Ages ago, the sway of the Har'qin Empire
waved mightily amongst the czars, emperors, gerents, and imperators
of the old world. Vicious battles had underscored their reputation,
forcing many conquered crowns into servitude and peonage. During
the infancy of the doctrine of pain and anguish inflicted upon our
world by the gods, these highborn magnates were forced into the
depths of the Takrin Gre'as'anto, their birthright sundered by the
malevolence of the gods. Here they wept and plotted avengement,
angering the deities who had punished them, they were sealed below
the burning sands to live in misery and depravity as punishment
for their impotence.
Within the depths of the subterrestrial world,
the populace of the Har'qin were rapidly digested, mauled, and mutilated
by the species that called this place their home. Some though endured
these horrible tragedies and learned the disposition of their attackers,
taking their weapons and life style. Others, the mages and acolytes
began to practice their magic once again, this time with the aid
of the strange black ore found throughout the caverns they rested
in. They were shaped by the black rock, their magic becoming more
powerful yet increasingly unsteady within their grasp. These men
and women of stature retired deeper into the tunnels and caverns;
pleased to stay remote from the foul beings they had once called
compatriots, later evolving into what we now know as the Ancients.
Those who remained in closer to the surface
soon found their way blocked from exit, they retreated back into
the caves with their knives fashioned from bone and their armor
carved out of old bark. They were the first of the race we know
now as the though they were not by
any stretch the last. For thousands of years, the people of the
surface world continue about their wars, petty squabbles, their
very lives, unaware that an entire nation, with laws, gods, and
prejudices, existed right beneath their feet. Nor would they know,
for it was the will of the Ancients to have the world of the Kin'kaan
sequestered from the sight of the infidels.
Deeper and deeper the peoples of the once
grand Har'qin Empire dug and explored, finding new uses for the
very creatures they had once fought against for survival within
the subterranean lair. The Ancients spoke in the dreams of a handful,
to come to them in the night. Those who followed, were forever altered,
removing themselves from their families and friends, working within
small grottos and terraces away from the eyes of their once comrades.
What the Ancients taught them, we do not know, their eyes burning
with the flames of knowledge and understanding, they set about their
task, creating living armor and weapons for the warriors and training
the first of the cadith in what the Ancients wished of them and
the people of the Kin'kaan.
Those who had been touched by the Ancients
took upon them the name shapers, reflecting the art they practiced
deep within their lairs. The shapers outfitted the warriors with
powerful beasts of burden, to aid them in their campaign against
the creatures below the cities; they forged new metals and rocks
that were harder than steel and more beautiful than diamonds and
forced the first of the underground creatures into vassalage. Their
unending work giving rise to the idea of The Power that their magic
and by proxy the magic of the Ancients is derived from.
It was during the respite between conflict
and peace that the masq evolved. Carrying out dark quests of assassination
and vengeance, these horrid wraiths of the ebon wastes evolved with
the practiced arts of the shapers, giving their kind the ability
to shift forms and assume other identities. Their stories are rarely
told, invoking their name would bring shame upon even the most worthy
of the castes, instead their myth and legend ran rampant, even in
the ears of the generations who should have known better.
It had been centuries before the Ancients
returned to the world they retreated from so long ago, their comrades
so changed and warped by the ages of terminal darkness siphoning
away their laughter and their love, that without the shapers they
may have never truly realized the horrors they had created. There
were four that came forth that frightful night, wafting into town
as though carried by the drafts of the subterranean. They slipped
amongst the warrior caste, the shaper caste, the masq caste, and
the Cadith. Leaving before the waking, they chose their quartet,
young children emblazoned with the brand of the Ancients, marked
for a destiny the once proud people of Har'qin had held high above
them as unrealized goals and wishes.
The Ancients had not been heard of again,
but there are rumors of a Executor, raised and bred by the Power
and the Ancients who possess it. It is believed that he is to lead
the castes to inevitability, to the bright world they had once been
shunned from. This outsider was chosen carefully by destiny, his
name was Nil Spaar, and his legend may be heralded even greater
than those who came before him. Though we know through dedication,
all that the Ancients plan for us shall come to pass, we shall return
home to those golden-haired children of the gods, we shall deliver
to them the gifts we have gathered from beneath their feet and their
sun will be coated in the blood of their fallen. The Kin'kaan will
be home again.
:: Enlightenment ::
It was morning in the capital of Palos, though
that fact was scarcely evident to anyone in the city. Roiling black
smoke choked the sunlight and blotted out much of the blue sky.
Deafening screams of women, children, and battle frenzied warriors
filled the air like a rolling cannonade, loosed from a mighty warship.
The smell of burnt flesh and ensanguined bodies struck any consideration
that this city had once been the vanguard of peace and prosperity
in the region known as the Takrin Gre'as'anto or Desert Peace.
Rising from the center of the city, a black
monolith stood where once had been nothing. Jagged and cracked,
it scythed into the morning sky, each crack opened up within to
reveal several pulsating sacks, alive and doughy. Each smoking crevice
held wiggling masses of flesh, dislodging itself from the spire
and falling harmlessly to the ground. The muted sounds of flesh
upon stone were dwarfed by the screams of the infidels as they ran
from death and their ultimate destiny. Destiny and death, the inalienable
truths of the people of Palos, their light falling into the final
stages of extinction.
It had been much like this since the evening
prior, when the monolith had finally pierced the hardened mantle
beneath the city. It toppled the statue of the infidel's fallen
monarch, a sign of the great victory soon to come to the proud warriors
of the Kin'kaan. The pulsating sacks had spewed herds of warriors
birthed from the elements themselves onto the dreaming populace
of Palos. The warriors hit the ground and immediately proceeded
upon their objectives with eerie efficiency. The watch stations
and the garrisons first, then into the sewer systems that snaked
underneath the city, hundreds of silent warriors crept, blades extracted
from the very spire they had arrived in. The governor's mansion,
the mayor's home, all came second; the captain of the guard and
the garrison near the bazaar came next.
By the time the slaughter had been figured
out, it was too late; a few infidels who had survived the first
attack raised the alarm, though none of their comrades could hear
it from their death sleeps. The cattle swarmed from their homes
and huts, grabbing what they could before running to the streets,
praying to escape with their lives. Screams of young ones lured
the second generation of beings forged from the spire, vicious four
legged wolves, skin peeled back with vertebrae exposed. The Vor'sk,
as they were called, raced into the streets to find the screaming,
drawn to it like so many other predators who stalk the young as
prey. Two-story beasts lumbered from the center of town, built from
the denticulate black stone of the monolith-spire and seemingly
dead flesh, these tormented souls walked through homes as though
they were walking through waves on the beach.
As Maxim's primary started to burn bright
in the sky, the very last of the monolith-spire had been exposed,
like a black dagger striking out toward the sun. The apex of the
dagger burst open to disgorge flying beasts, with wings like insects
and convolute razor-thin claws with which they struck at the peasantry.
Their faces were covered with the look of anguish and the ferment
of hate. These horrid forms crashed through the night, stealing
man, woman, and child alike, flying to the heights of the still
standing buildings, siphoning them of their blood and wrapping their
empty carcasses in sacks, for later meals. Within hours, as the
sun came into full view, the first hives had been completed, stocked
full of fresh food for the broodlings.
Far outside the city, atop a small cliff
overlooking the once serene sight, he watched. He was wearing the
chitinous armor of his brood, his face covered in the skull of some
otherworldly beast. Furs draped from his taut noframesallowedand
cascaded down his stalwart body. His name before this time had been
many things, "slave", "killer", and even "thief", though he doubted
the efficacy of those names. His proselytes below had come to call
him the Executor, which he believed suited him much better, giving
him an air of distinctiveness.
"Ol uriu tlus xunor, Executor" the attendant
spoke as he approached upon a winged beast with six legs and the
body of an armored horse. Jumping from the beast and then waving
it off, the unarmored being fell immediately to one knee, head bowed
low with neck exposed, the proper greeting for someone of the Executor's
status.
The Executor did not elucidate any reaction
to the attendant.
"Forgive my forgetfulness, Executor, it will
not happen again." the attendant repented to the hooded Executor,
"I will speak in the infidel's tongue as you had ordered."
The Executor scanned the carnage that was
Palos, a lone man, no older than a squire climbed from the roof
hatch of one of the various burning or smoking buildings carrying
what seemed to be a musical instrument. Hot on his tail were two
of the warriors the Executor had personally commissioned to assist
him in this critical undertaking. Both were brandishing the taken
weapons of the infidel, a hammer of prodigious proportions and what
seemed to be a scythe, most likely stolen from the corpse of a farmer.
The young infidel began to strum his contraption,
most likely celebrating his death with a psalm to his dead god.
The Executor almost turned away from the scene, but a flash of movement
caught his eye, one of the two warriors slammed the hammer into
the midsection of the other, knocking the wind out of him and seemingly
ignoring the boy completely. The Executor watched in fascination
as the boy continued to sing his blasphemous song as the two warriors
began to battle. A quick turn on a heel caught the hammer wielding
warrior off balance and sent him to the ground in a stunning round
house kick, the scythe maneuvered through the morning sunlight with
all deliberate speed, truncating the hammer warrior through the
midsection. A few twitches of the foot and his lifeblood had left
him, abandoning just the singing boy and the scythe warrior.
The warrior for a long moment just stood
there, as though mesmerized by the singing of the boy. Then the
boy let out a yelp as the warrior stepped forward dropping the scythe
with a vicious howl. Grabbing the infidel's contraption with one
hand, crushing it, and the retreating boy's hair by the other, the
warrior turned to face the Executor. Holding the boy by the hair
and echoing another howl at the recognition of his commander, he
kicked out the boy's knees so that he was prostrate on the ground.
Reaching to his right side he brandished a dagger, the young boy's
face pale with the knowledge that his death was coming. The blade
cut down across the infidel neck, blood seeping out of the wound
almost immediately. He held the child there, almost like a father,
as he waited for the shaking and shivering to end in the infidel's
cold and pale body. When the boy had stopped his death seizure,
the warrior set him down placing his head down, knees wrapped below
the body, and arms crisscrossed beneath the chest in the sign of
respect to the warrior gods and their brave soldiers.
"He sees something I do not, Valier." the
Executor said.
Not surprised by his long pause before speaking,
the attendant acknowledged the Executors answer and use of his actual
name, yet said nothing before being asked.
"Perhaps he felt the infidel deserved more
than just death. Maybe he was a tougher opponent for the warrior."
the Executor concluded.
Valier knew better than to be goaded into
this word trap the Executor employed. He would fish for an answer
so that the attendant would answer incorrectly, thereby granting
the Executor the opportunity to engage in shin'ra or ritual
killing.
"You are very good at these games Valier,
please though tell me what it is you are thinking." the Executor
allowed a tight smile creep out from under his mask, still looking
away from Valier.
Valier nodded and bowed deeply, "Perhaps
the boy had the Power of the Ancients, Eminence."
The Executor's expression disappeared, "Have
his body investigated, his contraption, that instrument examined
as well."
"Yes Eminence. Immediately, I will obey."
Valier replied and turned to leave the Executor to his examination
of the closing battle.
Impossible, the Executor thought to himself,
a boy could never harness the Powers of the Ancients. We must investigate
this further, there is much more conflict due in the coming days,
we must know these people's strength. The very notion of the Power
almost corrupting the great victory the Kin'kaan had claimed this
day.
Continued in From
Whence We Came (Maelstrom)