them and were safe from the celestials though the celestials always waited in the shadows for the fire to go out.
The old ones began to fear men, for the celestials they spoke into being couldn't touch men with their Fire about them. What would the old ones do if men with torches were to come to their palaces in the high places that gather energy or the deep depths below the deepest waves. The Old ones decided that men were too dangerous to let live no matter how tasty.
The old ones got together on opposite sides of the world and summoned forth ice. Ice beyond belief Ice that flowed like slow rivers eating mountains and carving valleys. The old ones summoned enough ice to choke the world with ice. Unfortunately for them they created so much ice that they trapped themselves deep beneath it at the poles. As the last one began to freeze into place he realized he couldn't stop it so spoke into being a servator named Light Bringer and told him to get them melted out of the ice. Light bringer escaped the ice but had to think a long time to come with a plan to free the old ones. Meanwhile since that date the old ones have been frozen beneath the poles in cryogenic sleep dreaming even greater destructions.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Thu Jan 04, 2007 1:20 am
Part four
The men put on hides. The dwarves didn't know the last ice time had ever ended. Wood got difficult to find so some men could no longer feed Fire. Many were killed by the cold many more vanished into the shadows as the Demons and other celestials were no longer kept at bay.
In the north some humans met up with the giants. Many of the giants thought it would be a good idea to eat the humans before they could build fire and chase them out of their homeland. Another group of giants couldn't help thinking how the humans looked so much like their own children and defended the humans. Fire lived in those protective giant's longhouses in their home of Asgaard and chased away the other giants. The humans farmed and hunted in the fields below Asgaard. Sometimes the other giants of frost would war with the giants of asgaard and the humans were so amazed by the fights they believed the giants who protected them were gods and somehow that made them become so.
The elves and fey set up a protection racket. Alternating between leading people to their death and doom and helping people have a good harvest or chasing game towards human hunters. To be on the safe side people left offerings on their doorstep and in the fields and woods for the fey and didn't complain too much if one man out of a village got hunted down by the fey at the beginning of spring.
To the men of these villages Fire had lost it's power to the thing that man could make with Fire, Iron. Men kept iron horseshoes over their doorsteps to keep the fey out, but, since it was hard to get enough iron to protect everyone outside of their houses, people kept paying the protection. Also, they only said nice things about "the good neighbors" for fear of poisoned elfshot in the rear while they went to the bathroom.
During times of great conflict the fey harried enemy troops on their way to battle and the strongest of the fey joined the people of their territory in battle so as to keep what was theirs. Some of these great fey, The Morrigan and her sisters, Lugh, Stephen of the silver hand and others fought so bravely the humans thought that they must be gods and so they were.
In other parts of the world similar rackets took place symbiotically though usually in the favor of the celestials. Oni, Mauri, Loa, Kami and many pantheons of gods and demons came into being.
The Demons snuck and killed, warred and looted. Some made pacts with men. Men surrounded the demons with Fire so the demon could not strike out at man. Then the demon would negotiate with men.
Animal gods becoming forgotten made deals with men either joining with men and allowing them to take their form or looking over people as a totem that wasn't as arrogant as fire.
The dragons of the west verried in disposition. In some places they allied with the fey and lived on what men gave them. In others they took whatever they wanted.
In the east the dragons being calmer because of their water nature thought of what would happen when the old ones got out of their icey prison began to teach the secrets of magic to men of great learning. Though in a human lifetime a man can only learn a very cut down version of magic. Over time the secrets filtered wests changing slightly from culture to culture like a message passed from mouth to mouth.
The servitors of the old ones split into two groups. Some were created to be very very helpful. These went slightly mad and tried to find something to help out. Many of them got drawn to powerful humans or humans with great destinys or just really nice humans that they liked and would give them advice and help out however they could. They could move so fast that people assumed they must have wings and so many of them suddenly did.
The second group were built to be very very loyal. When they found Light Bringer and vice versa they instantly joined him in his cause of warming up the world. Finally Light bringer came up with an idea and his servitors and he went to the middle of the earth and started stoking the fires there. The world slowly became more liveable but the poles refused to melt.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Thu Jan 04, 2007 3:58 am
Part Five
Light Bringer took a look around to see how things were going but was very displeased to see the humans so profligate and almost every village possessing a magic user or two. The more advanced studies being done in the large cities worried him even more.
Quickly he came up with a plan. He set the loyal servators away from stoking the core and set them to whispering into the minds of people. They found men's weaknesses and stoked them like they had the heat of the Earth's core. They fortified greed, covetousness, envy, fear, lust, doubt, wrath and anything else that makes men turn against each other or even themselves. Men envied each other for their power, wealth, lovers, or even their simplicity.
They grew to hate each other for any difference that they could perceive. They declared the shape changing tribes to be monsters and chased them out of towns and wouldn't trade with them. When the shapeshifters fought back men claimed it was proof of their monstrosity.
Men declared any god different than the ones they worshiped to be a demon and went to war against the demon worshipers who lived next door or in the next country over.
When the men of the west heard that magic had been taught by dragons they remembered the tyrannical lizards of the west who had stolen whatever they wanted from them and declared all mages to be evil.
War parties went into the mountains of the west and slaughtered every dragon that didn't go into deep hiding.
The teaches of a Jewish carpenter and an Indian prince became very influential in the world. And as the focus of these religions were dead men there was nothing to become a new god. So an imaginary god was held out to the people and anyone who couldn't see the emperor's new clothes were killed either by war or by execution.
The sacrifice of thousands to the imaginary god finally turned that nothingness into a god of arrogance. Worshippers of this god of destroying what you don't understand gained the ability to destroy celestials on sight.
The celestials went into hiding along with those mages and free minded people who managed to avoid the wars and public executions. And so a crowd of refugees found themselves at the twins' palace.
The twins listened to the tails of an arrogance god and marauding warriors and were reminded of their early childhood. Their arrogant father and his armies. They felt a kinship for the refugees and let the celestials and mages move into the palace while the nonmagical folk built villages in the valley below their palace, and farmed the fertile fields in a place some call Shangrila.
There was peace and love in that place and everyone celebrated everyone else's festivals because they were all very fun to celebrate. Sadly not everything a human could want was available in the valley so traders from the village would have to go south to buy salt and thus the other servitors heard of the valley and felt the residual magic on the trader.
The servitor whispered into the mind of a warlord with thousands of troops telling him rumours of the vast wealth to the north in a little valley. The warlord listened and smiled.
They came to the valley in the night, on fast short ponies, short broad men with thick short sharp blades poured over the valley wall like a waterfall howling like hell itself. Ratholina set a protection over the palace hiding it from the eyes of the war party.
Ratholin rode a gryphon down to the valley to take on the approaching troops but they saw him coming and the gryphon turned to a dust mote beneath him. He spoke a sylph into being to carry him slowly down but that too was seen. In a rage he sprouted wings of fire and headed at the enemy ranks.
The warlord finding not much treasure in the valley and having killed all the peasants in the village saw Ratholin flying towards his troops and thought it might be a demon coming to eat his flesh. He declared a retreat. ratholin threw a fistfull of tiny black imps at the back rank of the retreating army. No one watched them fall so they managed to catch hold and burrow into the enemy becoming bubonic plague.
Ratholin landed and looked upon the villages which were like huts set up on a lake of blood. The last time Ratholin had done healing magic had been in the days of the dragon wars. Though his powers had increased he had not the finesse to repair the dead. So of course he just counted on power alone and willed the blood back into the bodies and the bodies. Since he didn't want to try to figure who's blood was whose he just adjusted the bodies to be able to repair themselves with whatever blood they got. The bodies rose up and lapped the blood from the valley floor and wounds healed themselves up until all but those decapitated or cut in half lengthwise stood whole again and looked to Ratholin with eyes that were hungry always hungry... And that was the creation of vampires.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Thu Jan 04, 2007 4:25 am
Part Six
One of the vampires ran directly after the opposing troops and in their shock and surprise managed to kill 20 of them that had lagged behind trying to avoid their comrades with the black spots. She came back to the valley with a wide grin on her pronounced canines. And thus was it known that vampires were immune to the eye of the arrogance god.
Ratholin declared a council of war and brought everyone together. The first order was gathering information. The vampires were sent out into the world of men to find what they could learn. The mages and alchemists and witches and diviners cast spells or studied crystals to change where their vision looked. Mule dear flew east and brought back as many dragons as he could find (which turned out to be nine). The dragons told of the Buddhist priests in the east who taught that there is no god except the god in your head and thus could destroy celestials with a glance. One dragon from the west who'd migrated to the east told of the Christian priests in the west who told that any thought in your head not told you by them was the work of the devil and must be cast out and thus could destroy the celestials with a glance.
The divinations and vampire spies helped bring back the whole story as you've heard it hear. More divination was made to perceive what the point of this was.
Four things were discovered:
The arrogance god was spawned from the worst of what it is to be human by the servitors of the old one.
The arrogance god would favor the old ones above all when the old ones return and would give them the power to do anything they wanted in the world
The old ones have been pissed off for thousands and thousands of years and plan to destroy every celestial they even suspect of being disloyal to them and then killing every biological lifeforms more evolved than a fish.
The old ones will do this in the most painful way possible.
Ratholin and his generals have been recruiting the least religious, most effective, open minded people and monsters they could find to fill out an army. Since those people tend to be amoral and prone to violence it has been deemed the Legion of Evil.
The servitors of the old ones have spent about 200 years helping man raise his technology and lower his love for the planet to the point where it becomes nearly assured that the icecaps will melt very soon.
The legion of evil has gathered all it's mages and cast a spell that will blind the arrogance god for 100 years. It is hoped that will be enough time to take back the world and perhaps reinstate some knowledge of magic to the human populous.
Many of the celestials who were in hiding have decided to openly fight on the side of the loyal servitors fearing the fate the old ones will give them.
Most notable among these are the elves and dwarves.
This is how things now stand. Evil against Evil.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Reply
