Immerse yourself into the place and time when the legendary City of Atlantis
cast its influence and power across the world then known as Plethwih!
Herein discover the legends and mythology that form the lore of a time lost in the shadows of history and recounted once again in the historical fantasy novels of 'The Broken Pithos Saga'.
From ancient days, humanity recorded their affairs in time framed within the linear concept of Past, Present, Future, and the singular egocentric certainty of a world central only to themselves. It was and is the Age of Man. Yet, it is not this Age that the story of Mother Earth begins. In fact, the Age of Man is where the story ends. So, we travel back far beyond the known scale of time to Ages past when the world would look strangely alien to modern eyes. It was a world with shifting land masses, oceans which rose and fell hundreds of feet congruent with ice ages that expanded as far as the 40th parallel from the north or retracted to reveal a lush landscape beneath the ice of Antarctica in the south.
According to those who would catalog this time, it was the Age of the Golden Aspen. Four Ages of the Golden Aspen, to be precise, that spanned nearly four-hundred thousand years before an extinction level event known as the Cataclysm would herald the arrival of the Age of Man. Echoes of those lost peoples, their stories, and their civilizations would filter into the legends, mythology, and oral traditions of modern humans. Sadly, the credence of such tales would diminish over time until they were nothing more than curiosities in history books. Yet, what if they were true? What if the Four Ages of the Golden Aspen might have been?
What stories, yarns or tales might be told of mighty civilizations, magic, mystery, and high adventure where heroes of destiny strove for lofty ideals, power, wealth, and love? Thus, the ancient chroniclers began their labor, committing words of their day to clay tablets, chiseled stone, reed and vellum, the hereto unknown accounts of peoples that called their world Plethwih.
It is notable that the four Ages of the Golden Aspen and the time periods they individually spanned, are interpretations by an enigmatic group of the Sylvan race called the Watchers, a highly secretive order of druids. These chroniclers of time have become the accepted authority on the history of Plethwih by all the races through the Ages including those who ruled uncontested thousands of years before the first Sylvan civilization burst forth upon the Emerald Isle. Curiously, the rise of the Sylvan race and the first day of Sylvan Year (SY) 0 of their calendar correspond precisely with the beginning of the Third Age of the Golden Aspen. It is further recorded that the Watchers claimed that date as the inception of their organization as well. So, it is remarkable that through their extraordinary efforts of research, relationships with the more ancient races of Plethwih, and a peculiar connection to Spiritual Nature, that the Watchers should be so highly revered. In light of this, and with no other conflicting source by which to contest the veracity of the Watchers chronicles, they shall be considered the true and accurate record of the history of Plethwih. *
One might also ask why the Watchers identified all four Ages with a ‘Golden Aspen’ rather than a tree of any other species such as Spruce, Oak, or Willow unique to each Age. And why four and not two, five, or ten? The Sylvan offer no explanation. For them, the concept is unambiguous. There is one instance on record recited in the court of the Atlantean Emperor by a Watcher who wondered, “The history of Plethwih is long. Why would one assume there were not Ages named to honor other varieties of venerated trees?” This enigmatic reply persists as the subject of debate among priests, nobles, poets, and scholars as either a clue to a wealth of unknown history or a perplexing jest. As to this, one might suggest asking the Dverger Dwarfs whose rage has not lessened one fleck since the day they became the subject of what most consider the greatest Sylvan hoax of all time – the insinuation that the Dvergr are a creation of the Tuatha De. Although, it should be pointed out that the Sylvan historically show rare inclination toward roguish humor.
A word about calendars. Although every kingdom, humanoid race, and religious congregation have a form of calendar unique to their own history, agriculture, politics, and notable events - nearly all have adopted the Sylvan Year - if not the precise structure of weeks and months. This is remarkable considering the reclusive nature of Sylvan society and in no small part due to the exhaustive efforts of the Atlanteans who had the foresight to not only influence how developing nations recorded time, but to also engineer a form of common communication between all peoples everywhere. Both of which have proved instrumental in furthering trade and fostering peace between regional powers. More on that later.
A word about Spiritual Nature. From the start all Sylvan peoples, including the Watchers, held an unwavering reverence for a kind of divinity that inhabited Plethwih (Mother Earth) and everything that grew or rose within her embrace. Thus, mountains, stones, trees, plants, water, wind, and animal life are all considered parts of the greater ‘being’ called Spiritual Nature that has existed from the earliest days. The Watchers claimed the unique aptitude to ‘see’ the history of Plethwih via communion with Spiritual Nature; however, through what means ritual, arcane or otherwise is a deeply held secret of their order.
Finally, for reasons unknown to any except the Watchers, no specific date or event marks the start of the First Age of the Golden Aspen. The earliest reference to the First Age principally remarks on the emergence of an enigmatic people who called themselves Tuatha De and their initial efforts to shape the future of Plethwih. Thus begins the abstract of the chronicles encompassing the Four Ages of the Golden Aspen.
* In later times, when human chroniclers became the only extant source of historical documentation, the ‘Ages’ were classified, cataloged, and ordered based on different contexts of a wide-ranging understanding, interpretation, and religious philosophies of highly divergent cultures. However, one lasting source of note regards the combined third and fourth Ages of the Golden Aspen as the ‘Thurian Age’ and the first several thousand years of the Age of Man as the ‘Hyborian Age’ of which much has been written by noble sources.
The First Age of the Golden Aspen began some 350,000 years before present time. A people of unknown origin calling themselves Tuatha De, swept out of the frozen north across the mountain range east of what would become the Sea of Dragons, south along the coast and into the heavily forested territory inhabited by pre-evolution tribes of ape-like Wild People. The Tuatha De were the first intelligent species to inhabit Plethwih, and their foray south was not for the usual purpose of plundering the resources gathered by others. This, the limited intellect of the Wild People might have understood. What they could not understand was that the Tuatha De came for slaves to build their cities on the southern edge of the Great Glacier. The squat, thick-limbed, stout frame of the Wild People could be well adapted to such work. Or so they believed.
The Tuatha De struck with orbs of fire thrown from bare hands, bolts of lightning called from the sky, and waves of thunderous force that could fell trees as easily as their hairy leather hide-clad prey. Yet seldom did the Tuatha De’s demonstration of God-like powers cause injury or death to their quarry for that was not the purpose. Rather, their intent was to intimidate the apish brutes into cowed submission, round them up, and lash them together with silvery cords not even their primal strength could break.
Entire tribes were herded north to the valley under the shadow of the Great Glacier. The Wild People were a strong species with the fortitude to survive the rigors of this cold climate, but they were taken beyond the farthest migration of the mammoths they hunted, where even their extreme resilience would be sorely tested. Most accepted the enforced servitude. Their spirits were broken and they had no understanding of what these terrible ‘Gods’ wanted of them or how they might have displeased them. So early in their evolution, the Wild People communicated mainly with grunts and gestures with only a rudimentary concept of Gods and spirits manifested in the solitary custom of burial rituals. The strongest rose as their leaders, fire was a recent discovery, and slavery was a notion unknown in their burgeoning culture.
While the Tuatha De compelled many thousands of Wild People into forced labor during the First Age, tens of thousands more either evaded capture or were lucky enough never to encounter the Tuatha De in the first place. These ‘free’ Wild People developed complex language, art, and religion. It was common practice to record their way of life on cave walls and stone blocks - mostly depicting animals and hunting. Yet, scenes with strange-looking beings were also prevalent. Scenes surely inspired by the Tuatha De and the creatures they created.
The Tuatha De set the enslaved Wild People to the building of their first city utilizing massive blueish-grey stone cut from the leading ice flows of the Great Glacier. Once taught how to use the basic tools to extract the stone, they excelled at the task and, of course, dragging the heavy stone over the ice and snow was well within their physical adaptation. But the Wild People were keenly skittish when it came to the display of simple magic the Tuatha De would employ to shape the stones or apply the shimmering iridescent sheen that made them glow. Often these demonstrations caused a spontaneous panic among the hundreds of primitive workers that sent them fleeing across the icy tundra. Sometimes it would take days for the Tuatha De to round up and organize the scattered Wild People into work groups again. Worse still, when it came to the actual construction of complex structures, the Tuatha De found that even the most industrious of the primitive folk fell far short.
The Tuatha De were at an impasse - they would either accept the Wild Peoples physical and intellectual limitations or apply their godlike powers to improve the situation. Never a people to stand against progress, the Tuatha De embarked on an agenda whereby they would enhance the strength and fortitude of the enslaved Wild People beyond what they could have achieved naturally. They considered the physical alterations something of an artform that produced blasphemous modifications such as longer limbs, greater size, wings, or tentacles. Each alteration designed to perform a specific task with greater proficiently. Ultimately, the Tuatha De settled on a handful of variations and soon, powerfully built giants strode the glaciers transporting the building blocks of their earliest cities more efficiently than ever. The Tuatha De were pleased with their creations and gave them a name: Fomorians. Still, the modified Wild Peoples physical prowess alone did not alleviate the ancient fears of mysticism engrained deep within their consciousness, nor did it improve their ability to reason, or problem solve any better than before.
As it happened, a new humanoid species emerged from the warmer climate of the south. They were slight of build with dark sun-touched skin of various tones and a wandering spirit that compelled their migrations. The first humans rose upon the lush savannahs of Plethwih and with them came the Second Age of the Golden Aspen.
It was a time marked by great migrations of the first human populations throughout modern North Africa, Europe, the Levant, Asia and over the land bridge into North and South America. The less populous clans of Wild People (Neanderthal) slowly disappeared. Most through assimilation and breeding with humans, some through conflict, and the smallest numbers retreating deep into The Wilds to live reclusive, isolated lives. Language, burial rituals, and the first concept of a greater power manifested as spirits or Gods as the immortal embodiment of the sun, moon, earth, fire, and natural phenomenon that was so mysterious to folk at the time. And although humanity shared many common threads of early cultural development, the further apart they spread the more distinct and unique they became. This too resulted in a disparity of advancement as tribes north and east of the Levant were among the first to move beyond hunter/gatherer societies with the discovery of agriculture and irrigation. Permanent and semi-permanent settlements soon followed.
The Second Age would experience longer periods of Glacial and Interglacial cycles as the climate grew colder or warmer every hundred thousand years or so, forcing further migrations over time.
And what of the Tuatha De? They were immediately fascinated with the lean, graceful humans who so readily adapted to almost any environment they chose to inhabit. As they did with the Wild People, many humans were taken as slaves to serve in whatever capacity the Tuatha De required. And just like the Wild People, humans were subject to physical alterations and experimentation.
The Watchers suggest that this practice was indiscriminate as the Tuatha De regarded the Wild People, Humans, and beasts of fin, fur, and feather that roamed Plethwih with equal indifference - their fundamental goal simply to modify species to the tasks meant to be performed with the greatest efficiency. Their creations were many, and in the span of the Second Age creatures of the wildest imagination would labor for the pleasure of the Tuatha De. It wasn’t until the Third Age that the Watchers cataloged with detailed descriptions several volumes of the Tuatha De’s arcane handiwork; however, the Watchers conceded that what managed to record was likely only a small fraction of the whole. Some of the more well-known creatures included small canine humanoids designed for the brutal work of mining; they were given the name ‘Kobolds’; another small humanoid with mostly human features specializing in extraction of precious gems from rock would later be known as the ‘Kabouter.’ Then there were the leanly muscled pig-faced brutes known as ‘Orks’ designed to keep order in the mining camps and quarries, and great reptiles with bat-like wings trailing sinuous tails capable of transporting heavy loads by flight were identified as the earliest dragons. And of course, the Fomorian and Cyclopean giant mutations from the first slaves taken from the Wild People. Thousands of species were created by the Tuatha De. Some were numerous, while others were unique. The preceding represents only a sampling of those who survived into the Third Age. With this powerful labor force, the Tuatha De built four gleaming cities in their vale: Falias, Gorias, Murias, and Finias, where they lived in undreamed-of comfort and luxury.
Fortunately for the natural inhabitants of Plethwih, the Tuatha De rarely travelled beyond the Vale of Glaciers they called home. Thus, they almost never encountered tribes of humans or human settlements unless they were collecting more slaves. With this exception, the vast majority of humans were unaware that the Tuatha De existed.
The Second Age of the Golden Aspen lasted nearly 300,000 years. At its close, humans inhabited nearly every corner of Plethwih. It was the dawn of civilization. Cities of mudbrick, wood, and stone rose next to irrigated crops. Complex language and writing were in use, and religion blossomed with ritual and tradition. Not all people looked the same anymore and many clustered together for protection and community. In the modern geography of Europe pale-skinned folk with blond, red and light brown hair dwelt in tribes that warred with each other for resources and worshipped pantheons of Gods. In Africa tribes of black-skinned people of many tones ranged vast savannahs following the endless herds of antelope and wildebeests, or farmed fertile lands along great rivers. Further east the ‘black-headed people’ became masters of irrigation. In Asia populations with dark hair, slanted eyes, and yellow-hued skin carved out lives in strict societies, and in the Americas tribes of ruddy-skinned hunters followed the buffalo across the plains or cleared jungles to build temples of stone. And there were innumerable smaller societies besides.
There also existed an island-continent of immense size that stretched from the northern glaciers to the moderate climate of the savannahs. It was lush with trees and foliage, especially in the northern parts, with a mountain range that ran the length of the western edge of the island like a giant’s spine. It would be called The Emerald Isle for its thickly forested coastlines that reflected a vibrant green radiance like a sparkling gem. In the thickest densest tangle of said wood where nature was at its purest and unspoiled, a slight light-skinned people with pointed ears and wide almond-shaped eyes walked through the veil and into Plethwih for the first time. They were a people born of nature and magic with lives that spanned centuries. Sylvan was the name that represented their varied population of elves, centaurs, pixies, sprites and more. They needed a new home, and the isolated forests of The Emerald Isle would suit them just fine. With the Sylvan came the Watchers, and the Third Age of the Golden Aspen.
The first day of the first year (SY 0) of the Sylvan Calendar began to record time with the dawning of the new Age. The quiet reclusive Sylvan were not for some time first noticed by the Tuatha De. Nor were there any Human or Wild Folk inhabiting The Emerald Isle to cast their curious gaze upon the newest arrivals to Plethwih. Not so for the Sylvan Watchers. Their seamless blend with nature allowed them to observe the peoples of Plethwih undetected. It was just as well. Otherwise, the gentle Sylvan might have been drawn into a cataclysm beyond their comprehension.
By Sylvan Year (SY) 2113, the Tuatha De were fractured and divided. Two major groups were at odds with many smaller groups falling somewhere in between. Their disagreement centered around the conduct of their own people with the largest faction led by a man called Dhroghan and woman named Laghfrin. These two claimed stewardship over Plethwih, protecting its natural inhabitants rather than enslaving or corrupting their natural forms into grotesque objects of grueling service to unsympathetic masters. While the other major faction despised the lowly beings of Plethwih demanding their right to subjugate and use as they pleased the inferior life forms, arguing that it was, in fact, the reason the Tuatha De chose Plethwih as their home in the first place. Eochu Bres, the cruel leader of the dissenting faction, compelled his followers to combine their magic to create a powerful artifact – the Radiant Crown - that Bres hoped would give his faction an advantage over the others.
The Watchers carefully scrutinized the Tuatha De, noting with no small curiosity how they appeared almost physically identical to the Humans that populated much of Plethwih. Only the faint aura of one color or another that most times bounded the frames of the Tuatha De and their strange shimmering robes caused them to stand apart. This carnal similarity would incite heated debate among the most enlightened Sylvan Scholars and powerful Arcanists for centuries to come.
There were children among the Tuatha De as well. Children born from the pure blood of Tuatha De parents as at that time no Tuatha De would consider copulation with an inferior species. In time, the Watchers would consider the children of the Tuatha De among the greatest tragedies of what was to come.
Centuries passed. No resolution, mediation, or accord could be reached between the factions. This puzzled the Watchers. The scant two millennia they had observed the Tuatha De in addition to the ancient knowledge passed on to them by the mysterious spirits of nature, revealed a subtle transformation over time in the Tuatha De that they had not noticed in themselves. So faint and cunning was the change, it was almost insidious in the imperceptible artfulness of the alteration that the entire Tuatha De population, counted over a thousand at the time, should be infected so uniformly. Yet, even as the Watchers became aware of the slow pestilence, they made the shocking connection to its source. And it was impossible to explain, for just as the Tuatha De corrupted the mind and body of their Human slaves, their own immortal magic worked against them by transferring, in turn, a piece of Humanity. It was the most savage and feral survival instinct Humanity possessed - Human Nature. The Tuatha De unknowingly infused themselves through arcane transference that which they believed set them apart from the lower cast, yet was that which tore them asunder. And they knew not why.
As throughout much of history, it began with a spark. From where or whom it came none could say. Suddenly, the Tuatha De, previously ignorant to the concept of war, were full upon it in a conflict of immortals who used their terrible creations against each other to devastate their rivals’ cities instigating a catastrophic loss of life, both mortal and immortal, that raged across the whole of Plethwih. It was a conflict of feral savagery fueled by revenge, hatred, bitter loss that up until that time was unknown and unfelt. Incited by desperate fury, Eochu Bres joined with the surviving Tuatha De of his faction and drew arcane energy wild and unconstrained through the Radiant Crown that taxed its immeasurable power beyond capacity. And when they sought to release their wrath upon their enemies, an implosion rent the earth in a devastating collapse of negative force that shook the planet, tearing time and space, cleaving a rift in the heart of Plethwih that opened a portal to the Infernal Planes.
Eochu Bres and his followers were obliterated, along with a preponderance of the opposing Tuatha De. What they left behind, at a cost incalculable, would be later termed The Breaking. Perhaps incalculable to the Tuatha De. The Watchers knew precisely: barely half a hundred Tuatha De survived. Of these, the greatest in both power and moral distinction was Dhroghan and Laghfrin. Through the arcane efforts of these few Tuatha De was the rift to the Infernal Planes sealed beneath a crystalline barrier impervious to the gnashing maws and rending claws of unadulterated evil. Still, seven Greater Demon Lords - Tephras, Aesmadaeva, Mamon, Ornias, Alu-Abad, Yalal, and the worst of them - Ba’lzbl, plus thirteen unnamed lesser fiends simply known as Chaos Demons, slipped through the rift before it was closed.
The Sea of Glass, as the barrier would be known, was a temporary resolution to a problem with no permanent solution. And yet, despite all they bore upon their shoulders, the Tuatha De found the strength to banish what remained of the terrible creatures they created before The Breaking to a frozen land north of the Sea of Dragons they called Fomoire. In this harsh climate only the strong and clever survived. Many thousands died forever unknown and uncatalogued by the Watchers. And many hundreds survived or escaped beneath the distracted noses of the Tuatha De who did their best to track down and destroy any that dared to escape whilst Plethwih was ravaged by the scourge of demons.
As yet unseen and unknown, the Watchers recorded numerous contrived creatures of the Tuatha De that found their way to freedom in The Wilds. The Orks proliferated in the south, dragons, chimera, and other ferocious beasts of flight flew off to distant lands, trolls and goblins leveraged their stealthy talents to skulk away unseen, and many other species terrible and mundane somehow fell below the vigilant guard of the Tuatha De, but not the Watchers.
Consequently, only thirty-two years after The Breaking did the Dvergr Dwarfs emerge upon the surface of their island home of Tirnan Yog. The Sylvan date of SY 2145 marks the first Forge Year (FY) on the Dverger Calendar. The stout, broad shouldered Dwarfs lived below the ground tending the volcanic forces that grumbled far under their isle and reaped the rewards of gems and ore mined as a labor of love and compulsion as much as the material gain of wealth and prosperity.
Eochu Bres left one other thing behind – the Radiant Crown – sundered into four pieces. Dhroghan knew that if The Breaking could not destroy it, then nothing could. Instead, the Tuatha De used their powers to construct four mystical towers in obscure places far apart from one another, and a fourth of the Radiant Crown was placed in each one. Once this was done, the towers were sealed and protected for all time.
Thirteen hundred years passed as the Watchers stood witness to the plight of an immortal race resigned to bear the weight of their ancestors’ sins upon their shoulders. This might have been the providence of the mighty Tuatha De chained by their own choosing to protect a world they nearly destroyed themselves - until an unexpected event occurred that surprised even the diligent Watchers. It was an advent that would profoundly shape the future of Plethwih and bring an end to the Third Age of the Golden Aspen after only thirty-five hundred years.
The first ancestors of the Atlanteans came unto Plethwih. The Watchers record this momentous occasion thus:
It was from the stars they came, out of the vast darkness of the Primeval Cosmos, plunging from the sky in a great wingless beast consumed by smoke and fire. It fell with a thunderous crash upon the earth, plowing a long black rift across the open plain before it shuddered to a stop with an impressive display of sparks and lightning. The shining silver shell of the massive creature lay shattered and smoking where it came to rest, yet from its broken maw hundreds of odd-looking figures crawled through the acrid haze to stumble disoriented onto the lush green grass of a new world.
The Sylvan Watchers witnessed the arrival of the newcomers from the quiet repose of the forest. They scrutinized these strange bi-pedal aliens with blue-tinted skin, elongated skulls, and large almond-shaped eyes who came uninvited to their tranquil isle that up until that day lay isolated and protected from intrusion by the vast expanse of the Primal Sea. The Watchers observed how the survivors worked as a collective to remove the shiny scales of their battered host piece by piece to make shelters or cover the bodies of their dead. Unlike the Sylvan, these folk buried rather than burned the dearly departed, and they mourned their passing rather than celebrated their passage to the afterlife.
When that was done, they brought red glowing crystals that shone bright even in daylight from the metallic frame of the silver beast’s remains. The crystals they handled with great care and reverence, depositing them in caverns deep in the earth near an inlet on the coast. Whether to hide or protect them the Watchers did not know. It was there too that they built the first structures with stones.
These were a people with no hope of return or rescue, determined to survive and resolute in their struggle to make a place for themselves. A permanent place that would bring irrevocable change to the Isle, to the land, to nature, to a way of life that existed long before their abrupt arrival.
The prophecies spoke of events such as these that would herald the beginning of the Fourth Age of the Golden Aspen, the Age when the winds from the north would bring an icy chill even in the summer and end the elves isolation from the rest of the world forever.
Still, the Sylvan Watchers watched with pragmatic detachment.
In time, the Sylvan learned that the unusual, blue-tinted people called themselves the followers of Atlan, the one who was the first to rise above the others offering leadership and hope for a new future. They would name the spine of the isle in his honor and build a shining city on the sea that would become known as the City of Atlantis.
And they thrived.
Recorded in the Fourth Age of the Golden Aspen
by Watcher CrellianRafkarSil of Avalon
_ _ _
It is a matter of some debate among the Sylvan Watchers the precise cause that triggered the beginning of the Fourth Age as more than one significant event commenced at that time. There was the arrival of the Atlanteans, an otherworldly people, and the start of a climactic change, later classified as the Younger Dryas (YD), that affected the whole of Plethwih. Most Watchers believed that since it was the ‘Nature Spirits’ that gave life to Plethwih and determined when the Ages began and ended, that it must be the Younger Dryas. Others speculated that the sudden instigation of the Younger Dryas was simply Plethwih’s reaction to the Atlanteans arrival. While an even smaller division of Watchers believed the turning of a new Age had nothing to do with either one or the other.
Whatever the catalyst, the Fourth Age had arrived. Within the first few decades the glaciers rapidly advanced as far as the 50th parallel in some places, and temperatures dropped across the globe compelling human migration to follow the herds to warmer regions. In this Age, agriculture would take root, settlements would rise to civilizations, trade and commerce would bridge the divide between far-flung cultures. It would be an Age of scholarly pursuits, poetry, art, and literature of the highest form. And magic. But this awakening would not take place until after the first thousand years of this Age, as seven Greater Demons and thirteen Demons of Chaos were loose in Plethwih bent on the subjugation of all living things. In these years, pandemonium reigned freely across all lands.
Yet, even in these tumultuous times great strides were made by those cultures powerful enough to resist the diabolic influence of the Demons. While early humans quickly found themselves under the brutal lash of fiendish masters, the Atlanteans, Sylvan and Dvergr were largely unaffected. Less than five centuries into the Fourth Age did the great City of Atlantis appear on the southeastern shores of the Emerald Isle. It was an urban beauty from the start, built upon rings of land separated by wide channels of water encircling a mountainous island capped by a gleaming Temple dedicated to Pontus, God of the Seas. Atlantis was the jewel of the burgeoning Atlantean Empire rivaling the fantastical cities of the Tuatha De and even the natural beauty of the Sylvan capital, Avalon. A century later, the Dvergr Dwarfs constructed the foundations of Aquilon, on the southern edge of the Sylvan Forest in Atlantean territory and Andlang a few leagues further north on the eastern coast of the Sylvan Kingdom. The Dwarfs placed a massive sculpture of white marble in the center of each of the cities displaying the proud likeness of an Atlantean, Sylvan Elf and Dvergr Dwarf standing together in friendship. It was a stunning work of art and a powerful statement of concord between their peoples and by means of an elaborate celebration, the Dvergr formally gifted Aquilon to the Atlanteans and Andlang to the Sylvan. The year was SY4000, henceforth commemorated as the ‘Year of Unity’.
The Dvergr Dwarfs, even in those early days, would never have been mistaken for a compassionate people and so it must be considered a sign of desperate times that their reclusive nature gave way to pragmatic wisdom. For they knew that the only path to survival was by aligning with the Sylvan and Atlanteans if they had any chance of purging the demons loose upon the earth. It was the beginning of a coalition that would soon grow to include the still powerful Tuatha De and the primitive, yet numerous Human populations gathered from the furthest reaches of Plethwih.
This Age would prove as tumultuous as any other. The demons who succeeded in crossing the barrier between the Infernal Planes and Plethwih before it was sealed arrived in physical forms described by the Watchers as vulgar, unnatural, grotesque. The Chaos Demons stood roughly the height of a tall Human man with ruddy leather-like skin, lean muscular frames, sharp claws completing disproportionate large hands and feet, with a long spike-tipped tail and red-glowing eyes under a thick brow crowned by twisted horns organically suited for impaling their adversary. There were thirteen, and they all appeared identical.
The same could not be said for the Demon Lords. Each was unique from another in both appearance and the horrors they could inflict upon the living. A Demon Lord’s very presence wrought terror in those that gazed upon them. They were physically enormous – at least five times the height of a human man – each commanding a horde of nightmarish half-human, half-demon fiends compelled to aid them in battle. To make matters worse, the Demon Lords possessed powerful psionic aptitude; mental powers with the capacity to dominate or destroy another creature’s mind.
So hideous was their visage that the Watchers dared describe only one in part thus: “Its body was red like the crimson of human blood, bestowed with a muscular, humanoid physic that bore no clothing at all, and it towered over every living thing casting a shadow to rival the tallest trees ever known. From its maw great mandibles clacked mercilessly over row upon row of teeth longer than the longest broadsword, its eyes glowed blood red with a black pupil split in the center like those of a snake, and long pointed horns protruded from the top of its head to complete the perfect nightmare.” Which of the seven Greater Demon Lords this one represented is unknown.
For nearly two thousand years the demons were free to cause whatever havoc they pleased upon Plethwih. Humans suffered the brunt of the demons wickedness as thousands succumbed to their wrath or pleasure. Humanity may have disappeared forever had not the demons been so distracted with fighting amongst themselves vying for power. In time, such diversions would be their undoing.
While the demons waged war upon each other, the Sylvan, Dvergr, Atlanteans, Humans and Tuatha De formed a coalition so named the ‘Alliance of the Free Peoples of Plethwih’ for the purpose of opposing the demons and purging their evil presence in every land. They chose the man named Dhroghan, immortal hero of the Tuatha De, to lead them. Under his leadership, the alliance quietly gathered resources, trained warriors, mentored capable Humans in the use of magic, and diligently studied every detail about the demons and their minions that might reveal vulnerabilities, if any existed. By SY4048, nearly five decades after the “Year of Unity”, the Allied Peoples of Plethwih were ready, and so began the Demon Wars or, as the Humans would term the decades that followed, ‘The Generation of Sorrow’.
It started on the northern plains of the continent west of the Emerald Isle. Dhroghan combined the forces of Atlantis with the wiry ruddy-skinned Hisat’sinom tribes of humanity led by their War Chief Tekweneee’n, ‘the Great Owl Who Watches.’ The natives looked with wonder at the Atlantean warriors exhibiting elongated skulls, blue-tinted skin clad in translucent Aurinium armor that fit like a carapace over their tall, lean figures. To the Hisat’sinom, the Atlanteans looked like ants. Thus, the tribal folk of the plains would always refer to the Atlanteans as the Anu Sinom, or ‘Ant People.’
Dhroghan led the first assault on a Chaos Demon laired deep within the Sacred Mountains, but the fiend was not alone. Packs of distorted shape-shifting humanoids fathered and corrupted by the demon swarmed from subterranean burrows to defend the fiend, fighting savagely with mindless disregard for their own lives. For seven days the battle raged through canyon and cavern, and each day Dhroghan slaughtered the Chaos Demon. Yet, with every morning dawn the fiend emerged again from a darkened hollow to fight on. Finally, the Tuatha De withdrew his forces to the grassy steppes to reconsider his strategy. Forty days passed. While the warriors ate piki, smoked tobacco and hunted small game with their dogs, Dhroghan and the tribal shamans spent their days in the Sacred Kiva communing with Kachinas of the spirit world. When he came out of the Hisat’sinom temple, Dhroghan knew what must be done, and on the next full moon Dagda-Dana Laghfrin, the Tuatha De Wizard Queen of Falias, arrived with a score of powerful Tuatha De Mages in tow.
Laghfrin conjured a dark cloud over the Sacred Mountains to blind the Chaos Demon to their activities on the steppes as she assembled her mages and the Hisat’sinom shamans in the construction of a powerful artifact from consecrated clay which they placed into a man-sized pottery jar imbued with spirit magic. This, she gave over to Phalaeh, Dhroghan’s sister, who was a powerful Tuatha De sorceress. She inscribed enchanted symbols upon the vessel that would make it unbreakable. When it was done, the beautifully engraved jar stood gleaming in the sunlight. The Sacred Pithos was complete. Dhroghan bade Laghfrin lift her dark cloud as he gathered the Atlantean and Hisat’sinom warriors once again and swept into the Sacred Mountains. This time he went forth in the company of Laghfrin, Phalaeh, the Tuatha De Mages, and a magical pithos designed for one purpose.
As expected, hordes of contorted humanoids shapeshifting from animal forms riddled with mange and vile disease erupted from holes and hollows seeking blood to assuage their hunger. The Chaos Demon drove them fearlessly to confront Dhroghan and found itself confined within a transparent arcane bubble conjured by the adept sorcery of Laghfrin and her Tuatha De. Dhroghan knew they could not kill the demon, nor could they banish it back to the Infernal Plains while the rift was sealed by the Sea of Glass. All that was left was to confine it forever in an inescapable prison. Phalaeh brought forth the pithos, and into it Laghfrin and the Tuatha De Mages forced the Chaos Demon’s essence inside. But there was more. The spirit magic within the shimmering confinement of the pithos stripped carnal flesh from the shrieking Chaos Demon separating its physical anatomy from the indestructible essence deep within so that it would atrophy over time to no more than a shade of what it once was.
From the tribal plains of the Hisat’sinom, Dhroghan trekked south with the Atlanteans and Tuatha De Mages into the jungles where the Jaguar King, Tuocelotl, reigned over a vast empire of pyramid cities connected by a complex network of roads paved with stone. In this dark rainforest two more Chaos Demons were confined to the pithos. From there, the Atlanteans returned home via ship while the Tuatha De used magical means to cross the Primal Sea and join the Chief of the Grass People, Amgar N’rrbi Suub, leader of the ebon tribes. Six clans of Sylvan Centaurs arrived from the Emerald Isle about the same time, and through their collective efforts, the number of captured Chaos Demons grew to six. Dhroghan then led the Tuatha De to the far east where they assisted the Yellow Thearch, Huangdi, with bringing several tyrannical city-states along the ‘Mother River’ under his rule through conquest and diplomacy. With the help of this burgeoning Dynasty, four more Chaos Demons lost their freedom. Turning south, Dhroghan and the Tuatha De hastened to the coastal city of Dvaraka in the Kingdom of Meluḫḫa. The King, Rega Durai, called upon the tribes of the valley to join the Tuatha De in their hunt which soon delivered two more Chaos Demons to the dreaded pithos. Only one fiend remained of the thirteen. Dhroghan soon discovered it was terrorizing the lands southwest of the Sea of Dragons and with the support of several northern barbarian clans, Laghfrin forced the last Chaos Demon into the pithos.
In SY4055, on a farmstead outside the seaside village of Ys, Dhroghan assembled the Alliance of the Free Peoples of Plethwih for the purpose of devising a plan to confine the Greater Demon Lords within Phalaeh’s pithos. Although there was only seven Demon Lords to contend with, their power far outmatched that of the Chaos Demons, and they also controlled hordes of fiends bred over centuries of insatiable rapine coition with human populations.
Emperor Zamfer of House Atlan brought hundreds of Atlantean Marines and scores of Wizards; many from the Yellow Hall of the Imperial Enclave of Wizards, who specialized in psionics. The Sylvan Elf High-King RalnapianCalithIlon arrived with contingents of Elven Archers and Sword Masters, potent Arcanists, calvaries of Centaurs, and a forest of animated trees they called Treants. Brak Iron-Teeth, Lord of the Dvergr, led ranks of Heavy Infantry and Pike from Tirnan Yog. Queen Laghfrin represented the Tuatha De. And then there was the charismatic Human, Anlawd Dormont, the recently installed ruler of the unified clans from across the lands that would later become the Western Kingdoms. These pale brawny barbarians numbered in the thousands and constituted the bulk of the Alliance’s fighting force.
It was decided that rather than chase down the Demon Lords wherever they might be in Plethwih, a select few Tuatha De led by Dhroghan would lure the Demons, one by one, to an open stretch of land one hundred leagues east of Ys where Laghfrin and the Alliance would be waiting with the pithos. It was a daring plan that took thirty-three years and cost thousands of lives before the last Demon Lord was finally trapped within the pithos. At the location of the last battle, row upon row of monoliths stretching over a league were placed to honor the dead and forever commemorate their sacrifice. Dhroghan declared it a sacred place and called it Carnac. So ended the Demon Wars.
The next several hundred years marked a period of peace across Plethwih. With the rise of the Western Kingdoms, Ys grew from a small village to a prosperous trade port. Anlawd Dormont, a devout worshiper of the Sun Goddess Sunna, and the barbarian clans so devoted built Yorwick and proclaimed him king. His descendants would go on to establish the Kingdom of Lyonesse. Other clans broke off to settle city-states, each ruled by their own king. Several of these independent cities with populations that revered Eriu, Goddess of the Land and Fertility, formed a loose confederacy in her name. Westward into the Primal Sea, many of the seafaring barbarians erected the first Vikja settlements on a large island near the Dvergr home of Tirnan Yog and would soon form a strong trade alliance.
The rise of the Eastern Kingdoms followed similarly with several smaller cities governed by a king or council. And in the south between The Wilds and the Great Sea, the logging Kingdom of Courth rose to prominence as many of the roving tribes on the Plains of Tarre crossed the Bodin River and settled in the lush valleys in the shadow of the Spine of Cel. The powerful theocratic city-states established by these folk would form a federation to be known as the League of Free Peoples in Rasna ruled by an Over-King. Other tribes migrated west where they cultivated the land and founded Provigi, the first city in Tarre.
Although the druids had been a murky presence associated mainly as tribal shamans, they became a prominent influence once Humans began to build cities. Shamans who settled in the cities established temples devoted to a single deity and served the populace as priests. However, most of the shamans preferred to maintain their devotion to many deities and spirits, and so remained connected to nature. They built enclaves in remote places away from population centers yet continued to serve rural settlements as healers and leaders of faith. These were the first organized druids with their own rules, laws, hierarchies, and a calendar characterized by the natural passing of seasons called an Oak Year (OY). To the frustration of many monarchs, the druids placed their loyalties in faith rather than kingdoms and after a few disastrous attempts to subjugate the druids, the monarchs grudgingly learned to tolerate their autonomy.
In other parts of Plethwih, tribes of Grass People on the fringes of the Ibhr Rrbi cultivated agriculture and built the cities that would become the kingdoms of the Mouillians and the Capsians while others sought to preserve their ancestral traditions and formed the Imaziyen tribes. All around the Great Sea civilizations were rising from the dust. Seafaring merchants and wagon traders traveled far and wide and with them came new ideas, innovations, tradecraft. The city-states of Hellas grew out of the migrations of the Enchele and Thraix tribes, the Sicans began as settlers from Hellas and later absorbed migrations from the Grass People and the tribal folk from the Plaines of Tarre. The city-states of Kur-Gal rose along the Idigna and Buranuna Rivers from hunter-gatherer tribes that mastered agriculture through irrigation. The Hisat’sinom clung tightly to their traditions and continued following the vast herds across the lush plains on the continent west of the Emerald Isle just as the Huangdi Dynasty and the Meluhha Valley Kingdom far to the east slowly expanded their influence over the tribes, villages, and settlements in their respective regions.
For nearly five-hundred years after the Demon Wars Plethwih enjoyed global peace. Yet, as would happen throughout the history of Humanity, greed and lust for power would eventually beget a never-ending cycle of conflict and violence. By SY4480, House Dormont founded the Kingdom of Lyonesse and began to exert territorial claims further away from its new capital of Yorwick. At first, the various cities, villages, and townships east of Lough Greely were eager to join a kingdom dedicated to the worship of Sunna as they were. All except the fiercely independent city-state of Cambria whose population largely revered Sunna yet included nearly as many worshipers of Eriu and Lunna. After inciting insurrection within the walls of Cambrian by citizens devoted to the Sun Goddess, Lyonesse marched on the beleaguered city and within a fortnight it fell. The city-states of Eriu quaked with fear that Lyonesse might continue its conquests westward, but the anticipated invasion was forestalled when a delegation of Tuatha De arrived in Teamhrach with a magical stone they called Lia-fal – Stone of Destiny. It was upon this stone in SY4487 that Dhroghan was coroneted as the first High-King of Eriu uniting the confederacy as a strong deterrent to Lyonesse’s aggression. Once again, peace and prosperity ruled the Western Kingdoms as they learned to get along and trade with each other. Dhroghan abdicated the throne after one year and the Congress of Eriu comprised of all the kings of the member city-states chose a new ruler from among their own.
In this time the brother kings of a newly formed kingdom centered on the Aur River in the southeastern region of the Great Sea proclaimed their land would become two – Ta Mehu and Ta Shemau. Each ruled by one of the brothers. The twin kingdoms instituted a new calendar titled the Year of the Land or Ta-rnpt (TR) in SY4621. Further west, hundreds of Grass People migrated to a cluster of isles off the Mouillian Coast. They discovered the isles were inhabited by the descendants of Sylvan Centaurs who aided the Grass People and the Tuatha De trapping a Chaos Demon five hundred years previous, but they never quite made it back to the Emerald Isle. These were the Isles of Gades, ruled by a Sylvan Nymph Queen, and despite the natural Sylvan reluctance to mingle with humans, the immigrants were welcomed.
Peace in the Western Kingdoms was shattered again by an unexpected source: the druids. Initially the people of the Western Kingdoms believed the Druids of Eriu, Sunna and Lunna were at odds with each other. This was especially strange since the druids revered all three Goddesses giving preference to one or another only during rituals at certain times of the year. The druids had done more than anyone to blur the lines between the deities so there would be no repeat of conflict among worshipers of different deities as happened in the early days of Lyonesse. Only the priests remained exclusively loyal to Sunna, Lunna or Eriu, but they were tolerant of the others and as confused as anyone about hostilities between the druids. What the royalty, nobles, priests, and druids either did not realize or refused to see, was that the long peace that brought prosperity to the Western Kingdoms also left out a huge swath of the populations. With their cries drown out in the exuberance of parties, balls, and celebrations so frequent in affluent society, those who went without turned to an obscure cult-like sect of druids called the Atiod-Bherto. For centuries they were shunned and hidden. Every kingdom declared them outlaws and banned their heinous rituals. The Atiod-Bherto worshiped the ‘Horned-One,’ practiced human sacrifice on their recumbent stone altars, and promised dark powers to those who joined them. The centuries of peace had swelled their ranks with desperate followers willing to do anything to relieve their impoverished situation. By SY4854 the Atiod-Bherto had grown powerful and confident. They came out of the shadows with their masses and made war upon the druids of Sunna, Lunna and Eriu. The war would last over one-hundred years, cost tens of thousands of lives and bring the Western Kingdoms to their knees. The druids referred to the hostilities as the Oak War considering that the oak was their symbol of nature and life, but the struggle was not limited to the druids. Death and suffering would permeate every level of society throughout the Western Kingdoms and set the stage for a conflict that would end one of the most prominent royal lineages in Plethwih.
While war raged between the druids, another long held dispute erupted into violence on the far side of the Great Sea. In SY4935, descendants of the brother kings who ruled TaMehu and Ta Shemau were at odds over trade and shipping rights. In a surprise action, Ta Mehu swept into Ta Shemau with thousands of shock troops and hundreds of war chariots that devastated the northern half of the kingdom. The city of Tjenu was the first to fall after feeble resistance and a month later Naqada submitted. It appeared Ta Shemau was teetering on the verge of defeat. Full of confidence, the ruler of Ta Mehu pushed his weary forces to take Waset, but they were met in the grasslands outside the city walls by the well-rested armies of TaShemau and their allies from the Kingdom of Kerma. The battle lasted three days and resulted in TaMehu forced to retreat to their stronghold in Naqada where they were surrounded and besieged for over a year. During that time Ta Shemau liberated Tjenu and fortified its northern border preventing Ta Mehu from sending troops to break out their forces trapped in Naqada. When the starving troops finally surrendered, they were given no quarter. Thousands of TaMehu soldiers were executed, and their heads were placed on poles lining the border between the kingdoms with their bloody vacant gaze facing northward. Several more years of skirmishes followed, gaining nothing for either side until a peace treaty ended the War of the Brothers in SY4957.
A decade later, the Oak War ended in the Western Kingdoms. The Atiod-Bherto was defeated and what remained of their cult was driven back into the shadows. While the end of hostilities and violence was a relief, a century of destruction left a devastated infrastructure, crops abandoned, and livelihoods in tatters that brought the Kingdom of Lyonesse to the brink of collapse. Lyonesse had borne the brunt of the ruin in the wake of the Oak War, but the people and the other kingdoms offered little sympathy. Blame for the war was set squarely at the feet of House Dormont in Yorwick and there was no shortage of resentment. In the decades that followed, the people tried to rebuild their lives, but the disparity between the misery of the commonfolk and the nobles of House Dormont, in addition to the unyielding high taxes inevitably brought the kingdom to a breaking point.
In SY5159, the Duke of House Monmouth led a revolt of the citizenry of Lyon’s Gate against the tyranny of the King and House Dormont which quickly grew into a Civil War. Small skirmishes fanned the flames as the noble houses allied with one side or the other. In a move that enraged the King, the Priesthood of Sunna abstained from supporting House Dormont and to no one’s surprise the druids followed suit. But the real shock to the whole of the Western Kingdoms came when the Temple Knights, who were certain to support the King, withdrew from Yorwick and declared their order neutral. One great battle determined the outcome of the war and fate of Lyonesse. It took place on the expansive flatlands one hundred leagues west of the Thayre River, southwest of Yorwick. The army fielded by the King and House Dormont far outmatched that of the Duke of House Monmouth whose forces included far fewer professional soldiers and less than half as much heavy cavalry. The outcome seemed assured until, at the last minute, the Temple Knights withdrew their neutrality and joined the Duke. Still, the outcome was far from certain. The battle raged back and forth across the field for hours until the King lost confidence and attempted to flee back to Yorwick. A mob of common citizens intercepted his retreat and tore the King to pieces. His fate was no different for every member of House Dormont, effectively ending the lineage forever. Their bodies were buried in unmarked graves in the fields of the last battle along with countless soldiers, knights, and citizens who lost their lives for the cause of hope. After the Duke of House Monmouth was coroneted as the new King and the capital was moved from Yorwick to Lyon’s Gate, a monolith was erected at the center point of the battlefield proclaiming that place to be forever known as The Dormonts.
After the Demon Wars, the Sylvan and Atlanteans kept mostly to the Emerald Isle. Behind the scenes, the Atlanteans were monitoring the Human kingdoms. Unbeknownst to all but a few nobles, High Priests and Arch Druids, the Emperor’s Court in the City of Atlantis was extremely concerned with the volatile nature of Humanity. How the Atlanteans could influence peace and prosperity in all lands was often a subject for debate. Every year, the emperor gathered representatives from many lands around Plethwih, especially those at odds with one another, to encourage peace through trade and cooperation. These conferences usually ended with promises of good will that were short-lived or quickly forgotten. It was during one such conference that a young child of one of the Atlantean nobles made a simple observation commenting to her mother, “How do the Humans talk to each other with so many languages?” The emperor happened to overhear the girl’s remark, triggering an epiphany that would change the world.
For some time, Atlantean Emissaries were a common sight in the Kingdom of Kur-Gal, and particularly the city-state of Eridu. Something big was happening. Shortly after the Battle of the Dormonts, the Atlantean presence exploded in Eridu as day after day flying ships arrived shuttling Atlanteans back and forth from the Emerald Isle. It was soon apparent to anyone in Eridu that the Atlanteans were building an enormous tower utilizing a huge labor force of native folk calling themselves Sag-gig-ga working alongside scores of Atlantean Wizards whom they referred to as the Anunnaki.
The tower was completed in SY5172. It was an impressive structure constructed with white marble stone unknown in Kur-Gal. Wide at the base, the tower tapered as it rose skyward, each section separated by a terrace, with the spaces in between quilted with numerous broad balconies adorned with hanging gardens and lush foliage. Instead of a sharp point at its zenith, it featured a flat landing, upon which figures could be seen moving about from time to time and served as a dock for Atlantean flying ships. The most evident purpose of the tower was as a residence built exclusively for the Atlanteans and their guests. Perhaps it was intended as a long-term domicile from which to continue their building projects. Lately, the Priest-Ruler of Eridu had requested their assistance constructing a massive Temple-Pyramid he termed a Ziggurat. It would be used for rituals and ceremonies to honor the Gods and the first of its kind in Kur-Gal. The Ziggurat was completed before the end of the year. Like the Atlantean tower, it had a flat top, but rather than another dock for flying ships, there was a massive red crystal shaped like a four-sided pyramid slowly rotating in place.
From the day the red crystal was placed atop the Ziggurat, there was a low hum that arose from the Atlantean Tower reverberating through earth, air, ocean and all things on Plethwih until it could be heard by every ear capable of understanding language. As the hum subsided a miracle occurred wherein every language spoken could suddenly be understood by any who deigned to listen. The Atlanteans calculated that if all peoples on Plethwih could communicate with each other without misunderstandings, disambiguation, or misinterpretation, then trade would flourish, societies of all races and nationalities could connect more easily with each other offering a chance for peace in every land. The Watchers regarded this gift, this Tower of Tongues, as an endowment to humanity that would carry significance far into the future. All do to the innocent observation of a child.
As far back as SY4800, the Watchers were aware that the Atlanteans were discreetly building very unusual structures in cities throughout the world. Most often they were tall towers or multi-story edifices atop a hill or mountain and in every case matched the local architecture so not to appear incongruent to the casual eye. But stick out they did, as the common feature to all was a red-glowing orichalcum crystal that slowly rotated at the apex of each one. Such a sight might have been distressing to native folk unaccustomed to oddities perceived as supernatural, especially when the structures were built and occupied by an even stranger race of lean humanoids with blue-tinted skin and elongated skulls. Except that the Atlanteans were far too clever and spared no effort to gain the good-will of kings, chiefs, priests, and shamans to achieve acceptance by the resident culture. And where they could not, the Atlanteans avoided those societies altogether preferring to build in isolation rather than risk hostilities. This particular point could not have been demonstrated more tragically than in SY5175 when a small group of Atlantean explorers disappeared several hundred leagues south of the Huaxia Empire.
The loss of the Atlantean explorers revealed a jarring discovery to both the Atlanteans sent to locate their missing compatriots, and the Watchers whose curious gaze followed their progress. In an unexplored land of dense jungles and vast bug-infested swamps an unknown civilization rose in isolation at some point in the distant past. Centuries at a minimum if not millennia, as a network of hundreds of roads and canals crisscrossed a kingdom of sprawling cities with stone towers, rambling neighborhoods, swarming marketplaces, gabled palaces, and squat temples attached to massive pyramids draped with thick vines that towered above it all. Nearly all of it partially submerged in the brackish water of the swamps. Most startling, however, was not the strange architecture, nor the span of time that this civilization went unnoticed even by the Watchers, but the astonishing inhabitants of the swampy cities. They were a race uniquely evolved to thrive in that seemingly inhospitable place. Many cultures on Plethwih made vague references to creatures such as these in their mythology and legends. Ancient religious tablets stored within dusty backrooms of temples in Kur-gal called them Mus-lu; the Meluhha peoples named them Nagas; and the Huaxia believed in the Xian. All described a similar bi-pedal humanoid race with greenish scales for skin, clawed hands and feet, a long tail, and the head of lizard or snake. With the incredible discovery of their civilization, the Atlanteans would name them Reptilians and the Watchers aptly described them as a race of Lizard-Folk.
The Atlanteans approached the Reptilians as they approached all cultures they met for the first time – with cautious friendship. Thus, they arrived in a flying ship crewed by one hundred Atlantean Marines, and a handful of wizards and priests led by a trio of diplomats with a train of advisors. They landed in the spacious courtyard of a palatial structure believed to be the governing center of the city and immediately found themselves surrounded by hundreds of Reptilian warriors bearing tortoise shell armor and long serrated double-edged swords. A delegation of Reptilians displaying headdresses adorned with colorful plumes soon appeared, followed by six robed figures holding tall polls each adorned with the severed head of one of the missing Atlantean explorers.
Shaken and enraged, the Atlantean diplomats demanded an explanation and through the magic of the recent Tower of Tongues construct, the Reptilians understood that which they could not before. Equally enraged, the Reptilian High-Priest condemned the Atlanteans as heathen trespassers who dared desecrate the sanctum of their hallowed shrine. Confused by the accusation, the Atlanteans hesitated and turned their backs to the High Priest while they discussed their response amongst themselves. Infuriated by the perceived disrespect, the Reptilian High Priest released a low hiss and the hundreds in the courtyard swarmed the Atlantean Sky Ship. From afar, the Watchers witnessed the horrors of unrestrained slaughter alongside the flash and fury of arcane butchery by fire, force, and lightning that claimed lives a score at a time. Through luck or divine intervention, the burning Sky Ship lifted into the clouds leaving the courtyard littered with dead and the hatred of those left among the living. In only a few spare minutes the Atlanteans suffered the loss of more than half their number but gained a dozen Reptilian captives that would ultimately provide invaluable information about the Land of Mu, the various kingdoms therein, their Gods, and their people. Such knowledge would poove invaluable as only a few decades would pass before the Reptilians would venture out from their Shadowy Kingdoms and once again engender bloody conflict. However, as far as the Atlanteans were concerned, they showed little interest in further overtures of peace, nor would they ever set foot in the Land of Mu again. Even for vengeance.
The Watchers were under no such constraint, and they were determined to learn what they could from these odd amalgamations of something between monster and Human. There would be plenty of surprises along the way. The first of which was the discovery of another culture living quietly south of Mu on a forested peninsula. These diminutive folk were taller than the Gnomes from Kabouterhol north of Courth, their skin was dark if less so than the Imaziyen, otherwise they might have been mistaken for the Hauflin who live in Argyllshire between Lyonesse and Eriu. The Watchers named them Indo-Hauflin for their wild appearance and skittish behavior. They built compact huts in trees or vacant caverns and grew small gardens. From time to time, they would form hunting parties in search of small game or turtles and fish when near the coast. On the rare occasion when the Reptilians came out of the swamps to explore or hunt the southern woodlands, the Indo-Hauflin quietly melted into the environment unseen until the threat passed. There appeared to be no desire on the part of the Indo-Hauflin to seek trade or make war upon the Reptilians. For that matter, the Watchers were never quite sure if the Reptilians were even aware of the Indo-Hauflins existence and if the latter were true, the Watchers were of the opinion that it was sound testament to the small humanoids survival.
For nearly fourteen hundred years the demons were sealed within a pithos guarded by Metis - the Goddess of Wisdom worshiped in Hellas – formerly known as the Tuatha De Phalaeh. She had a daughter, Anesidora, by an unnamed human. The child displayed an entrancing beauty that compelled Metis’s Tuatha De lover Kronos and other Tuatha De ‘Gods’ to bestow favor and gifts upon the girl that conferred extraordinary abilities nearly equal to that of a pure Tuatha De. Since the Breaking, no Tuatha De could bear ‘pure-blooded’ children and instead chose to mate with humans producing a part Tuatha De, part Human hybrid with some small magical talent, without benefit of immortality. A distinction had to be made and thus the few remaining pure Tuatha De would be known as Tuatha De Blood, whereas their progeny simply Tuatha De. Anesidora was something in-between and from the perspective of humanity considered a Demi-God.
From the start, the Watchers were gravely concerned. Anesidora’s extraordinary gifts came with the extraordinary side-effect of magnifying certain human characteristics that as she grew to adulthood became impossible to suppress. It was her rebellious nature and insatiable curiosity that drove Akakios, an elderly human TaHiera Fire-Bringer of Kronos, to believe he was in love with a Goddess. Through dreams and visions, Anesidora convinced Akakios that she was held prisoner in an ancient Temple of Metis at the summit of the Othrys Mountains. The old priest could not ignore his heart, nor her desperate plea. In SY5379 Akakios melted the magical seal on the pithos as only a Fire-Bringer of Kronos could do. He was convinced Anesidora was trapped inside. Instead, the shattered pithos liberated the essences of seven Greater Demon Lords and thirteen Chaos Demons released upon Plethwih, all for the trivial curiosity of a Demi-Goddess ignorant of the terrible dangers trapped inside.
One-hundred years passed before the Watchers learned about the first possession following the broken pithos. It was not surprising that so much time had passed considering that the demons were stripped of their corporeal bodies when forced into the pithos and thus emerged incorporeal thirteen-hundred years later in a much-weakened state. So, in SY5489, when a Demon Lord took possession of the formidable En of Eridu in Kur-Gal, those who were aware that the demons were among them again, braced for what they knew would come. Within a year the En was dispossessed, but the Demon Lord was unlikely destroyed and instead released from the body to find another. In that same year came word of a powerful wizard suddenly gone mad before he was killed in his tower somewhere in The Wilds, and then came stories about a crazed knight slain in a duel outside of Teamhrach in Eriu. Either or both could have been instances of possessions by a Chaos Demon. The common thread between them was what occurred after the death of a demon’s host: a smokey orb blacker than night rose from the corpse before swiftly speeding away. Anyone unlucky enough to gaze upon the vile orb reported sickness and terror far beyond anything they ever experienced in their lives. Both events included these specific details.
In SY5491, the elegantly beautiful city of Ys was brutally swamped by an unnatural storm driven by nefarious magic linked to their tragic princess, Ahes. Although her body was never found, many expressed that her mannerisms took on an extreme nature in the months prior to the deluge. A year later there were rumors of a great battle in the Valley of Leprechauns that pitted the legendary brothers Myrllin and Wodanaz against the healer-turned-witch Aja, and on the Isle of Gades the ‘Child of Gold’ Alseid, daughter of Queen Lysithea and her consort Senjit, captured a Chaos Demon in a magical bubble of the child’s making. SY5490 turned out to be a busy year for the demons. By the end of the Summer, Count Djago of Cambria sparked another Civil War in Lyonesse that ended in a second battle on The Dormonts. Myrllin and Wodanaz assisted the King of the Dvergr to dispatch a mythological creature known as the Three-Faced Man, after which they pursued a Pheonix that rose from the hot magma of the volcano on Tirnan Yog. Another tale told of the Gold Dragon, Senjit, who barely survived a battle with the Ancient Black Dragon Belthagore; and yet another described how the Cyclops Giant Kumida was killed in battle on Etna by the first Druid of the Imaziyen tribes. All presumed to be demons. Plethwih was once again in chaos. This time, the Tuatha De wouldn’t be leading armies to defeat the demons. Rather, the responsibility would rest upon the heroic effort of a few individuals and their peers. And there was no pithos to which the demons could be imprisoned. By happenstance or fate, the Wizard Myrllin chanced upon a discovery that promised to end the threat of demons for all time – the Ourea. The massive volcano that dominated the Atlan Mountain Range on the Emerald Isle was also a one-way portal into the Infernal Planes. And once Myrllin learned the secret of trapping the demons in small bubbles from Senjit’s daughter Alseid, he simply let fall their captured essence into the Ourea, sending them back to the home they hayed, with no fear of their return. Or so it was thought.
When the pithos was broken emancipating the demons, the magical seal between Plethwih and the Infernal Planes began to weaken. The signs were clear to all as the fracturing of the Glass Sea placed over the rift by the Tuatha De Blood was fraying like a withered bandage over a festering wound. A permanent solution was required to heal Plethwih and close the rift for good. To this end, legendary figures of Plethwih, and those who would become legends gathered to pursue the Prophesy of Crown and Blood through knowledge and quests with the aim of combing the Tuatha De’s ‘Radiant Crown’ and the blood of the ‘King that Never Was’ with a mysterious ‘Vessel’ as their only hope to save Plethwih and all life that depended upon her embrace.
Salvation from the demons would only be a temporary reprieve from catastrophe. Only nine were aware of this truth, for Myrllin had awakened from his long sleep in SY5485 to speak his vision to this Assembly of Nine of which he was included. Formed in the dawning years of the City of Atlantis, the Assembly of Nine included nine of the most powerful, wizened, and influential persons on Plethwih to include: the Emperor of Atlantis, Dagda-Dana Laghfrin, the Sylvan High-King, the Dvergr Mountain King, a Human Arch-Druid, Wodanaz and Myrllin as permanent members, plus two Humans thought best to represent humanity as a whole. At the time these were the Yellow Thearch from Huaxia and the King of Lyonesse. Not all nine were present at this urgent meeting, but all nine would know every detail in short order.
Myrllin spoke of an unavoidable doom certain to occur in SY7500. An unstoppable cataclysmic event that would shake Plethwih to its foundations, obliterate a continent, alter climates, and bring life in all lands to the brink of extinction. It was a fate set into motion by nothing more than unkind chance, without mal intent or design, millions of years before Plethwih existed. Myrllin’s Vision predicted the cataclysm in the form of a fiery rock, two-fold larger than the greatest city, that would crash down through the heavens and impact the Ourea sparking terrible eruptions along the Spine of Atlan to sunder and sink the Emerald Isle and the Great City below the waves forever. Smaller impacts would follow, raining serpents of fire that dotted the planet like stars on the belt of the Great Hunter in the sky. Massive waves in every sea would break upon the shores deluging the land for hundreds of leagues, washing away entire civilizations as if they never existed, and submerging forever the subcontinent of Mu. Then darkness would cover Plethwih. The forests would die, and so too the animals. For a time, the north would become colder and the south warmer. And when the skies shown blue and clear once more, nothing would be the same. Absent would be the Sylvan, Atlantean, Dvergr, Hauflin, Kabouter, Tuatha De Blood and all manner of creatures of fin, fur, and flight. Only Man and natural beasts would survive, thrust back to the earliest days of humanity as if by divine reset. Myrllin called it the “End of the Enlightened Times,” but the Watchers knew better. With more clarity than any prophecy, dream, or vision could render, the Watchers saw a new Age looming in the future. An Age when humanity would rise and stumble, and rise again to dominate life and land. Knowing they would never live to see it; the Watchers designated the last Age on Plethwih as ‘The Age of Man.’
The darkest age of the Sylvan Chronicles are known by only a few. This lone volume, painstakingly recorded on platinum plates bound by a cover of petrified wood obtained from an ancient oak, is kept apart from the original volumes detailing the Ages of the Golden Aspen. The source of this dark chronicle, hitherto known as the Age of Demons: Prophesy, is a controversial figure of ancient times. An unnamed Sylvan Watcher, devoted of Niamh, in divine conference was granted the gift of prophesy. It was controversial in that the prophetic prescience, visions, and exultations thus expressed were delivered via a diatribe of ravings in the previously unknown Werdom Enoch, ‘the language of Angels and Demons,’ considered at the time jabbering madness. It was only due to the foresight of the Mad Watcher’s favorite scribe, whom he slaughtered soon after his last utterances, that a record of his wild gibbering exist at all.
Separately in the scribe’s personal journal, he described the Watcher’s slow descent into insanity with each revelation, often accompanied by spasms of emotional extremes and eventual violent bloodshed. Centuries later, when came to light enough of the dialect of the Werdom Enoch to translate the scribe’s blood-stained journal did the full measure of the prophesy reveal itself. The pages read with remarkable similarity to the form and cadence of a chronicle, and under first observation appeared thus, more so than a presage of future events. Until the final entry.
At the last, an unusual alteration occurred in the style of the writing that clearly projected a disturbing episode that would occur in an unspecified time and indeterminate Age. It was not until The Breaking, brought about by the Tuatha De Blood civil war, that such a time was revealed. So, it was decided by a conclave of the Elders among the Watchers that the Age of Demons: Prophesy, as it was known from that time forward, would be kept separate from the vault wherein the original Chronicles of Ages were safely stored for study and duplication. The few who were aware of the Prophesy were forbade to speak of it, no copies would be allowed extant, nor would any citation or reference allude to validate the works as fact. For all intents and purposes, the Prophesy of Demons was nothing more than idle fantasy.
Thus was written:
From a time primeval. Thousands of years before the dawn of the Age of Man, darkness reigned unchallenged, unprovoked. The land churned like molasses superheated and boiling under roiling winds more fire than air struggling through thick ash and haze of a newly formed sky, yet impatient to shape a fateful dome for life and light.
Life and light.
Life, sudden and uncontrived, took passage within rocks that plummeted through the searing atmosphere like so many thousands raining from an ever-diminishing celestial orbit. Of them, seven carried an essence of alien origin durable and enduring to such degree that they survived the impact into the primordial soup of an inhospitable world of dark elemental violence, where they sank deep below the molten waves.
What hope could there be for life under such extreme conditions? Incalculable heat and pressure stirred the pudding of what would one day be the highest mountains, hissing with rage, belching igneous eruptions in the throes of a world desperate to escape the cosmic womb. Yet, life inorganic and unknown to evolution or intelligent design somehow thrived. Seven drew strength from the nascent energy of turmoil and chaos over countless millennia until at long last, the earth began to cool, and iron-rich silicates formed a crust over the whole of it.
To the Seven that dwelt below, incubating in the stew of creation, the shift to terra firma was not immediately noticed. Slow to awareness, the danger of the land thickening around their molten lair was recognized too late. In a fury they sought to escape. So long were they trapped within the frozen nucleus of the comets that brought them to this world, weak and impotent, it had taken too long to regain a fraction of the strength they once boasted. Out of desperation, the Seven combined their powers in a final bid to break out. As one, they drew deeply from the energy generated by the immense pressures and heat at the very core of the planet. The power, so intoxicating to ones familiar with the allure, drew beyond their need, heedless of the practical restraint they once knew to wield it. They sought to be the Masters once more, lording over worlds, compelling lesser life forms to do their bidding, feeding their hunger for vile pleasures. These evil dreams induced the Seven to drink deep of the earth-energy to power their freedom until they could bear no more.
A terrible shudder shook the earth when the Seven released the energy they amassed. Unpracticed after epochs in time, the discharge was uncontrolled, hastened by unconstrained anticipation. Rather than breaking through the miles-deep crust that separated the Seven from their diabolical desires, a void of the smallest size came into existence for the smallest amount of time drawing the Seven into a new spatial dimension - a universe of their own making. Yet no less a prison for the immortal Seven. Arcane scholars and priests would eventually name this terrible dimension the Infernal Planes.
In time, the spark of a solar orb grew bright and illumed the world the Seven left behind. New life bloomed unfettered by their corruptive presence. It was savage, organic life in its primordial pre-sentience that instigated an impossibly conceived ascent to intellectual liberation destined to become humanity. A bipedal race murderous and cruel by necessity, kind and decent by nature, evolved alongside other peoples to dominate this world, this earth, home, - Plethwih.
Unbeknownst to the Seven, unknown to anyone, a lingering thread connects Plethwih to the Infernal Planes for all time. It is a thread no power can manipulate from where it joins the Infernal Planes, but there is an undetected flaw where it links with Plethwih. A flaw that can only be exploited by the release of unconstrained power and happenstance. Such shall be the case many thousands of years from this time, when a cataclysmic event shall tear a rift between the two worlds and form a gateway from which the Seven and Thirteen of their lessers will finally bring about their nightmarish fantasies on the mortal inhabitants of Plethwih. Until such time, a time that shall not be named, the Infernal Planes remains the only home for the Seven and their ilk, to await unknowing for their time to shape the future.
