The Ages

The Age of Creation
Ultimately, the Creator desires entertainment and a release from solitude. While divine, it is not unlike our own needs and desires. The difference is that the Creator made this desire, this need, and the rest of us are the consequence.

As it is chronicled, the Creator's first creation was himself. Endless power and potential shaping and confining itself in a form that could think and feel. It began to conceptualize reality, forming our existence as it crafted its own. The first age was one of massive change and rapid upheaval as the Creator began to settle on what he desired.

It began with the stars, brilliant light equal only to the Creator's own. Then stars were torn and the dust of their derelict cores were scattered to form worlds, and the first lives. The Creator delighted in this discovery, and focused on shaping these new beings.

So were the Forgotten born, first to be made by the Creator's hands. They were conscious, watching as first bone was formed, then muscle and tissue was draped over their forms, binding their starlit hearts and minds.

The Forgotten looked upon this with wonder, observing and taking note of every step of the process. Already they were driven by their desire to create and mimic the Creator, as they were designed to do. They set to work immediately, testing the boundaries of reality in utter silence: The Forgotten had an intimate connection between themselves and had no need to speak. The Creator had withdrawn to the heavens, to explore the stars. It was many years before his eventual return.

The Creator finally descended from the stars. He was pleased by the devotion and dedication of the nameless race. He reached into the skies and summoned a star down from the heavens. It fell to the world, causing a wave of dust to spread through the land for some time. Taking the First Born in hand, as the first ten Forgotten called themselves, he showed them true creation, teaching them their true purpose. Tearing apart the bright star with his magic, he showed the Forgotten what they came to eventually call the unique magic of "Weaving." They picked it up instantly, and aided the Creator in their first creation. This creation came to be known as the "Children of the Light" in later years, after the star they were formed from and due to the Creator's aid in creating them.

The Children of Light were beautiful and wondrous. The Forgotten looked upon them with parental devotion. But this creation was inherently different from them: it looked upon them with disdain, clinging to the Creator. There was love between the two races, but it was strained. The Children never truly forgave the Forgotten for having a hand in their creation, potentially introducing imperfections. The Forgotten, on their part, still blame the Children for diminishing them, for it was the Children who spoke the first words ever to be uttered. The Forgotten were forced to learn these words to communicate with the Children, and with the first syllables could feel the link between them fade. They were forced to conceptualize with words now, forced to name things for the first time. Eventually, the Children left and made stories of how they were the first born and Creators of life. So did the nameless race come to be known as the Forgotten.

The Forgotten, now less than they were, turned their attention to understanding the Children. Some few remained among the Forgotten, and it was these that the Forgotten most loved. One among the Children offered herself to them in the hopes to better understand the Creator's art and to potentially repair the damaged relationship of the two races. The Forgotten and remaining Children worked together to try to find answers to the questions they had in this new world, forging a powerful friendship.

But something went wrong. The Child who helped spearhead the project one day stood atop the mighty platform of the Forerunner, who focused the Weaving power of himself and the four greatest among the Forgotten through use of the Artaei, the grand Focusing device and laboratory of the Forgotten. What exactly went wrong is unknown, but those Children who were on the platform were no longer Children. They were something ruthless and cunning, the darker and more perverse half of the beautiful creatures they once were. They were changed forever. Of Lusania, the Child who volunteered to aid the Forgotten, nothing was heard. She was gone.

What followed was absolute chaos. The new demons, each vastly powerful beings in their own right, fought for dominance amongst each other and against the Forgotten. They invented the concepts of murder and violence, as well as the eventual decay of other things. One among them was victor of the power struggle, declaring himself the Firstborn and forging a surprisingly honor bound society which strongly reminded of the Children of Light, though through the mirror darkly.

They rose up and spread across the land, grabbing some of the prominent Forgotten and convincing them to Reweave themselves as demons, as well as providing demons with a means to taint others and pervert their Weave. It was far from perfect, but the insatiably curious Forgotten could not resist the pull and became the first lords among demon kind, which turned against the Forgotten who tried to eradicate their mistake in honor of the memory of those who faded. The Children of Light came to their aid, bearing down on the demons when the Forgotten armies, unsuited to mass combat, faltered. The demons were driven back and the Forgotten Wove a seal of such power that even the Creator could not break it ... from within. Yet, this left the demons ultimately victorious: they survived a world that had shown them hatred and fear when they were first waking from birth.

At roughly the same time, the first Forerunner was growing increasingly unstable and began to lock the best and the brightest of the Forgotten away in other sealed and secret places, fracturing the unified pool of knowledge the Forgotten once had. The Forerunner began to consolidate power and left a very uncertain future. All who threatened his might were cast aside. It was this that caused his downfall, as one of the Master Experimenters crafted two living weapons that were far more potent than the Forerunner, weaving some of the original star into them while sealing it with the dark of the demon taint. Before he was finished, the Forerunner managed to seal both children in the Nether: one in fire and passion, one in soul-sapping cold.

The Forerunner, however, underestimated the wrath of the 'mother' of these children. This woman, the only Forgotten to truly end her life and sever her Eternal Weave, crafted a chain that bound the original Forerunner away. Forever. A new Forerunner, who had been selected to replace the old ages ago, was finally allowed to take his proper place and the chaos settled. The Children of Light, saddened by the loss of their brothers and sisters, grew distant from the Forgotten, who in turn keenly felt the weight of their mistakes. Through it all, the Creator watched on in silence, and some Forgotten have since come to believe that this mistake also had a purpose.

Many years passed, with only a few demons traversing the land, usually half breeds who weren't sealed away. They became the stuff of legend, tales being told of strange twisted creatures who lived in a mysterious, fire wracked realm. But these were not the tales told by the Forgotten, nor the Children: new races had been formed by the now cautious Ancients, their tales only just beginning. The Elves had been made, a gentler race formed from the materials of wind and leaf. The Forgotten made them to be the Guardians of Creation, to prevent their mistakes from causing any more damage and to heal the world of the scars of former conflicts.

To this end, the Elves were made to be beautiful and charming, to serve as a people able to speak with the Children and the Forgotten. They tended to the world, inspiring the plants to grow and the forests to swell, and then living amongst the life they nurtured. They were, in many ways, perfect. They did not create as the Forgotten did, but they did not have the same capacity to destroy. The Children disdained these new beings, noting immediately that the Creator did not have a hand in their making and suspicious of anything the Forgotten crafted after the rise of the Demons.

So the Age of Creation ends, and the stories of the Forgotten begin to fade. It would not be long before they disappeared from history for a time, along with the Children of Light and the sealed away Demons. The world belonged to the Elves alone for some time.

It was many years before the world saw change.

The 'First' War
The wheel of years turned on its spokes and delivered all into a new Age. The Elves had done their work, and done it well: they had revived the torn landscape of Aeonis and spread across it, creating an empire that would later be spoken of in songs. They had succeeded in making a world of peace, where they lived in tune with the forests.

It didn’t last, of course. The Elven empire had grown too large and its outer regions told startling reports of floating cities held aloft by naught but air, with shining residents who outright ignored their passage. Forests had been felled beneath these islands, and trees had been suffocated by the lack of light due to long shadows cast from above.

The Elves peered cautiously at these beings who lived in a brilliant world above. They watched and waited until the novelty wore off. When enough time passed, they began to ignore those who dwelled above, telling tall tales of those who danced among the clouds. Until the Children of Light came down to replenish their supplies, cutting into the land, chanting verses that caused large chunks to fling themselves skyward, and carving into the forests. The Elves, who had done so much to heal the world, were infuriated. They took up arms and began to fight. They were not prepared: the Children were a devastating force who were neigh unassailable and while at first seemed to ignore the Elves they now made it their mission to erase those who had attacked them. They struck back with all the zeal of religious fervor and all the righteousness of an angry God.

Elsewhere, the Forgotten had just finished their latest creation. They had taken from the heart of Aeonis itself and forged life in its fire, creating the stonefolk. The Dwarves. In typical Forgotten fashion, they had made them to be excellent workers who were very family oriented and very able to achieve their goals. A sense of material to the spirit of the Elves and Children of Light.

And in typical Forgotten fashion, they did so without considering consequences. They created a race that would delve to any depth, that would conquer any challenge. That would dig through ancient seals, meant to keep the hordes at bay. The Dwarves broke the seals and released the demons, the two races coming into immediate contention beneath the surface of Aeonis. Their battles were so fierce that it began to effect the surface with cave-ins.

It is likely the Creator’s humor that led us to the next event: the Children were fighting the Elves, the Dwarves were locked in battle with the Demons. The under races fought beneath the upper, and the four were forced by fate to meet when the battles below spilled into the open sky. Demon and Child met once again at long last. Then their battle began anew, the Dwarves and Elves cast to the wayside… until they fought back and proved that ignoring them was a fatal flaw.

Four armies in one great war. It nearly looked as though it would cause far more damage than the time of the mistake, even without the presence of the Forgotten. However, the only absent race would quickly end the war, and the four participating would be very shocked indeed by the might of their newest foe…

The Age of Man
The Forgotten had just finished their ambitious and strangely hasty project, the humans. Into these creatures they inserted passion and potential. They began frail and weak, but could become surprisingly ferocious in groups. And they did.

They entered the war more prepared than any had bargained for, ready and willing to carve a place for themselves among the races. At first they were a nuisance, the child told to walk away while the adults worked. Then they began to surprise each race, first crushing the Elves and then the Demons before moving on in greater numbers than the others could dream towards the Dwarves and Children. The Children were forced to depart, letting their old islands crash to the ground or ascend into the distant heavens while they made their way to lands they could call their own. The Elves withdrew into the forests, the demons gathered in the Nether to regain their strength and learn of the frailties of humans, while the Dwarves locked themselves in their halls and swore never to reveal their location to the violent races of the land.

The humans were left to their own devices. The once conquering warlords fell on each other until they established a kingdom, which the victors named Aeonis while others followed in the footsteps of the Children and left for other lands. They crafted a land and spread across its borders, making an empire stronger than any that came before and one which lost track of its non-human cousins.

Their cousins and fellow created were no longer remembered by the short lived humans, who went about their business and told tales of those who came before. They traveled the lands and claimed the world as theirs, with nation after nation being born and pushing back those races who sought to avoid the long reach of mankind.

Surprisingly, peace was maintained easily in this age. The races refused to fight a superior foe who was quickly growing stronger and greater with each passing generation. It is quite possible that the incredibly flawed humans would be the most wondrous and successful work of the Forgotten, had not the Creator stepped in.

The Age of Struggle
The Creator descended on the world and peered silently at its inhabitants. The humans were terrified of this strange being, who they did not recognize and who did not, in turn, recognize them. Legend varies at this point. The most common one says that the Creator, displeased with the disinteresting world, cast great plagues upon it to create a clean slate, decimating the human herds and granting the other races another chance. Others say a human attacked the Creator out of ignorance, and that his wrath was mighty. Others say it was a combination of events that caused the great struggle.

Either way, a great plague swept across the land, slaying nearly nine out of ten humans it came across. Those who perished in this way were transformed into ghastly things that were caught between life and death. Some were rotting as they walked, while the flesh simply fell off of others. Strange beasts rose from the earth and hissed before violently exploding. It was absolute chaos, and the human empire largely crumbled save for some solitary strongholds. The other races found a new and far more relentless foe, but suddenly also had more room to expand.

What confuses the issue are those legends of the demons, who say they made the plague. Or the arrival of two ‘new’ races: the Margonites and the Vampires. The Margonites were a race nearly as old as the Forgotten who claimed a different origin altogether and who had specifically engineered such undead beasts as guardians. Some claim the vampires brought the plague with them when they came through the Nether. Others suggested a darker hand may have been involved.

Either way, this age was punctuated by years of struggle as people attempted to find their place. During this time some of the Children of Light began to filter back, led by the Lady Kaline. Soon after, a child was born, who bore the unique aura of the Children of Light and the physical markings of the Demons. Such a union was greatly discouraged, yet the child was strangely well respected.

Many pinned their hopes and dreams on this being, naming it the Chosen One. The people of the kingdom put him through many trials when he came of age, and rewarded his successes with great artifacts from each of the races. Then he set out amidst the chaos to find the gates to the Creator’s lofty and unseen realm to demand that he remove the curse set upon the world.

He never returned. Primogenitus, the insatiably curious Forerunner, wondered if the races could succeed on their own. The races pinned their hopes on ‘fate’ and ‘destiny’, and the ancient decided he wanted to see what would occur if they had only themselves to depend on. The Chosen One did not pass through the gates of the Creator.

The Age of Uncertinity
It is in this age that I awoke, an age when the races had just regained some control from the bleak invasion of monsters that wore the faces of old friends. This age is marked with many political changes and wide-scale tragedies, including the fall of the ancient Elven Lord Phoenix to the curse of Vampirism and the following decline of the Elves into violence and decay, the curse of Frost which befell the then highest ranking Dwarves which left their kin in disarray, and the rise of the wicked and powerful Dark Elves.

Lords came and went in this era, with people redefining themselves as the tide of battle shifted. Amidst the chaos were bastions of order, such as the Templar, and those who fought to keep the peace. My own order of the Tetragrammaton arose in this time, leading those tired of war into a path of learning, while others learned the healing arts of the Creator.

It was the best of times and the worst of times. Here, people made their mark on history and changed our microcosm of a kingdom. Here people fought battles unlike any other, or partied with friends that did not always survive to the next day. Riches were made and lost. It was an uncertain time, but it was a time where people truly lived.

And then the darkest day dawned. When The Dark, a personification of malevolence, rose up to devour our world.

A Black Dawn
It had been quiet, for a time. The people of Aeonis had briefly set aside the grudges of the past and sullenly stood with one another in anticipation of the next assault by the entity known only as The Dark. It had been no easy task to create this momentary lull in the ceaseless war for the lands of Aeonis, battles that were at first waged in the name of the Creator, of the Queen, of Kael, or for the very idea of war itself. Now the fight was for survival against a threat that clearly meant ill for all.

And yet nothing was happening. The world was unstable, to be sure: time distorted and distended over the next few weeks, creating strange moments where people had left rooms days before only to return from whence they came upon waking. Objects carried faded or multiplied, and all retained their memory of these happenings. But nothing truly happened. Soon the fragile peace began to crack at the seams: the Nords began to press against the Druchii. Arguments and tempers flared. Then swords were drawn by others who remembered their bitter rivalries and all was as it had been, with the silent watcher a distant memory.

Aeonis returned to the state of disarray and chaos that it had so lovingly held dear, with blood flowing down the gutters of highways and the call to arms ringing through the mountains. It was then, in that moment when things had returned to the normal state of affairs, that the dawn rose black.

The sun died that early morning, sputtering out as if clasped by a bird of prey too immense to fathom. It collapsed, leaving a hole in its place that spewed dark profanities and wicked perversions. It cracked with violet energy that expanded outwards, catching fleeing stars and swallowing them whole. The earth spiraled violently under the horrid glow, with the furthest ends suffering the most first: the Ark and the Elven tree grew festering boils that burst, releasing untold hordes of creatures that Aeonis had never before witnessed. Further out the land crumbled and then burned away, fading into the empty void as it was unwoven. The Elves and Dark Elves were forced to flee through their portals, both temporary and otherwise, to preserve their lives. Many were lost, and they witnessed their old homes fall into nothing.

Then the inner lands began to suffer. Aeonis, within seconds, had become the last bastion of life. Others flocked to the Cathedral of the Creator. The Forgotten worked to stave off the assault, but some fell even as they acted, becoming hollow shadows that devoured the light before fading entirely. Rajaat and Primogenitus were nowhere to be seen, though many assumed they were attempting to protect what was left in their own ways.

As the world crumbled about them, falling in thick shards into the hollow void, the survivors could make out a legion of corrupt figures pushing towards them, led by the now familiar form of Sejano. The Followers set out to delay them, save for Ami Takeshi who had disappeared for a time. The Children who had entered the lands walked with them, brandishing swords enhanced with the fires of the sword wielded by Rutni the Coldforger, who shattered it in the process and wielded its inferno in the battle to come.

The Creator appeared then, stern disapproval chiseled across his divine visage. While the Followers worked to delay the horde, the Forgotten Wove to keep what little remained existent, and the Margonites worked their ancient powers around the few mages of the world, the Creator spoke. His words were few: “I am disappointed in all of you.”

It was unclear what he meant, precisely, but he raised his hand and wrapped the remaining world in a sheath of light. What happened outside is unknown, but the Forgotten were all very, very quiet. They paused to look upon those few survivors gathered. Then Rajaat and Primogenitus appeared and led the other Forgotten. When all was finished, Rajaat stepped back and allowed Primogenitus to speak. The First Born looked as if he were about to say something profound, but was quickly distracted but a small butterfly, which he examined very carefully, forcing Rajaat to speak instead.

“The world is made anew.” He said. “It is not as we remember it. And it is all that is left.”

~

''It is in this new age, the Age of Dawn, that we find ourselves. It is here, in our new world made up entirely of Aeonis and naught else that we have infinite potential. Now we stand with the Creator against the Dark, or allow ourselves to fall into the endless void.''

~Rajaat High Master of the Tetragrammaton Lead Architect of the Forgotten The Weaver