The History of Earth Eternal: Lost Ages to Age of Man
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The History of Earth Eternal: Lost Ages to Age of Man Note: There’s an approximately 2000 year period between the end of this history and the game period. That history is forthcoming, as is a summary version of this history. © Sparkplay Media, Inc. 0 | THE LOST AGES Titans When the Earth was young and even the Gods themselves were but an unrealized possibility, beings of power raw and roughly‐formed held dominion over the land. The Titans, they were called, for they were the very definition of might. Kronos, the greatest of them, and Gaia, his wife, ruled them and in turn they were masters of all the Earth. Tethys, Bor, Themis, Atum, Hyperion, Oceanus, and many others made up the ranks of these Lords of the Lost Ages. For time untold, Kronos and his fellows in power ruled unquestioned. A multitude of mainly‐forgotten beings and creatures walked the lands, some created by the Titans themselves, and all paid homage to the unquestioned lords of the eternal Earth. Two amongst these races are of concern to us, for they were chief among the servants of the Titans and their influence persists even today, many Ages hence. First, the Elemental Dragons. Winged creatures of fearsome and fundamental power, each of a type – Fire, Ice, Earth, and Air. Upon these ancient monstrosities the Titans rode to war against armies we know – the Shadow Legion foremost among them – and forces we know not even the rumor of legend. Next, the diverse folk of the Faerie Folk. Noble and callow, beautiful and hideous. If the Elemental Dragons were steeds of the Titans, the Faerie were the stable masters and the sergeants, the priests and the princes. In all their forms, the Faerie were filled with the pure, chaotic potency that characterized those who managed to survive the wild, brutal Lost Ages. The Faerie differed greatly in both form and ability, and there was a roughly‐ enforced hierarchy among them with King Oberon and Queen Titania ruling their race and reporting directly to their Titan emperors, and the lowest of the Faerie, whom the rest deemed fit only to perform menial tasks, chief amongst these being the Cyclopes. Beyond Oberon and Titania, though, lay one Faerie that exceeded them in power, and to whom all Faerie owed allegiance and perhaps eventual survival: Agalarna, the Spirit Mother. The Faerie had been created by Hyperion, and the first born to Hyperion’s craft was Agalarna. Potent beyond any Faerie after, the Spirit Mother was nearly a God in her own right and though she did not exercise formal authority over her people, even the Faerie King and Queen treated her as an object of adoration and near‐worship. From her, it seemed, the strength of the Faerie blood flowed, and for this reason Hyperion deemed 2 © Sparkplay Media, Inc. this first Faerie creation a mistake, for he saw that Agalarna might serve the Faerie as a symbol around which to rally and perhaps as inspiration to be more than servants to the Titans. With time, the Faerie did indeed grow discontented with their state of servitude. “Why should we serve? They may be greater in power but we are far greater in number. It is time for the Folk to chart the course of our people.” Rumors of rebellion reached the ears of Hyperion, their ultimate father, who brought it to Kronos and all of his kin. They met in council, and debated the fate of their chief servants. The Titans were nothing if not capricious and arbitrary in their power and they determined that the Faerie would best be punished for their impudence by sending their Spirit Mother away. They could not slay her, for her death would greatly diminish the power of their Faerie servants and perhaps even ruin them as a race. By exiling the beloved Agalarna, the greatest power among the Faerie would be safely removed from the influence of the others, and the strength in the blood of the Folk would be muted enough to serve as a harsh reprimand. Hyperion, taking the defiance of his creations more personally than did the other Titans, also demanded that one of every five Faeries be executed, to drive home their status as servants rather than free beings in control of their own destinies. The Titans gathered the Faerie and informed them of their collective punishment. Dismay swept through the ranks of the Folk as well as an emotion new to them: Fear. On all the Earth, only the Titans exceeded them in power and only the Elemental Dragons rivaled them. The Faerie were servants, it is true, but they were first among the servants of the Titans and heretofore had never needed to be disciplined by their creator and masters. Those to be executed were taken and slain on the spot. The Faeries wailed in anguish and gnashed their teeth, but what could they do against the combined might of the Titans? Despite losing one‐fifth of their race minutes before, the cruelest blow was still to come. Kronos himself took the Agalarna, the Spirit Mother, and placed her on comet that was passing by Earth. He sent the comet off in space, on a straight line, such that it would never return to Earth. Agalarna would recede further and further away from her people with every passing moment, for eternity. The Faerie Folk felt a blow to themselves as they had not believed possible. With time, as the comet the Spirit Mother was on sped away from them, they felt the potency in their blood diminish somewhat and become muted. Though still fearsome in their strength, the Faerie knew they were now less than they had been, and that they would never be what they were when the world was still young. Never 3 © Sparkplay Media, Inc. again would they bask in the glory of Agalarna, the first of their kind, and forever would they languish in servitude to their cruel Titan masters. The Titans celebrated their own wisdom and judgment, feeling they had done well. The Faerie Folk had been put in their place and the Spirit Mother would never serve as a rallying point for their servants again. They were wrong. What Kronos and his fellows could not know is that they had erred, and erred greatly. It was not the plan of sending Agalarna into exile itself that would return to plague them; rather it was the execution. Despite their intention to send the comet on which Kronos had placed the Spirit Mother straight away from Earth, even Kronos, the Lord of the Titans, did not achieve perfection in this endeavor. He did not propel the comet in a straight line but in one that curved ever, ever so slightly, such that eventually the comet was destined to return in a loop and pass close by the Earth again. The Titans had sealed their fates, though it would be uncountable years before they would be haunted by the specter of their actions. The Coming of Djall Millennia beyond measure passed. Great wars between the unknown inhabitants of the Lost Ages raged. The Maar built their Orean Symmetry, imprisoning themselves in its time‐warped influence. Nations with names our greatest scholars may have encountered only once in a lifetime of study rose and fell. Who among us today knows anything of the Rik’tul Horde or the Celestial Empire of the Sumar? Above all these reigned the Titans and the Faerie who served them, and for all this long time the Faerie were diminished by the absence of their Spirit Mother and made sorrowful by the thought of her alone in the empty void that lay beyond the boundaries of the Earth. They were right to fear for Agalarna, but not because she was alone. Out there in the blackness and emptiness she had acquired a companion. This companion was unsought for and surely unwelcome, for he represented such concentrated evil as the Earth had not yet seen. Yes, the Titans could be cruel and capricious, and the mortal denizens of the Earth could be as good or terrible to each other as they are now, but no being of the Earth had previously encountered anything that had the kind of hideous malevolence that what hitched itself to the huge ball of compressed silt and ice Agalarna sat on possessed. It was a mind with a will to terrorize, use up, and consume the essence of all that was beautiful, hopeful, or bright about what was around it, and the Spirit Mother shone like a flame to it, cast against the uniform, empty background of the deep void as she was. It was Djall, the Dark Lord, and while he didn’t know where the comet was going, he knew that Agalarna was something powerful and beautiful, and that he must corrupt, 4 © Sparkplay Media, Inc. torture, and twist her until she was a husk and he had sated himself upon her essence. He is a parasite and a predator, feeding off the essence of those he conquers with his power. For dozens of millennia she was unable to escape his torments and predations, and bit by bit, the Spirit Mother was broken and sapped of a good deal of her power. Eventually, inevitably, the comet we now know as Djall’s Hammer returned to the vicinity of Earth, bearing with it the beaten and shattered Agalarna, who could not leave the comet, and Djall himself, who saw in the Earth a bounty of near‐endless proportion on which to turn his crushing malice.