Midnight Archipelago

Part One – The Beginning

In the beginning…

…there was only darkness.

Now, this darkness was not evil in any sense of the word…

This darkness was merely the absence of light…

The Creator, with his daughters, called into being everything: planets, air, and breathed life into clay. After this, the Creator rested…

In the darkness, magic ruled over all - life and death; animals, plants, and humans; earth, sea, fire, and sky. And over them all ruled the Witch Queen: goddess of the Long Night, matron of Winter, and eldest among the Creator's daughters. Humanity gladly worshipped her as a just goddess, giving her what offerings they could from the darkness and cold, even though she did not create them…

The Witch Queen had many younger sisters, chief among them the Harvest Goddess. It was she who lifted the first man and woman up from the dirt and gave them the imagination and means to shape the earth into a hospitable place. The Witch Queen, being pleased with her sister's creation, gave humanity the gift of magic. Thus it was her voice the humans first heard and understood, though the Harvest Goddess had been the first to call them…

Over time, though she respected her sister as Queen of the earth, the Harvest Goddess came to realize that much of humanity suffered in the darkness. And so, in secret, she created the first star, the Sun, and coaxed forth the first light. Thus dawned the first ever morning of the first ever Spring…

Thinking this new light as a gift from the Witch Queen, most of humanity rejoiced and began to reshape their settlements into what they deemed as beautiful, not with magic – the Queen's gift – but with tools – gifts of the Harvest Goddess. Many other humans, however, though smaller in number than the others, knew the light as not of their Mistress. They retreated from the rest of humanity, remaining ever-faithful to magic and the Queen, creating new lands away from light…

Pleased with her gift to the world, the Harvest Goddess eagerly went to her sister, the Queen, to present her with the gift of joyous praise that came from the world. The Witch Queen, who had ruled in the darkness for countless millennia, could not look at the light for fear it would hurt her. But, she did gaze upon humanity, prepared to accept their praise. For some reason, she felt herself grow weaker, not stronger. The Queen then turned on her sister, enraged to discover that humanity had begun to worship the Harvest Goddess instead as the giver of light…

Oblivious to her sister's anger and the source of her newfound power, the Harvest Goddess continued to assist humanity, even creating a race of helper-creatures – the Harvest Sprites – to further assist the farmers and ranchers of the world, by far her favorite and most faithful followers. The Harvest Goddess, powered by light, greenery, and praise, began to change shape: her hair changing to the color of vast, ripe fields, and her eyes shimmering like deep pools of enchanted water. The humans who worshipped her also began to change, no longer conformed to a single shape; they evolved and adopted appearances as countless as the grains of sand on the beaches of the world. And it is even said that once every lifetime, the Harvest Goddess herself descends to live among humanity and take a mate…

On her throne, the Witch Queen grew ever more jealous and resentful of her younger sister's power. Despite all this, what she considered complete betrayal, she still loved her faithful servants dearly. Unchanging in their ways, they changed little over the centuries of their self-imposed exile: all were pale of skin. Most had hair as pale as the moon or dark as a cloud-filled night sky. And all had eyes of crimson. Considering they continued to worship their Queen with magic, the Witch Queen also changed very little, though her hair became as the color of rich amethyst and her eyes like faerie fire. As her servants continued to struggle in their new home, she too, taking an idea from her sister, created the Imps – not-unpleasant, though trickster creatures – to learn the ways of her sister's people and use them to aid her own. Once a century, at the apex of her power in Winter, the Witch Queen descends to live among her people and find a suitable mate. Only once has she given birth: to a baby girl, who on her eighteenth birthday ran away from home and came to live among the people of light…

Learning of this, an even greater betrayal, the Witch Queen descended from her throne in a terrible rage and lay waste to the Sunshine Islands in her search for the Witch Princess. The Harvest Goddess knew she had to protect her people, even if one of them was the daughter of her beloved sister. Gathering all her power on the day of the Harvest Festival, she cast her sister down from her realm and planted a seed over the place where the Witch Princess had risen from the darkness. On that day, the Harvest Goddess wept, bringing the first true rains to the earth…

Centuries have come and gone since that terrible day, and still the Harvest Goddess weeps for her lost sister. The Sunshine Islands have risen from their graves under the ocean and are inhabited once more. Over time, the Witch Queen has even come to see the error of her ways and desperately wishes to live in harmony with her sister once more, but in her greatly-weakened state, she is unable to do anything more than call a short Winter to the earth once per year to communicate with the Harvest Goddess…

The Queen's people still live on their islands in the darkness, which sit on an underground sea in a great cave, illuminated by purple faerie fire and luminous fungi. This is their story, the story of the Midnight Archipelago…