A brief History of the West, the return of the Light, the Second Dawn of Man, and the Sleeping of the Age.

A brief History of the West, the return of the Light, the Second Dawn of Man, and the Sleeping of the Age.

There are many histories. 

Some say only the sages see back far enough.  But what truth can be found in legend that no scribe can surmise?  There is the Great Count of Days in Kias written by King John himself that span almost 1,100 years from the day his ships moored in what is now known as the Bay of Kings.  There are the Great Epicosmoleric Tomes in the Hidden tower that record the 9 Histories of The world, as written and passed down by the heads of the ancient colleges of sorcery the seek the Birth of Magic.  There is the Hall of Mirrors in SkyFall, the ruined city of the dwarves, where their language lives in its many forms, and chronicles fantastic things that seem to have no reference in this world.  There is the Great Work of the Sages Guild at the Gra y Heart Observatory that is said the record the lives and deeds of all men.  But who has access to these places to hand out truth and understanding, and it is no great thought that a lie can be written as easily as it is spoken. 

There are stories.  Stories are born in your own heart, and rise with you through your life and have their say in your deeds and the deeds of others and never die, but stay carried aloft in the hopes and tears of your friends and your people.  Most people have stories.  Most people remember a time when, or they remember that their father knew someone, or were themselves great, and almost everyone comes from somewhere, a survivor of some great dead whose fruit is a 10 generation tree of life, that may not have been had they failed, cowered or been carried away in the rivers of doubt and fear that crisscross our lives.

You have your own stories don’t you.  Of course you do.  Here are a few stories often told, and known by many.

"The Dwarves broke the world.  The Mockery of man.  Sprung up as some insult against the Men of old, the reached deep into the world and pulled forth its heart and with a mind not governed by the Light and no Soul to hold faith, the cut the heart from the world and broke it upon the tallest mountain.  But the earth was older still than the Dwarves and while they destroyed all good things the earth did, the earth had the last say, and sent a choice to all things and to all places, to pick up the earth and live again.  This thing was called magic by Men.  And the cared for it, and the punished the dwarves where they could find them and they tried to heal the earth but somethings just stay broken."

"As the last man died protecting the Light, his child was left, as he could not raise a hand unto his own.  Darkness buried the light and took the child and made elves from her.  Ooiya was her name.  The elves being the answer of the darkness to the Answer of the Light that was Man.  It is said that it is in every elf not to be wholly evil, and so many elves choose to see their light and serve man, but many elves also choose the Dark and shun the light and are forever the enemies of Man.  And so as Man is responsible for the creation of elves in that Aand could not kill his child as he lay wounded unto death by the Great Heaven, it is in mans heart not to slay his child still though elves be wholly or partially of this darkness, there is the hope in them that they might see who they truly are."

"There once was Light, and it was served by men and Men were the beginning of the Light.  It had one champion from the beginning of days, Pholtus, and if there was a god, Pholtus was it.  Many sought him for protection and guidance and only Pholtus stood in front of the Great Heaven and Pinned the sky with daggers and kept the dark from the tent he built for man.  But darkness if foul and good only for hiding and building wrongness, and though many rose in strength beside him, Darkenss found a way into all things.  Pholtus Told Man that he would bring the Light to ever piece of the Gift, and there were many who stood beside him and said they also would surrender their lives and help him in evil, correct the great flaw of the world, and that their lives would be a sacrifice to give man always a place in the Gift.  And they are the gods now, though in their time they were mortal Men, women of the Line of Ooiya.  And Pholtus brought darkness low and stuffed it back into the ground and pushed it out from his Sky and laid it upon the Great Heaven.  And his time came and he made gifts of himself to all things, and there were some among his Ascendants that could not hold open the sky or keep pinned the darkness of the heavy depths, and lost the gift of Pholtus and were taken into the Dark where they remain.  But there are gods left to us, Varmelius in the south in his great City of Tullnimoon.  There is Mathereal of the earth who is the power of the earth.  There are others too, and evil, the Gray Veil himself Malfator in his Aspects and the world of the dead.  Peytah, the Path, Yihoon who see’s, Igyaya lost to reason, Leah’dah gone from the Gift, a scar of great pain upon the world and the lands in her passing.  The good gift of God, wasted on his children, the many gods now, who live and fight and die."

"King John has ruled for over three thousand years.  He fights the God King Mok Turosh in the south for us every day.  He will not let his city fall.  I have seen him, lead his men, call them back from death, drive the horns of the enemy into their heads, the flags from the ramparts fluttering as he pushes them from the fields of his kingdom.  I have seen his Vicars set things right.  I have seen him stand with that great light and punish the god king and break the banner of his red word.  May King John still live forever."

"There was a day when the dark of the southern lands, the horned lands, awoke with a voice and a vision and came north to take what is left of the Gift from Man.  Mok Turosh, the God King, the King of the Banded lands, the Power of his people, the Drinker of Blood.  He has destroyed the great and vast plain of the south and taken all those great cities from men.  He stands at the gate of Kias and knocks with his great hand.  He looks north, here to this small province, and see our light.  He will come for us if Kias falls.  He sends his kind north to find us."

"There are many great things that are left, though it seems all the goodness in them is past and the hands that made them, held them high, drove out the darkness, have been wounded, and are lost to us.  These things are a great power, when magic was strong and new, and weapons ripped the havens open and made there a place for Light.  Then great swords, pinned the darkest of hearts deep within the earth.  When the words of the mouth were a powerful language and the greeting healed and nourished and the admonition destroyed.  These artifact are there, out there, far to the west, past the green sea, and the high wall of the world, past the second sea, and in the broken lands of the Western Men.  All in the south know of the Eye of Varmelius perched atop his mountain city of Tulnimoon.  It is not beacon but a tool of the old Western men, a box that restores the sky and breaks darkness.  It is now god up there that stands the vigil, not varmeylius in his Golden Halls, but a toll of the old ones, and artifact of their will and faith before the world was born, and then Broken again."

"Everywhere there is war.  Many Cities burn or are burnt.  The great of men have died or fight still somewhere.  It is now that the Darkness, with its evil and caution, pushes forth into the deeper places, tests the light and eharts of man, and seeks ever a place in the world that was theres of old, before the coming of man and Light.  It is all those things wild and dark, the creatures of the woods, the mountains, the sky.  Shine a light into darkness.  Drive it back, do what you can.  If we do nothing, will the Light always shine?"  

"They say that everything is a cycle.  That we live and die and live again.  Who knows this, the Gods may, they tell not me.  But for all this, all that was, the heights of power, the great and vast lands of promise and peace, everything slides down the hill to be taken by the river or worn to nothing by time, eventually.  I say the age is sleeping, or soon to be.  Maybe man will survive."