Prologue
"Who am I?" you may ask yourself. Well, suffice to say I am a chronicler, a reciter of sagas and legends, a reservoir of what once was and what it has and shall become. I am eternal, undying, a force for neither good nor evil, though I may be used as such by those with an agenda of their own. In the simplest of terms, I am the singular quest for knowledge, a craving for the unknown and imagined. "What exactly does that make me?" you may ask: a reasonable question given the circumstances. Suffice to say, you are the audience to the story, the guests of honor in an epic, featuring characters from a world many know nothing about. But enough about me and my purpose: let me ask you a question, hmm?
What makes a hero, well... a hero? Is it his actions, the way he interacts with the people and places around him? Is it his mind, clever and quick or brave and loyal? Is it something hereditary perhaps, passed down through the generations, from fathers to sons and mothers to daughters... or is it something more, something that makes a selfless being- a being who would fight to the last breath, ready to die for those he loves and cares for? The real answer, of course, is yes: that is by all definitions a true hero. "But what of this story you have told us about?" you may ask again. "Is there a true hero in it?" Calm down: a little patience goes a long way, after all.
Yes, this is a story of one such hero: one who would signal the end of an era and the beginning of a new age. But before I can tell you about this great being, this wondrous example of the heroic spirit, I must start long before his time, before he or anyone in almost the world had been born. Indeed, it began long before many of the forests grew and rivers flowed and even some mountains touched the sky, when the hisory of the world took a turn for the worst. Let us take a journey, looking back at how it all began, far into a past shrouded with mystery and intrigue.
The Great Mushroom War changed things: what was once wholesome and good had, in many cases, become twisted and horrifying. Seas covered lands that were formerly wondrous metropolises, and glaciers covered much of what was once the great cultural centers of the human world. Wherever someone went, they were met with nightmarish hallucinations, beings of unheard-of power and horrific parodies of what was once considered normal and natural. Heroes of any shape or size were fleeting at best and even fewer in number. With the supposed near-extinction of the human race, many of the old tales of heroes and empires were forgotten. So much knowledge, the collective wisdom of the human race, had been so reduced that scholars, if they had survived the purges and disasters, would have called it the greatest of crimes against humanity: a loss our our identity. This can be true, save for the excluding extinction of course. All that was left was a crumbling, desolate world and unstoppable chaos everywhere, with little end in sight. After many years of darkness, a few beacons of light began to shine forth from the anarchy and chaos. Leaders of small groups became leaders of larger groups, drawing like-minded peers to their cause for a place to live in relative safety and peace. It fell to the remaining bands of survivors of the Great Mushroom War to rebuild and recreate some semblance of order, creating many kingdoms like the Candy, Fire and Ice Kingdoms.
Centuries would pass as many kingdoms, empires, religions and individual governments either prospered or fell into ruin: in the land now called Ooo, there was no real room for a third option, for the safest of places it was not. Times of peace would be interrupted by war, and then the wars would fade from memory and many would question why such a thing even happened. It was at a time of unnaturally long peace between all the kingdoms of the land that the anniversary of the Mushroom War reached its thousandth year: indeed, a whole millenia had passed since the end of humanity's reign over the world. Then, on that very day, a remarkable thing happened; on a lonely mountain a human infant was found by a dog couple out for a stroll. A human, not seen since time in immemorial: a time so long ago that many of the great-grandparents of Ooo's rulers had not even been born yet. This remarkable baby quickly grew up with the dog's sons, and they became brothers, not in blood, but in spirit, with a friendship forged out of trials and tribulations few could have endured at such a young age. Together they set out on their own, carving a name for themselves as adventurers into the records of time.
The saga of that human, simply called Finn the Human by all, began one fateful day, years after he became a young man and had become an adventurer. Little did he know he would be in for the experience of a lifetime: indeed, several lifetimes if philosophers were to be believed. For you see, you and I were not the only ones watching his progress from beyond the veil of his own reality. Other forces, some benevolent and others not-so-much, were very interested in him. Some were farther away than any Ooo-ian had ever been, and others were closer to him than he realized. He had potential in him, a greatness he had not yet realized: as it was, things would drastically change for him, for everyone he knew, and indeed for all of the land of Ooo and the mysterious lands far across the oceans.
And so, our story begins...