The Ael'van Houses

General Overview

In what the Alluvians from Damon's Empire - the Consolidation, consider the far east of the ancient world, empires rose and lasted for millenniums, predating even a time when Krotoan weren't civilized enough to be considered to be squatting like barbarians in their own filth, afraid of animals and the dark.

The Kingdoms of the Sun and as the People of the Sun, or Ael'van in Puhra Dahli, peoples who inhabit them, managed to knowingly retain more of the secrets of the ancient world than anyone else, though they were struck just as hard by the Great Dark.

They named their domains for that which had sustained their life, and provided them their power in the days leading up to the Great Dark " for that which they waited the return of so that they might rise again: the sun. When the cataclysm fell upon the land, and light began to dim and vanish, they had already harnessed the power of the sun to do more than any of the other elder races. It was the energy and power that they had stored that allowed them not only to survive the creatures that came out of the southern and western oceans, but to beat them back and keep their influence localized " sparing much of the rest of the world the havoc caused by those creatures.

The powers and secrets they retained from the ancient world were hoarded away, their true nature only revealed to a select few. Those charged with the governance of the secular and spiritual realms of the people retained the secrets, and came into disagreement in regards to how those truth of those secrets would be communicated " and manipulated " in their transmission to the people.

The two groups became known using the Consolidation naming conventions of Houses, as House Lycid and House Genji. The former sought to encourage their people to not only to live in harmony with the land, but to embrace it to the point of worship, to avoid the mistakes of the past which had lead to the Great Dark. The Genji, however, were anathema to that; their world view evoked harmony, but not worship; they saw themselves as the stewards of the land, a people in place to tame the land but not destroy or despoil, and to cultivate and control, but to eschew it's natural wildness. The Genji too well remembered the things that had arisen from the oceans in ages long past, the things that the dark had brought with it.

Each of the two Houses embraced their worldview to the extreme, and a splinter of each of them joined together into a third group ? a group trying to modify the way the old secrets were used, the old spells and artifacts, so that the long mysterious origins of the Ael'van couldn't be leveraged into a wedge issue by those only seeking power. Due to the machinations of the elders of the race however, the artifacts that the splinter group held, which were going to be exposed to the public, were activated incorrectly, creating an entirely new sub-race of Ael'van: the Oss'aei, or House Ossaei.

House Genji

Governed by a council of elders known as the Telekurion, the Ael'van of the Genji House are slightly smaller in stature than the Lycid, with men and women averaging 6 to 6 and a half feet in height respectively. Like all Ael'van, they are unnaturally strong given their size and structure, but their endurance against damage is the one physical aspect that truly stands out: they are remarkably resilient against any kind of cut or abrasion, as if their skin were simply too thick, or too dense to be marked in that fashion. Piercings among their people are almost completely unheard of, and being pierced and having the puncture decorated is something that is done as punishment for someone branded anathema to the Ael'van, rather than something done as personal decoration.

The Genji are also share the trait of typical Ael'van long life. While there are no records of ages kept or birthdays " at least not in which age is a factor so much as continued existence - among the Genji, it is nonetheless relatively easy to tell one Genji's age compared to another of the same House. In their youth and into their middle age, the skin of the Genji quite literally reflect the light of the sun with a slightly different hue for different stages of life. The very youngest among them typically have skin of bronze or copper, which gradually turns more golden as the individual gets older, until they've reached the apex of middle age, at which point it becomes more brilliant gold for a time before it begins to turn silver. Almost all of the Telekurion have reached the point where their skin has started turning to silver, and a few on it have gone even further, showing the rare signs of truly advanced old age in the fact that their hair has gone entirely iron grey " but has started to develop golden, almost platinum streaks.

The Genji are masters of the elements, and of the earth; central among their people is the First City of Calumen, their literal first city, and the place after which all their subsequent gathering places were designed. In the Consolidation, their city is known alternatively as 'Glimmerstone'. Calumen is a city housed within a massive sphere, seemingly drawn up from the ground and perched in place on a vast, basalt plinth. Entering through massive doors in the side of the plinth at the city's base, the first thing that a person notices is how well " and majestically lit the city is. From the outside, the sphere appears dull and stony, but from the inside it bears a striking resemblance to a geode. With individual dwellings separated by the color of the crystals grown to build them, the entire inside of the sphere is divided into colourful and spacious interconnected spheres of white, purple, blue, red, with even more variety appearing on the tips of newly formed crystal when examined closely. The city is connected by a complex system of crystalline walkways that twist seemingly free floating through the air within the sphere.

While there is not much plant life obvious within the sphere, there are a few great trees to be found " the odd light given off within effecting their growth and causing them to grow impressively robust for some reason. Cristal, and each Genji city after it, are each centred on one Eld tree found directly in the centre of the sphere. The Genji bear no ill will towards flora, but they do not require to eat food either " and unlike the Lycid " in most cases have not only the need, but no ability to process food. Instead, of all the Genji's sustenance is drawn, like the Lycid, from the sun. In a somewhat strange turn of events, their inability to process food began to develop in their history at the same time as an almost obsessive compulsive disorder which effects the entire race: their need for cleanliness. While they are not often compelled to clean constantly, they cannot abide their skin being marred for long, and in some cases in which they are have been prevented from washing, they have been known to develop a strange sickness which causes them to begin to waste away. The cure for the sickness was also found quite by accident when the body of a Genji with the sickness was going to be disposed off: upon cleaning the body, its cells began to regenerate rapidly enough that it was noticeable by those working with what they assumed was a corpse.

Due to their facility with both the elements and minerals drawn from the earth, the Genji are considered master smiths and artisans of all things metal or stoneware. They are the only race who know how to process the alloy known in the Consolidation as 'worldstone'. The facility with elements is one brought on by the rituals and rites their ancient elders retained from the time before the Great Dark. Their particular power allowed them to bind their physical selves not with animals or plants, or something else which was living, but with the elements themselves. Their skin and bones are hard as steel, hard as diamond, and just as durable. Though some would qualify their music as being too formulaic, their songs have the ability to call minerals from the earth and air around them, and to align them as the musician desires. Known as 'sung stone', their alloys are almost always more durable than those commonly found after being handled by one of their geomancers.

The Thain

General Overview

Far to the north of the Consolidation are the Fields of Forsaken Ice, and within them the crystalline caverns of the Thain, and the lost city of Arctathule.

When the Great Dark fell upon the land, the Fields were not fields at all, but a large, expansive ocean that touched each of the other continents northern tips. The elder race, using powers long forgotten, built cities which sprawled the ocean floor. Great worldstone columns rose from the sea floor, miles up through the clear blue waters, and towered indifferently over the waves which pounded against them, some were used for the transmission of air, others exclusively for materials. When the freezing began, open ports around the columns tops found themselves locked in ice, and materials had to be transported over increasingly long distances to the columns, and the deliveries became increasingly infrequent, as the rest of the world had to likewise adapt to the circumstances of the Great Dark.

Though they had received materials from above since the city's inception, those below were independently resourceful. The ocean floor could be cultivated for some things, and power and heat were drawn from deep within the worlds core. Through sorcery, most other materials could be synthesized to a degree, and for those that could not be, alternatives were found. The water around around the submerged cities, however, soon began to grow to cold to support life on it's own, and the once plentiful sources of nutrition began to disappear, moving to warmer climates. The little that remained soon found itself frozen, as were all avenues of exit from the underwater cities save for the worldstone columns that lead up and out of the ice. Tunnels throughout the ice were excavated both to reach warmer climates, and more immediately to harvest the chilled resources that were frozen outside of the urban areas. Where once the waters were harvested, there were now vast fields of ice being harvested from within.

Just as the environment changed, so too over thousands of years of solitude were that branch of the elder race, removed from all outside sources of genetic influence. Over time, the people grew to be smaller; shorter, more squat, and huskier. Their frames were better able to endure the new rigours of their changing home. The tall and lanky were prone to frostbite, and other ailments of the extremities with the extreme temperatures that the people were exposed to; taking part in activities which furthered the interests of the community were expected, and all citizens obligated to take part in sustaining themselves.

The Thain

The Travelling People

As their abilities to use crystals grew, so did their ability to travel " and that is what they did. Using the power of their crystals, they burrowed into the ice. They crafted long, ornate tunnels, tunnels that began as test sites for the harvesting of minerals and other resources frozen in the ice. The tunnels spider-webbed through the entire northern ice cap, which was quickly spreading downwards over the globe until, eventually, it would encompass almost the norther quarter of the planet's oceans, while leaving the land covered with enough ice and snow to make it forbidding to those who ventured there from outside the ice, but not as much for those who ventured from within it. Eventually, the Hallways of the Thain would reach to the edges of the northern glacial cap, and would serve as the doorways that reintroduced the Thain to the world.

Runic records recovered by the Ael'van from supposed Thainish settlements show records of three factions. Though any record deciphered from the tablets remain questionable, there are repeated references to three separate 'peoples', or more accurately, divisions of the same people. Often the glyphs used which are assumed to represent them indicate a rising sun, a setting sun, and what is " depending on the interpreter ? either an eclipsed, or fully radiant image of the sun. Regardless of which of the glyphs present, it is always accompanied by one other glyph that is generally translated as 'moving' or 'travelling'.

The Thain

The Travelers into Sunset

Those who went west, like their eastern counterparts, built satellite cities along their long route, and sometimes a generation or more of Thainish people would live and die within one of them. When the times did finally arrive that the Thain had excavated far enough to merit building another city, they dismantled the city which was already in place and painstakingly moved it, then added onto it when it was reassembled. This resulted in their community, Cerevinus, being in constant motion. It moved forward down it's tunnels in waves, and section by section, like a worm.

Part of the reason for the difference in the way the people tackled the migration before them, was due to the the Western pilgrims being the first to find the ice through which they were tunneling no longer yielding salt: the ice fields they tunneled through had come from fresh water, not salt water. They found themselves without their most basic resource, and one of the fundamental materials in the production of their crystalline structures. Everything that could be salvaged from settlements, was reclaimed, and reused. Some facilities seemed to always be in the process of being taken down, or moved. Mining and exploration on the western edge of the city, the bulk of the residential and governance placed safely in the middle, with engineers shoring up the eastern side. The governance and policing often fell upon the same shoulders; there were no warriors, as the Thain had not known war since thousands upon thousands of years before the waters turned to ice. Cerevinus was a place of work, and safety, and peace; until the excavations of it's workers lead it into the Outer Arc.

The people of Cerevinus had accomplished their goal of finding a hospitable land outside the ice, and they had accomplished it long before their eastern counterparts. When the power from Arctathule stopped flowing, there was no one left in Cerevinus to take notice. The lands to the south of where they had migrated to were lush, and full of life. The tundra that the first of their explorers had stepped onto was filled with wild herds of great horned deer. It was an animal they would never forget, but it was not the only animal of note that was present. They were greeted by hunters of a people who called themselves the Kroatoan.

More similar than alien, the Kroatoan immediately took to them, and invited the Cerevinians amongst them. It was a massive culture shock that a people who had spent their entire lives in ice were destroyed by; never again would they submit to being made to wander in dark Hallways away from fresh air. Their artifice and the secrets of their crystals were hidden away, and they accepted the dubious honor of having the Hart declared their totem. Their Kroatoan 'benefactors' had meant the suggestion as a joke, as the Hart was something that the rest of the Tribes essentially harvested for food. The choice would be almost prophetic, as they abandoned their history and were consumed by the Kroatoan. The only remnant of their history is in the Krotoan mispronunciation of the word Thain; due to their thick accent, the Krotoan omit the 'h' and reduce it to 'Tain'.

If any were left to mourn when the power from Arctathule stopped flowing towards Cerevinus, it is hard to imagine they did any more than shrug their shoulders, and walk away from the ice one and for all. Especially hard to imagine when one sees the deserted ruins they left behind, though few venture there; nothing remains but Halls of ice.

The Protean

General Overview

The Protean are one of the few races who finds their origins before the Great Dark, and while their proliferation did coincide with the Dark, it was not caused by it; the cause of their violence and loss lay not from outside agency, but from hubris. They have been called Changelings, Shapeshifters, and by some, in myths, spoken of as the Fair Folk, or Ogres and Trolls, but these are only miens they portray: they are the Protean, and no tale of their origins can be told without speaking first of the land, long ago two massive kingdoms, through arrogance, made into one.

In the millenniums previous, when the elder race had dominated the world, and had teased forth the secrets of all the arcane arts to make their world more pliable, it was decided that a portion of the world should be sequestered unto itself for the purpose of preserving the wild things. Realizing the need to keep alive more than just mated pairs of animals, and a wide variety of flora, not one but two islands " each an entire continent - were deemed necessary in terms of size to house such an undertaking. The two islands selected were called Serica, which was in the west, and Percanir in the east.

The inhabitants of each island who planned to stay during the transitional years moved to the coasts, western in Serica, and the eastern in Percanir. On the opposite coasts, the most powerful users of the Craft gathered, and there they stayed for generation after generation, until seven generations had passed, all working their incantations and rituals towards one goal: drawing the islands towards one another, reversing what nature had done, similar to how they would halt the destruction of species the world over by preserving them in one place.

As the generations stretched on, so did their plans.

No longer would they be content to deny the extinction of the species that were left on the earth " which would have been the natural course, given that they themselves yet existed within the natural order. When it was clear that what already existed could be preserved, they set about to reverse extinctions which had already taken place.

General Overview Cont.

In a basin between the mountain ranges, a lake grew. Silvery liquid-energy that slowly seeped from the ground where the Arcanists had made their stand, and from which the first Protean stepped; it drew itself together from the energy that was the lake and stepped out onto the land in the form of a man. In his mind were the memories of his entire race, and he " they " knew that once they had been the Arcanists, but now that time seemed as though it were a dream. The first Protean ventured far across the land to determine the ends of their experiment, before reporting it's findings back to the rest, who dwelt in energy form, conserving themselves. The land was wild, but everything seemed to have found a natural equilibrium. Plants and animals flourished, and he saw that it was a paradise. But he found no remains of those who would have been his ancestors " the elder race was gone, vanished. In their place, the Protean found something else, something that caused him great sorrow. The things which the Arcanists had freed to hold the mountain ranges in place against the onslaught of the water had changed not only some of the animals, but had somehow changed the elder race as well. Their numbers were greater than the elders who had remained, but not as great as they had been before the two lands were chosen for unification; the land was rife on both sides of the mountains with new tribes of humanoids. Some were short, others tall, but all were grotesquely disfigured as a people. Webbed hands and feet, scaled skin, distorted inhuman facial features, and in many cases greatly reduced intelligence were but some of the maladies which plagued the those the Protean found.

Upon returning the information to the Protean 'lake' that was the combined mass of the new race, more individuals came forth to verify " though they already knew. Nearly at once, as much as can be said of an entire people, they set about to master their new abilities " and were once again dismayed. Though their physical forms were now superior to anything they knew before in strength, endurance, agility, and their ability to " with practice ? mimic almost anything else, there was one factor that none of them had expected. Their long term use of power had almost burned the ability out of their forms to use it. It was difficulty piled on difficulty, for as while the Arcanists had been holding back the ocean, the Great Dark had fallen.

No further aid would come to them.

The First Tithe

Amongst the Ossaei, a woman sought to save her child. An increasing number of women suffered tragic losses after the births of their children; the children had developed a severe photo-sensitivity, some of them dying as they burst into flames when exposed to natural light. Those who had been saved in instances by mid-wives, wise women, casters, or others, suffered an inability to properly feed. Attempts to feed them naturally resulted in a greater than normal discomfort to the mothers and surrogates; the infants were unable to feed without drawing blood. Examination lead to the discovery of small, needle like teeth, only large enough to abrasion the skin enough to draw blood. The discovery of the last was enough to cause a wider ranger inspection of other infants, with more found exhibiting the characteristic, but all within a small area.

Attempts to feed using bottles resulted in a slow withering of the child, and eventual starvation. When an accident caused the corpse of one of them was resuscitated through exposure to blood, all the infants with the trait that still lived, and bodies of those who appeared dead, were cremated, in a Culling.

What none of the Ossaei realized, is that there was a Protean among them who called himself Unvarex, and he had been there for some time. It had journeyed east from it's homeland, and in the process acquired great power, learning to take the shapes of the beasts of the land and air, the birds which dwelt in the skies, and the creatures of the deep as well. The Ossaei were the first other 'people' that it had encountered, and it had assumed the form of one of their own who had perished. Instead of not returning home, the being called Unvarex had returned in his stead " and in his guise. Whether due to sinister machinations, or a more primal, bestial nature from having dwelt so long among animals, he became careless with his passions " and had gotten many of the women pregnant with his children before realizing that he was the cause of the infanticide.

Days before the Culling had begun, he had infiltrated the hierarchy of the Ossaei and learned of their intentions. Later that same night, he took the form of a mid-wife and stole away to one of the women still waiting for their child to be tested. Unvarex, of course, was already fairly certain what the test would reveal, and so told her that he could spirit the baby away before the results were known " and he, posing still as the midwife " would bring it back if the tests showed her child was a healthy Ael'van.

The Third Tithe

The island did not long survive Vehkan's presence in it's natural condition, and soon he was aware of the full power, or curse, of his blood upon other living things. After claiming one of Pellucid's ruins as his home, he began to gather a herd on which to feed. Until that time, he had had no interaction with the things which he fed on, after his thirst was slaked. It was during this time that he learned that if he drained something completely, and the body was not destroyed, it would rise again in a state similar to his " but frenzied, rabid, and unable to control itself, suffering animation only to feed. He also learned that anything which fed on the blood of such creatures as him, or the things which were created by his draining them, were also turned into drinkers of blood, though more like himself.

The latter blood drinkers, Hollow Ones they came to think of themselves for their endless thirst, were able to 'live' much as they had before " with the caveat that they must abandon the light of day, and drink blood to survive. At first only predatory animals which naturally fed on blood were subject to transforming, but they were soon joined by sailors and other explorers who from time to time found themselves on the otherwise wild island. The curious among those Hollow Ones soon turned to experimentation on other animals; herbivores, and intentionally turning various breeds of bird.

Soon the entire island was under the seeming pall of undeath. As blood became more scarce, Hunters began leaving the island to bring back food, both to eat, and to breed ? though everything that goes there eventually shares the same fate.

More and more frequently tales of their people spread to the mainlands, both east and west. Never are there any tales which seem able to accurately illustrate the power behind sending such emissaries forth, though it is impossible to believe that an entire people suffering the same condition could have thrived without the benefit of their progenitors will.

The Black Wind

The desecration and eventual destruction of realities and Nexuses went unnoticed at first, due to the literally limitless expanse of existence. Only an equally illimitable mind could say if the Tree reacted as it did to answer out of awareness, or some simple means of self-preservation which makes its analog to flora all the more apt. Just as a plant would do, as whatever internal mechanism detected the end of its life, increasing energy was redirected from those branches that were dead, and pushed towards the still living, still thriving canopy above and root system below, until every branch was rife with knots of glowing, concentrated power.

As if sensing the first sign of opposition, the emptiness which ate at the branches of the First Tree seemed to be empowered by recognition " real or imagined - of it's plight. Nexuses, once like bright lights of limitless potential that twinkled like stars, winked out. Whatever was destroying, desecrating the Tree, was not doing so from within existence; more accurately, it was taking something from existence, sucking it into itself, like a parasite but not even leaving the part of the body which had been fed upon.

After so much being taken, consumed by the empty, something had to be given back; like a husk, a thing emerged from the empty, stripped of everything that had made it belong. It's new reality was as a mockery, and it's coming claimed the border that lay between the myriad realities and true oblivion. It had no form, but it had malignant presence which to the Tree manifested as a black wind, tearing at limbs and branches, cold beyond reasoning, and insidious in it's ability to pierce reality. It moved around the Tree, caressing it with its cold, enervating breeze; it's magnitude was as if it were the amassed emptiness which had grown in the hollows of branches and roots since the Tree had taken form. While the Tree itself can only be seen as questionably aware, it is certain that there was something of awareness within the Black Wind: it's mind was full of madness, and it thought and spoke with the collective corrupted will of those who had been destroyed, in such a way that even the memory of them was perverted, by the Black Wind of Oblivion.

As the empty grew in power, the Tree reacted to the terminal danger, the massing power within began coalescing into nodes. The nodes were myriad within all the branches and roots " each offshoot of the Tree held at least one small concentration of power, just as a plant blooms flowers or grows tubers when it knows it's cycle is shortening. The vigour and potency of the blooms defied the entropy of the Black Wind.

Echoes of the Word

The Gathering of the Progenitors articulated their power and influence upon the spans of the First Tree, upon the multiverse, by means of their Word. The Word was interpreted differently by each of the Progenitors, and each was influenced by the aspects of Creation which the Progenitors sought to embody. Working in unison, the combined Words of the Progenitors spun out tapestries of worlds and universes, flora, fauna, and sentient things; their sung Words were as the music of the spheres.

Where the Progenitors music touched, the nascent energy and materials of Myriad were formed; they would lay dormant, until several millennium later when the worlds population would give birth to suitable hosts for the other children of the Progenitors " the Eternals.

The hunger of Oblivion, however, knew no rest and no satiation " and the Black Wind swept through the tree as though it were a thing alive, and sentient, though it could not be as it was a thing from outside. Entire multiverses were devoured, some full of pure light, some of dreams, some even of darkness, for darkness in itself has no inherent protection against Oblivion. Worlds that had been created by single Progenitors were the first to fall, as they were inherently focused around one Word " one way of being, and thus even if the strength and integrity of the world was great, it's existence was very focused, very refined. Those that were able to stand against Oblivion were almost alien to human " to mortal " comprehension; imagine a universe composed of elemental justice, for example.

Those worlds which were wrought from the combined Word of more than one Progenitor, however, proved to be more durable. The most durable, however, were those wrought by enough Progenitors " by enough Words " that they were able to sustain life. While the nascent but unfocused energy of the Myriad invested all worlds, only those that could support life were invested with the inherent seed energy of an Eternal waiting to be born into the cycle of life. Even before they were born into worlds, though, their energy seemed inherently repulsive to the Black Wind; though one Eternal might live a thousand lives over a thousand worlds, their lifespans were so short that the might of their energy seemed magnified when juxtaposed against it's brevity.

Although the energies and latent unbirthed theurgy of the Eternals kept the Black Wind at bay, it also served as a beacon of challenge; echoes of the Progenitors Word bounded throughout existence, and to its edges. Other things heard the echoes, some of the listeners were from inside creation " things which had been born in the empty space before an Eternal awakened to power, things which had their own power, but were natural in that they were also a part of creation. Some of these things were hostile in their primal nature, and some merely curious after what might awaken in the arrival of the Eternal. Some few other sentient things were also born before and during the Eternals gestation; those things that could perceive the Eternals power were also variously curious " and sometimes covetous of it. The Eternals existence proved more than durable against Oblivion " for it is the nature of living things to endeavour to survive.

It was their capacity to articulate both their power and knowledge that set Eternals apart from the mortals which they were born and lived side by side with, most often without ever arousing suspicion that they were anything other than those they lived among. For every instance of them living low key lives, there are of course, worlds where they are hailed for their power as gods or prophesied rules of great import; their articulations of power allowed them to defy the laws of common men, wielding the elements as though they were tools, healing the terribly sick, and in some cases even appearing to raise the dead. It was in these latter worlds that Oblivion found the first of its agents, worlds where Eternals were obvious for whatever reasons; when to so many, it appears that so few have so much, betrayal finds fertile ground to breed ? even at the cost of existence.