When I was young, my schooling as a noble youth included tedious readings called "histories." I cannot recall anything that was written (the matter of the disputes of my ancestors must have seemed of little consequence to me at the time) but I do recall the manner of writing: austere, anonymous, and asinine. Histories seemed to float without writer or reader; they pronounced the "facts" as if the past were a matter of simple observation, and as if everyone would see it the same way. Even as a child, histories struck me as pretentious. After thousands of years, I find it hard to be so sure about anything. So why in the name of Rajaat am I writing a history?
Since I am not a practiced historian, I cannot speak or write to a void. I will imagine a reader, so that I can proceed.
I picture you as a thief that has stolen into my tower, seeking treasure or knowledge. You are skilled; you have circumvented my templars, my guards, my wards, my illusions, my locks ... but you are dissapointed. The shelves are less full than you had hoped. Surely Oronis king of Kurn keeps more than these meager belongings! Your eyes light upon an open book, upon a desk, inside a bare and empty room without windows. You step into the room, curious to see what spells I might be painting into my book.
The door closes behind you, and you turn to see me between you and the closed door. The knowledge you have come to steal, I will force upon you. Sit down, thief, and listen.
There was a time called the Blue Age, when halfings were scattered on mountaintops throughout the world, since most of the world was covered in water. The area around the halfling city of Tyryagi contained many peaks, and somehow became a center of culture. No surviving documents explain how this center of culture came to dominate all halflings cultures around the globe; the halfling histories begin suspiciously at "Year one" of the "First World Age". This is the same calendar has been preserved through time, although we now speak of "King's Ages". In ages of my careful searching of ancient halfling ruins, I have only encountered one halfling enscription that suggested that there may once have been an earlier calendar: a reference to Year Ninteen of the "New World Age". What was the "Old" World like? I have no grounds for speculation other than the strong conviction that there was an old world age, and that its story has been eliminated from the world.
The greatest of the life-shaping experiments were carried out in Tyryagi, and the language of Tyrian halflings came to dominate the others, even though halflings filled the land above water and even had expanded cities into the depths of the earth and sea. This expansion into different areas became the source of the only recorded conflict between the halflings: "The First of Wars."
A philosophical argument erupted between the rebellious group of "nature- benders," who altered themselves and other halfings (with and without consent), and the dominant "nature-masters," who created insentient life-shaped creatures and objects to serve halflings, but felt that alteration of the perfect halfling form was an abomination. This "First of Wars" led to the first proliferation of life-shaped weapons.
The overconfident Masters were shocked to find themselves threatened by a force of horrific Rhul-Takh, reshaped halflings turned into hideous monsters.In order to win the war, and put an end to the abominations, the Masters began the construction of the their master work, the Pristine Tower. A living device originally intended to transform Rhul-Takh back into halflings, the "Pristine" tower got its name from its makers' desire to rid Athas of the creatures and practices that sullied it. The Nature-Masters chose the place for the Pristine Tower at the equator of the world, in order to best utilize the power of the sun. The axes have since shifted; the Pristine Tower is now considerably above the equator.
The construction was carried out underwater, since at that time the ground was below thousands of feet of ocean. Because the tides wax and wane, and sometimes the steeple of crystals would have to stretch beyond clouds to reach the sun, the Pristine Tower was made of living alloy of platinum, steel, and quicksilver. The alloy left it impervious to corrosion, strong, and as flexible as an amoeba.
The research and construction took ages, and all the while, the nature masters were losing the war. Island after island fell to the terror of the benders, and were forced to add their strength to the Bender forces. In desperation, Masters began torturing captured Benders for the secrets of the Rhul-Takh, but the high command Masters never allowed their side to use these horrid secrets. Another, seemingly less horrid option was available: the brown tide.
Originally designed to wipe out the Rhul-Takh abominations and the life-shaped warships of the Benders, the brown tide infected the whole ocean, including the life-shaped underground city-shells.
The leaders of the Masters refused to acknowledge their mistake in releasing the brown tide, and decided that a scapegoat was required.They blamed the brown tide on the Benders. As punishment for their crimes, both real and imagined, the master leaders of the Benders were transformed into horrid insects about the size of halflings, and exiled to the barren lands far West of the Jagged Cliffs.
I believe that these transformed leaders of the nature benders are the same creatures that the Tohr-Kreen of the Savannah plains refer to as the "zic-chil". They wandered the mud plains that gradually greened and became lush Savannah, and eventually encountered the ancestors of the kreen, whom they began to cruelly dominate the zic chil would rather say that they "civilized and improved" the kreen. The Zic-Chil "improvements" also expanded the size and strength of the kreen, who previously had been smaller than halflings. But the expanded kreen became vulnerable to the then-damp savannah, and to the frustration of their Zic-Chil overlords, never could expand beyond a the drier high ground near the mountains on the western edge of the Savannah. of the Pristine Continent. Limited in area, the kreen were also confined in population.
The nature-masters also transformed lesser previous nature-benders (who insisted that their masters had not released the Brown tide) into reptile and avian creatures officially to punish them, but actually to silence them. The surviving Rhul-Takh were not deemed worthy of being turned back into halflings; every halfling that had been life-shaped in any way was turned into something similar to halflings, but too large to live among them or complete for halfling living space. Let them live in the new plains and mud-flats that have emerged from the desiccated sea-which was now too salty to drink. Their leaders created it. Let them live in it.
To the surprise of the Masters, many halfings came and demanded transformation with their families. The reasons varied: various-crowding of caves, disgust with the Master-rulers or with the whole species, longing for the company of a transformed loved one . . . Some of the best and brightest, and certainly the most adaptable of halflings took the transformation, and called it THE REBIRTH. They made their demands too quickly for the nature masters to comprehend what was happening. Before the Nature masters could count the cultural loss, all the surviving halflings that posessed mastery of the sea had been transformed into what became known as the elven race. Halfings culture was not only decimated it was broken apart and isolated.
As halfling after halfling demanded the transformation, the anger of the Nature Masters grew. They who had fought to protect the sanctity of the perfect halfling form, were required by the crowd to transform one halfling after another. They stalled. The crowd grew, and waited sullenly. They refused to transform more halflings. The crowd began to remind them of their crimes. If the halfling form was perfect, then why had the nature masters transformed others? The transformations continued -- but the Masters cruelly punished the ringleaders by turning them, their spouses, and their families into vastly different races: Human, Orc, Pterran, Dwarf, Elf ... wives and husbands looked at each other, and wept in horror at what they saw.
When the crowds saw this last betrayal by the nature-masters, they seized the tower by force, cast out the nature-masters, and persuaded some of the Nature-Masters' conscience-struck apprentices to continue the transformations. The families that Nature Masters had tried to break, stayed together, and vowed to remain as one family and one tribe. This group comprised of five races came to be known by the name of their vow: REMAN, meaning to "Remain". Indeed, the Reman kept this vow for dozens of ages, and, as you will see, left their own mark on history.
The apprentices knew that their Masters would seek revenge against them, and against the rebirth races, so they carefully prepared a select group of people for a special transformation, into beings that would shepherd and protect the new races. The transformation was so intricate and difficult that it could only be applied to babies. The apprentices completed the preparations for this special transformation in the halfling month of Pyreas, so the transformed children were called Pyreen.
The Pyreen were imbued with powers over the elements, and natural sympathies towards all halflings and rebirth races. They were given the ability to change their appearance between the rebirth races, and indeed, had no unique appearance of their own. They were made immortal, but in the process lost the ability to beget. The apprentices chose the pyreen candidates from the many orphans from the First of Wars, and entrusted the pyreen children to Reman families.
The new races spread through the Pristine continent, and each race found its niche
or disappeared within generations. Some, like the Wemic, remained united
race-tribes, while others separated into extended families that became known as
"Nations". One Human nation, Reman, mastered the waves, and established colonies
on other continents, some of which had no mountains and therefore no halflings. The
Pterran race was the first to master the Way, and established communication with the
seafaring human nation. The Remans and the Pterrans learned that the different races often
considered different spaces livable, different resources necessary, and that each race and
culture had goods to exchange. Trade was born.
To improve their trading profits, the Remans found it necessary to settle territorial
wars, and offered new land in other continents to help settle these disputes. When all was
said and done, only four of the eight human nations remained on the Pristine Continent:
1. The reclusive Golts, who buried themselves in the great forest near Pristine Tower;
2. The battle-thirsty Tanysh, who spread across the plains of the whole continent, warring
with every non-human race they encountered;
3. The artistic Melai, who were conquered by the Tanysh, and paid tribute to them, but
maintained their own culture, language, and traditions;
4. The peaceful Geshur, who moved far north of the Pristine tower, and settled by a
landlocked sea.
Two of the human nations, and eventually an elven nation, a dwarven nation, and the
Orchish and Pterran Races banded together in a single nation with the Reman. Because of
the ferocity of the Tanysh, they settled on the smallest but most temperate of the other
continents. For ages they thrived and traded with the races and nations across the sea.
One of their most profitable ventures was transporting other races to the third (and only
other) livable continent, a narrow but long-stretching body that lays along the equator.
While the Tanysh never mastered the waves beyond a few clunking fishing ships rightfully
called "junks", they improved land-locked technologies to their limits. All
creatures of the plains feared their gleaming chariots, their spears of bronze and iron.
The Tanysh settled all over the plains, because their chariots made these easy to seize
and defend. Mountains and great forests intimidated them, and they hated the halflings
that lived above the Tanysh empire -but they never had occasion or motive to war against
the little ones above. They also hated and envied the elves' longevity, and created
legends of "magic" that would extend life. (Hence the Tanysh word
"magic" existed ages before it became a reality).
The Tanysh were not a solid, unified culture; they adopted customs and traditions from the
humans they conquered and even from the other races that they slew. They imitated the
ziggurats of the halflings, but whereas the halflings built to "join the earth and
sky", the Tanysh built to assert their dominion over the plains, and directed their
ambitions towards the eternities of the skies. Tanysh dialects diverged as the empire
grew, and they split and warred to re-conquer each other a dozen times in every age. Most
of the time, the empirical seat of power was to the north, the isle Tanys in a lake near
what is now called Draj.
After a few ages, Reman expatriates returned to threaten the growing Tanysh culture. The
Remans had traded with the Pristine Continent for dozens of ages; but isolated expatriate
groups now came to settle, crowded out of the flourishing second continent. They
considered the Pristine Continent the "land of their first inheritance." They
did not come to conquer, but to build in unsettled areas, and build they did.
First the islands were settled. Waverly. Ebe. Malthas.
Then a few unsettled coast areas were settled, first as trading forts, then as
city-states: Giustenal, on the edge of the Goltish forest. Balic, a then-arid penisula.
Eldaarich, a rocky island near the elven nation of the northern forests. Other city-states
were not placed as strategically, or defensively, and were wiped out.
After the Reman-esque (their languages changed over time, and they were independent from
the Reman Nation) city-states were successful, more Reman expatriates moved inland to
areas not thought to be threatened by the Tanysh. One of the few successful first inland
Reman cities was Tyr.
Reman settlements flourished, if they were not destroyed immediately; the secret of their
success was the multi-racial specialty and cooperation that they had developed on the
Reman continent. Pterran druids moved the arsenic-contaminating streams that had wiped or
scared off the earlier halfling inhabitants of Tyr, and established peace and trade with
the halflings in the mountains and forest to the west. Dwarven architects made Tyr a
wonder above and beneath ground; elves scouted out the foothills and made the way
impassable to Tanysh invaders, Orcs tilled and brought abundance to the soil, and humans
raised herds. This was the strength of the Reman culture; each race found its niche; none
were subjugated, but shared one language and purpose.
While the Reman expatriates came as traders and settlers, they conquered nonetheless.
Their culture and way of life was enticing; under Reman influence, Melai cities threw off
their Tanysh overlords, and four of these cities, Raam, Yaramuke, Nibenay, and Kalidnay
held their liberty. Even some Tanysh cities such as Celik became swayed by the Reman
influence, and took on Reman traits such as multi-racial populations. Many other non-human
races flocked to the Reman cities for protection: Gnomes, wemic, etc. (But many of the
non-human races, such as goblins, had already emigrated to the equatorial continent, with
assistance of the Reman nation.)
The Remans rapidly settled all along the eastern coast and the great gulf, dividing the
Tanysh tribes in two groups, the northeastern ones, the properly "Tanys", with
the stronger cultural roots, and the southwestern Tanys,
or "Zethi", gathered around the ancient city of Zethir (far south of Celik).
Tanys and Zethi fought the Tyrians for a long time, but the Tyrians although not
unified were strong enough to withstand both groups of attackers. The Tanys were
the first in gathering, making a solid nation whose gleaming charriots still terrified its
enemies. The Zethi were not as succesful although a big group of them settled at
the shore of the pink river, Zethi was not as big as the Tanys nation, or as powerful, and
a lot of nomadic remained broken off from the Zethi nation, scattered throughout the
southern region, trading with the elves, the dwarves, the gnomes and the other races of
the south.
"And then there was Rajaat."
[It was the Pristine Tower that disfigured a baby pyreen's body, and later, his adult
mind, gradually eroding his personality away in self-hatred until he became Rajaat, which
in the nature bender language meant, Wiped Clean. The spirit of that tormented pyreen
passed long ago into the grey, while the spirit of the Pristine Tower raged across Athas
in the twisted Pyreen's body, seeking to wipe Athas clean of everyone except for the
Tower's original creators. Most of the PT's power and all of its consciousness passed with
its spirit into the hollow this is why Rajaat could not get out by himself, but was
quite powerful once he was out. The whole labor of the inhabitants of the Pristine Tower
is to bring back the spirit of their most powerful creation. Only the Makers, the most
powerful and ancient of the shadow-halfings know the secret of Rajaat's true connection to
the tower-and these may be said to be Rajaat's masters, although personally they are weak
in every way but knowledge and cunning.
Rajaat, the soul of the PT, is the sources of the changes in Athas that it most despises.
The Brown Tide. The changing of the sun. New races. The changing of the sun (again) The
Desiccation. The impoverishment and fragmentation of the surviving halfings. The dominance
of the human race. The Changing of the sun (yet again!) Perhaps the terrified gods fled in
fear, leaving the grey to hopefully, eventually finish Rajaat off. Perhaps the pyreen are
the ones who wait to tell the old gods it is done; Rajaat is dead; you can spare
this poor planet. Meanwhile, everything Rajaat does to undo its last blunder, makes things
worse, its self-hatred more intense.]
Quite interesting. I once proposed a group of undead ABs called the "Crimson"
who were the results in Rajaat's third attempt at making an AB. First he tried the Black,
and got the Shadow Giants. Shadow Giants were unsatisfactory because they lacked the
destructive power for the sort oftask he envisioned. Second, Rajaat began work on
preserving magic. He managed to create somesort of proto-avangion, but only one -- no
other halflings were able tomake the transformation, and the one that did rebelled against
hispurposes and escaped. So Rajaat turned to other sources of power, even though he found
quicklythat halflings would not be able to weild these powers. Rajaat turned to human
subjects, reasoning that humans seemed the most malleable of therebirth races, and dumb
enough to deceive.He tried Necromantic magic, and created the Crimson. The Crimson
wereunsatisfactory because they were bound to a specific place; Rajaat wantedhis champions
to roam the world.Defiling was his last resort; after all, Rajaat wanted to restore the
BlueAge. The rest is history.
The wanderer asserts that the "changing of the sun signalled the commencement of the
cleansing wars." Accurate but misleading: armies first have to be gathered, and this
takes time; the work of the cleansing wars began in whispers. The Champion Albeorn
confirmed the rumor that elves had begun to die of age. Humans, (particularly the nobles
of Tanys whose ambitions are expressed in their Ziggurat architecture) had long resented
the extreme longevity of the elves, and had long tried to pry the "secret" from
the elves; Albeorn told the Tanysh that the secret of elves' long life had been that they
had tapped the life of the sun, and that the elves had carelessly wounded the sun, and
destroyed the one source of immortality. Hatred mounted, and the skirmishes began, and
when the elves began to retaliate (which they did, devastatingly) the remains of Tanysh
empire joined Albeorn's cause. . . . .
But this is not the story of the cleansing wars. The work of the cleansing wars could only
be carried out by a unified culture--no Champion could motivate a mixed-culture to
xenocide, so each of the Champions drew a following from a specific culture, and took its
army from continent to continent, wiping out the races. This is why the other races never
managed to unite against the threat-it happened in waves. One decade Albeorn is assaulting
the elves in the Kurn area, Borys is killing dwarves in the equitorial continent, and
Gallard is killing the gnomes south of Celik, so why should the elves in the Celik get
involved? But the next decade Albeorn "retreats" to the south, and offers his
troops the chance to "settle" in some choice areas that happen to be inhabited
by elves, whom his troops dislike anyway . . . you get the idea. This is why the wars took
so long!
Drawing the curtain on the wars, let's examine the formation of the new cultures:
Albeorn abandoned his army, and took the appearance and name of a slain Balican general
that had opposed Albeorn's seige of Balic, rallied the routed Balican troops, and easily
destroyed his own former army (without visible use of magic). When the ruler of Balic was
assassinated a few weeks later, "Andropinis" killed the "assassins,"
mourned loudly, and ran for election. He was elected for life, which for some reason
lasted longer than the voters had anticipated.
Lalali-Puy similarly left her army to shift for itself, and appeared as a goddess to
rescue the Gulgs from the armies and hungry refugees. Uyness seized Raam with her army and
templars, but over the centuries, her shoddy rulership has provoked revolution after
revolution, and she has had to change her identity and start over in order to restore a
measure of peace. "Abalach-Re" is the eleventh of her identities, and the one
that has lasted the longest: the I-am-the-Grand-Vizier-representative
of-a-great-blue-four-armed-god scheme seems to be the least idiotic, and most successful
of her power schemes.
Both Keltus and Tectutitlay led armies who were Tanysh in distant origin, but had
separated from the Tanysh nation and (with the help of Reman sailors) migrated to the
equatorial continent. Keltis (his first name is lost in history, and his origin is
unknown) led the Kel Tan (who had lived more-or-less peacefully there until stirred up by
Keltis against the sea-going lizard-men) to settle in Kurn, the most defensible and intact
of the elvish cities sacked by Albeorn. Techtutitlay setled his army on an uninhabited
island in the middle of a pristine lake, and built his city from scratch. Gradually,
global dessication and poor city planning turned the lake into a mud flat.
Eldaarich was resettled by Daaskinor's army, also previously from the equatorial
continent. (Daaskinor would have preferred to islolate his city there, but the cleansing
wars left that continent too desolate and desiccated to support life.
Gallard returned his Melai army to their city of origin, married, named an imaginary
"son" after the city Nibenay, faked his own death, and made himself his own
heir. Gallard's "son" Nibenay was closer to the Melai people and was able to
govern them in relative peace. The change in identity made it easy for Gallard/Nibenay to
shake off his old military commanders that were running the city and establish a new order
of government.
Kalak appeared as if out of nowhere, seized power of Tyr, and held it with an iron fist.
Tyr still resembles Balic culturally-the vestiges of democracy somehow were ingrained in
the culture, but they have forgotten how to apply them, and Tyr's council has a tough road
ahead (think: Modern Eastern Europe).
A growing village named Urik asked Hamanu to be their king, in order to help them in a
skirmish with a neighbouring village named Eridu. Just as Nobles speak the city-language,
and the commoners speak "common," Nobles tend to try to preserve the ancient
archtectural styles, but trade dictates that the cheapest and best ideas proliferate.
Balican/Tyrian noble villa-constructions proliferate all over the tablelands, as does the
adobe construction...
Today, Equatorial continent makes the tablelands look like Eden. It is filled with
interesting ruins and undead. The SKs sometimes travel there alone to reminice or loot.
The former Reman continent has become a place of horrors. Unnatural volcanoes spew ash
into a nearly continual cloud; weekly rains provide clear skies for a few hours, but mix
with the ash to create a layer of cement. Permananent building and growth is almost
impossible. A few survivors hold onto what they call life. This continent recieved
Rajaat's personal attention, since it is here that inter-race solidarity had to be
destroyed, and memorably.
Rajaat stimulated volcanic activity in the land, and twisted a few gentle pterrans into a
horrific new creature: the firenewt, who were given an uncontrolable urge to kill
humanoids of all sorts. But over the ages the leaders of the firenewts have come to
recognize that if they were successful in killing all humanoids on the continent, that
they would lose their purpose for living. So they force their troops to perpetually
prolong their cat-and-mouse game.
Reman Orcs were long since wiped out, and Reman humans have interbred with elves to the
point where they are considered one race (and would take offense at being told they were
"half-" anything!) Only a handful of dwarves survive, and these the other Remans
treat as serfs, Of course if they got a chance the Remans would kidnap dwarves from the
main continent--they are very valuable diggers, which is very useful in a world where
everything gets buried in cement every few weeks, and only the fast-growing bamboo like
plants break through the surface of the cement.