Prologue: In the Beginning

"Verily, if I shall embark on a journey to make dwelling for thee, I shall return anon, and gather thee unto my presence, that where I reside, thou may also dwell."

- The Book of Light vol. 3, Hakamat

"There are those who believe: "Life here, began out there." Far across the universe, with tribes of humans, who may be the forefathers of the Egyptians, the Toltecs, or the Mayans. Some believe there may be yet brothers to Man, who now fight to survive, somewhere beyond the heavens."

- Excerpt from unstandardized vidcopy category in the archives "Earth - 20 A.D. - 'Kaner - Fernseher - Fantastik"

"And Man in his many cultures has long sought to dilute the Source into the Worldly Words: The Absolute, Adonai, Logos, Ta'at, Othann many more adjectives representing universality and fullness, of which can only bring harm to harmony for no tongue but sorcery is touched with ethereal authority. For there is but one religion, and that is that of the Flame."

- The last words of Priest-Sophist Koltmar of Welsple before his execution under charge of schism, 2 M.E.

For all things within time, the fortunate are inscribed into the annals of history. History becomes legend. Legends become myths. And myths, forever how long, pass unto the dust of the earth. Thus, many that are common yet cryptic when scrutinized, of those are too numerous to count now. And yet, nothing is certain than the certainty of recidivism, and history is not free of this either. From before the dawn of Man, who was the first race, then blind, war waited for him, seeking the ultimate practitioner that would give it a reach never before seen. And then, blood would be shed for the first time, in anger apart from immediate instinct, the first fruit of imperfection. Then, Man multiplied and these things went with them and increased in kind, thus the olympian hosts did devise with brutal cunning, that faint tales told by tongue shall truly come in to the being of flesh and spirit alike, tracing the thoughtpaths of Man and ensuring no terror went unspoken for. Soon the races of Man, nursed long under the shadows, of eldritch and edifice alike, finally sallied forth to meet his foe under one standard. Man has tamed beasts. Man has dug the earth and reaped bounties above and below. Man braves the waves of the widest oceans. Man would weave sagas and art. And Man would be thrown from parapets and pulled from steedback and his forts sundered, to be devoured, with steel and fire in hand the tools that enable Man to conquer the Seen fell against the darkness of the Unseen Manifest. Soon Man became a speck and the Celestial Hosts have seen the path to conditioning Man and keeping within the station.

For this, revelations are freely dispensed with, and first came the prophets bringing words bringing gifts bringing mysteries bringing The Anointed, and the tides did swell and the eye of the storm is, for the first time in eternity, breached and the Horde-General was laid low beneath the heel of humanity. All by design in accordance to the wills of The God. Of those times there are no scripts, only faint echoes in heroic realms impenetrable even today where the very earth and wind whispers fables of ages long past and glories evaporated. And thus this would continue innumerably as mankind grew tighter into it's own frame, and in awakening from the open eyed slumber from the lull did find that other folks had arrived, that being the most fair who master the Unseen with finesse impossible, and the diggers in the deep whose craft have eclipsed the greatest works of man as though were things of sand. And piety did come heavily most of all upon man, who immediately sought pacts with the new kin, who are lesser in age yet have kept all and beyond. And this was the equilibrium until, in a cycle, an oscillation did shake the heavens. UsurperPerverseSacrosanctTreason were the words uttered though to rattle loose the firmament itself, while The God remained silent, and with naught a scent did depart. And one Great Host, whose name is now taken and put to the fires had fallen from the most high, a lot forever cast in favor of the Chthonic. Again, the hungry hordes fell upon the races, who awaited within might, their Anointed at the forefront. This time, it did not save them the least.

The Fallen looked upon the broken kingdoms and empires of man for they are most displaced and numerous, but found the hold of the peers in a vice grip, for these are the living children, even though the lesser, they will not be thoughtlessly cast into the abyss. But the Fallen is a devious and wicked thing, and set upon the Men who dwell within the Threshold, that anarcane ground which holds no more force than the minimal, where the strength of abominations are brought unto the cold reins of nature that The God imposed as absolute, and where common men and common steel could part hides once invincible and the speakers of mysteries suffer under deprivation, the great band of earth held like the girdle of the world-sphere, was rent asunder, for the Fallen is the holder of the worldly, where the Gods could no more act in their fullness than a man diving breathlessly into the deep. The world itself wept as the once thick walls that enforce the cycles disappeared from being, floating into the voided expanses.

In that interregnum, the Ground was healed into place, lesser than before, and mortal realms would be long unwarded against the depredations of monstrosities until they stood firmly under the watch of the Gods, who provide. And the fate of the lost, is to perish slowly in the airless and scalding void, until the rent ground comes to rest, around the ring of a heavenly body formed from thick air. Then being like a sun to the moving body, a gentle and deep porphyr casted across the marred land, giving meager nourishment gratefully received. This has stained Man thoroughly. But the Partial Ground departed deeper within its new helios, whereupon it came to rest in a warm place, and gave birth to an egg which would be kept around it. Soon the Ground settled into a sphere, and the races of man emerged from their hiding places to come upon the surface once more, unbound now by the pressing hordes their hegemon soon dominated the nascent world under the conditions which all virtues and follies are of and from man alone. Worldly wisdom would increase while mysteries slowly died and faded into the nothingness, now worthless knowledge held firmly by the shakers in the lands of man.

All this is not to last, as through the greatest curse of man, where the vastness beyond his sight would crush him in malice at his weakest, never did fail to be invoked at the slightest provocations. Doom and terror did come again upon Modern Man and in this occasion he is helpless against a faceless and formless foe, who descend from what is thought empty and silent, his eyes placed up against the edges of the Upper Air would be blinded, his greatest polises thumped as a furious smith punishing the anvil, the nurturing nature rippled against artifice and once again did man must act. In the oldest tales, refined to a point worthy of songs, soon to all be forgotten from a fleshy mind, did this point be the compass for the Great Journey that would soothe that hearts of races of the New Man, who went into flight, through guidance of fables and the closing and opening of the way, did a race voyage for millennia. And soon, did the cycle come to ceasing, for the newest contender saw within herself the lovely blessing, and wept freely, seeing oceans of blood, who saw to it that the world should bleed no more. And within her reign did the signs in the sky oscillate. A new star is born from the nothingness, bringing the old yet new…