...the Second Song continues... … and it was Glorious. Before the humans even existed, it is worth mentioning that there have been previous beings before them. The Lipod, the winged wind-people, and the Magindara, the snake-tailed water-people, have existed much before they have. The tamawo and the palesekan fought amongst themselves in the Corpse of Kalibutan, claiming patches of forestry and life. The palesekan became the Children of the Trees, while the tamawo became the Children of the Crystal, creating large crystalline cities as opposed to the palesekan’s smaller forest-tribes. The dalaketnon wandered across the world and eventually found one of the caves to Sulad, the Underworld. There they met Saragnayan, Lord of Darkness. And so, during the first few years of the Epoch of Heroes, the humans lived in constant fear of various halimaw and yawa, which came from the Sea, for the Sea was the corpse of the Orphaned Spirit. The other races also subjugated humanity under their rule, even the Dragon Lords that were the eventual descendants of the Naga Tribe of the magindara. It wasn't long before The Actor of Power had returned from His voyage, and he found that all of the world was filled with death and travesty, crumbling underneath the crippling weight of the Mad Sky's tyranny. He sought to reason with the Mad Sky, who only ended up cursing him and banishing him from the world. Filled with wrathful revolution, he gave to Magu'yawan the instructions of creating powerful essences of pure, coruscating power -- he tasked Magu’yawan to collect the God-Shards of the Primordials: the Furious Rebellious Shard of Kalibutan, the Glorious Warrior Spirit of Adlaw, the Reaping Shadow Specter of Bulan, and the Burning Thousand Points of Suga. These four shards he sealed into his Storm-Breath, and into it -- like a craftsman would pour pouring hot lava into a cast -- the Actor of Power poured his unfiltered, incalculable Raw Bala. These Breaths were then forged with Apung Tolus Ka Gomanan, the Diwata of the Forge, to craft a vast Receptacle upon which the power could be forged. Tolus Ka Gomanan, the Ever-Gnashing Hammer, used the four divine materials mined from the God-Shards of each of the four dead Primordial Apo and created the Receptacle of Heroic Power. These Receptacles were powerful enough to hold even the infinite might of the Actor of Power. With that, Actor of Power promised that he will return in the future. The Receptacle of Infinite Power only worked with those who had the potential for power, and thus they imparted the Receptacle upon those humans yet to be born. When those imbibed with the power of the Receptacle were birthed, they were observed to have grown twice as fast, reaching adulthood at fifteen years of age, and becoming able to speak at Nine-months. Each one imbibed with the power of the Receptacle were birthed under unnatural circumstances, one way or another -- under the singing of a tigmamanukan, or a vast bamboo patch grows in the span of minutes around the house where the hero is born. These young heroes -- who have yet to prove themselves -- were given guidance by their ancestral spirits, otherwise known as their anito. These anito taught them to harness their infinite potential, and taught them about the nature of reality -- how the world was known as the Tapiserya, and everything was a string of Diwa that could be manipulated by the strength and force of their Bala, or their internal strength. They cultivated and trained, making their Bala more powerful, as they eventually became well known warriors. During this time, a powerful Karanduun Datu named Saligang Makoda wrote the fabled “Cacophonies of Combat”, a large epic song dedicated to singing the songs of the Four Primordial Apo, and then detailing the four important parts of a War Band -- the Supernal Sword (Striker), the Sublime Shield (Defender), the Sacred Scepter (Controller) and the Celestial Crown (Leader). In the Cacophony he sings that for battle to be won, each of the four roles must be fulfilled. Eventually, the task of training these young heroes were passed down to the Katalonan, shamans that channeled the spirits. These Katalonan were known to be blessed with infinite wisdom of the anito and the diwata, but their job has become more dangerous when the task of teaching the young heroes was passed down to them. These young heroes then sought to slay the world, ridding it of malevolence, binding halimaw and other such creatures to their oaths, and creating vast empires, especially the Sinaunang Kedatuan, which even the Apo were proud of. The other sentient races, known collectively as the “Engkanto”, became amiable in the wake of their power. All of this became the object of the Mad Sky's hatred, and he sought to war with the heroes. The heroes, now after a thousand years of prowess, creating vast technologies, and binding the three worlds of Maka, Sanlibutan, and Sulad to their will, have become worthy of legends. And their names became that to reflect their achievements -- the heroes were then on known as “Karanduun”, Worthy of Songs. They brought the world into the Golden Age. The Mad Sky sought to create his own army of super-warriors. He went to the Seething God of Beasts, Apung Asuang, and gave the Apo power and a harem, in exchange for giving him what he needed -- a replenishable amount of Devil-Beasts. He did so, creating 666 Devil- Beast Warriors which he named Aswang, to fight the Karanduun with. The Aswang had control over all manners of beasts and darkness, and used rage and illusion and witchcraft to their advantage. The 300 Karanduun and their Armies fought against the 666 Aswang in the conflict known as the War of Majesty and Rage. The Karanduun won.

Angered at this, the Mad Sky sent his angels, the biraddali, who were known to the mortal tongue as the Kumakatok, to connive with the world. They spoke with the Dragon Lords, who took humans and performed genetic sorcery upon them with the essence of Kalibutan, creating the Heretic King Burners, humans with the power and might of the Dragon Lords. They created 12,000 of them, who then created armies and fought alongside their Dragon Lord Generals. The 300 Karanduun and their 666 Aswang slaves fought against the 12,000 Heretic King Burners and their 1,000 Dragon Lord Generals in the conflict known as the Thousand Brimstone Song War, which lasted for almost 1,000 years. The Karanduun won once again, subjugating the Heretic King Burners under their command, and the Karanduun continued in their Thousand Year Kedatuan. They performed great miracles expanded the borders of Tapiserya, and even pushed the Jaws of the World outward, making it bigger than it already is. The Mad Sky worked with Apung Saragnayan then, Lord of Darkness, and they stirred the waters, awakening the First Born Naga of Orphaned Spirit -- Bakonawa. When she awoke, she saw the seven moons, and wished to eat them. Two of the moons escaped, and Bakonawa ate the remaining four, but she only had her eyes set on the most beautiful of them all: Bu'an, one of the seven Moon Gods, who arose from the detritus Bulan’s corpse. Spurned by his love, Bakonawa took on the form of a Dragon and ascended to the sky. Halea created a silver mask to distract the wicked Bakonawa, and fought her until Halea successfully drove her back to the depths. Halea then replaced her brother and became the Masked Moon, the only Moon in the Sky, ever-vigilant against the Bakonawa. Whenever she removes her Mask, the light of the Moon is vanishes. During the eating of the Moons, Saragnayan took the chance. Without the Moons and the Karanduun, he would be two steps closer to his dream of bringing his Realm of Gadlum upon Tapiserya, and enveloping it in darkness. He had corrupted 150 of the Karanduun and turned them into perverted version of themselves. Known as the Lingkag, they were the darkened, perverted mirrors of the majesty of the Karanduun... and they had the same power that the Karanduun had. In addition to this, the Lingkag worked with the Dalaketnon as well, the dark engkanto that served Saragnayan, as opposed to the tamawo and the palesekan, who were engkanto that served the Diwata as a whole and even helped the Karanduun. This conflict was only known by one word: Sorrow. It is known as thus because it ended with a pyrrhic victory...... and the Mad Sky's final lightning bolt. In his madness, and after aeons of combat against the majestic heroes, he unleashed all of his power upon the world, and his Lightning Bolt pierced through Diwa itself, in an event that was known as the Thousand Tears and Lightnings Apocalypse. Tapiserya was destroyed wholesale, and then was buried under a World-Spanning Deluge. In fact, the Thousand Tears and Lightnings Apocalypse erased various possibilities in the Tapiserya that would've been, and created new ones, as well as removed various parts of physics and replaced it with amorphous rules. The world was quite literally changed.

In the Bolt’s its wake, the Karanduun were destroyed as well. The 150 existing Receptacles (alongside the 150 Corrupted Monstrances of the Lingkag) vanished from the world. And eventually, the flood receded, and the world rebuilt itself, now without the Worthy...

...and the Third song is sung as thus...... this is a time of wailing and gnashing of teeth. It was known as the Time of Malice. The Dragon Lords, descendants of Bakonawa and the Naga, and the Engkanto re-established their hold upon the world. The Thousand Tears and Lightnings Apocalypse caused a rift in being and essence, splitting the world in twain, ripping the world of spirit away from the world of nature, causing the diwata to live in invisible societies which the races of nature cannot see. They now lived in a sundered world, one half-empty. The humans did not fail either, however. The Aswang left their empires and stayed in the fringes of Tapiserya, within dead forests and murky depths. The Heretic King Burners were destroyed by the Thousand Tears and Lightnings Apocalypse. In the wake of the apocalypse, the engkanto races (who all participated in the war as well) all filled in the void. They began creating more empires and kingdoms and cities that eventually also fell as the tide of darkness became undeniable, and the warring between the engkanto eventually drove them to the same state as the now sundered and destroyed humanity. This time was known as the time of Twilight. With the help of the engkanto, civilization rose up once again, now vastly reduced in population -- seemingly reduced to the time before the Karanduun came -- and began their bid for territory. Mortalfolk no longer meant just the humans, even if the other races were inherently more powerful More importantly, the Mad Sky became dormant in his Throne. The Apocalypse seems to have drained him of his power. A hundred years pass before the Septumvirate -- seven siblings of half-tamawo blood -- discover the writings of Yavum. As to who Yavum is, is something up for debate. But whoever he is, he has the power to Bless his chosen ones with powers similar to the Karanduun. Before long, the Blessed -- formally known as the Saint-Kings -- ruled over the Kivhran Peninsula, and in 1000th Year of the Masked Moon, have established colonial strongholds within Zuhayras, the Heart of the World. To the east, humans have created the Giroan Empire, which have split off from the Dragon Lord (dragonborn) empire of Qirong. Their Emperor has exemplary powers over Earth, Wind, Fire, and Water. Seemingly, the Emperor matches the accounts of a Heretic King Burner. To the West, the various engkanto races are preparing to either storm the colonial empire or take over the Lakungdulan Archipelago for themselves. To the South, the City-State of Effisia that is crowded with the other races, is becoming more and more adept in adapting various technologies, and have managed to create an aghimuan that can convey phantasmal images whenever performed with a sacred ritual. The Aswang return from their hiding places, becoming powerful Devil-Beasts and barbarians and bringers of death. Without a leader, they become worse and worse, and eventually give in to their murderous malignant frenzy. The Biraddali, without their Apo to command them, have begun to investigate the anomalies on the Thousand Stringed Tadhana Network. In the midst of all this, a farmer girl in a backwater barangay is born under strange circumstances: her birth was heralded by an earthquake, followed by a flooding, followed by a storm, and then ended with a scorching drought that eventually brought the most fruitful harvest of the barangay’s entire lifetime. Finally, it was heralded with a loud crowing of a tigmamanukan… which eventually vanished after she was delivered. From all the anomalies, they find that one thing is constant:

In the 1107th Year of the Masked Moon, the Karanduun return.

In the 1107th Year of the Masked Moon, you arrive.

What songs will they sing of your deeds?...

...the Song continues…