Avatar's Kingdom
History of the Avatar's Kingdom Page 1
This is an out of character informational doccumentation of Sosarian history up to our current point in our shards histoy. As a player you should think of yourself knowing nothing except what starts with chapter three from people living with in the shard itself. With chapter four we begin our own history. Please note that I did not write this. It is written by someone else whos name I will reveal after our shard has finished chapter 4. I have made edits to suit our shards needs.
Chapter 1: Ancient History
The circumstances at the utmost beginning of the world are wholly unknown to us. It may be that great civilizations rose and died leaving no trace we can tell, or that Sosaria was simply barren for eons. Whichever be the case, it eventually came to pass that two intelligent species dwelled in Sosaria: the Juka and the Meer. Known only recently to us, the Juka are a war-like reptilian race with a highly developed code of honor, while the Meer are feline, strongly gifted in magic, and have values centered upon reverence of ancestors. For millennia, they played out a war in ancient landscapes, yet never shifting the balance of power between them. Humans and gargoyles also existed in this world, but they were not of this world, having entered through moongates from places unknown. They were mere savages, though, and played no important role in history.
Whether early or late in the reign of the Meer I cannot tell, but they did come into contact with creatures long known in Britannia: the wisps. The wisps are actually more properly called Xorinia, for it is in actuality but a single intelligence with many manifestations spanning countless worlds. In fact they seem not wholly convinced by the concept of individuality, and have been known to assume all the individuals contacting them from any given dimension as parts of a vast entity like themselves. There is much more to tell about wisps, but at this point what is important is that the wisps provided to a Meer named Zog the spell known as Armageddon. Zog subsequently employed this spell, eradicating all life from Sosaria. It was not the wisps’ intent to end all life - the spell was merely offered as an example of the extent of the wisps’ knowledge. "Misuse of the sample information is suspected," according to the wisps.
Only wisps know how many lonely eons passed until life rose anew. It is said that the first new life in Sosaria was a great Yew tree, though one can only imagine how this could be known. Humans once again encountered the moongates that brought them to Sosaria. Rising out of some dark and primitive past these humans began to form tribes, and then kingdoms. At this time there were also other races: elves, dwarves, and bobbits, but their numbers were small. The gargoyles also returned, but lived underground, largely unknown to humans. Eventually one kingdom rose in might above all the others and became an empire. This was the Esidin Empire. Esidin's power began by its will and martial prowess, but its greatest achievement and its sustainer was the Ancient Liturgy of Truth. This tradition was both a system of philosophy and of magical power that became the cornerstone of Esidin culture. The symbol of these beliefs was the ankh, and the Esidin built many shrines to Truth. The sum total of magical knowledge available today pales in comparison to what was known to the Esidin, but their knowledge was not perfect. Many magical creatures, including gazers, headless, reapers, corpers, and harpies, are believed to be unintended consequences of their ancient spells.
The continent of Ambrosia was at one time during the reign of the Esidin assaulted by meteorites and earthquakes to such an extent that it disappeared beneath rock and ocean. Yet, miraculously, some part of Ambrosia remained intact as a vast cavern beneath the earth. The Esidin took it upon themselves to craft magic to light the subterranean continent and to provide transportation to it, and so Ambrosia was repopulated. However, the means of transport were lost to the kingdoms of later centuries. In its long isolation, Ambrosia gave rise to Terathans and Ophidians. The secret of these races' origin is known only to the Ophidian matriarch and her successor, and the two races war incessantly upon one another on account of this secret.
The reasons are not known in full, but over time the empire fractured and collapsed from within. More than one city of the Esidin simply vanished all at once leaving no trace. Among these the city of Wind. In various parts of the world, new feudal kingdoms rose to fill the vacuum of the empire. The shrines and moongates that the Esidin built remained fixtures of the landscape, but few reflected on the fate of their builders. Soon the Esidin were barely a rumor; however, the Liturgy of Truth was not abandoned, but rather sustained by dedicated believers who founded the city of Moon. During this time, some dissented from the Liturgy of Truth, believing that true enlightenment does not consist only of abstract ideas, but also in concern for fellow beings. This group became the Brotherhood of the Rose, and they settled in Yew.
The time of the rising of the new kingdoms leaves the first definite maps of the physical geography of Sosaria. The continents were entirely unlike those existing today. The main continents were these: Akalabeth, the Land of the Feudal Lords, the Land of Danger and Despair, and the Continent of the Dark Unknown (and Ambrosia.) On Akalabeth were founded these cities: Akalabeth (which became Britain), Moon, Montor, Paws, Fawn, Tune, Grey, and Yew. The other kingdoms were Olympus in the Continent of the Dark Unknown, the White Dragon Kingdom in the Land of Danger and Despair, and the kingdoms of Randorin and Barataria in the Land of the Feudal Lords.
In the time of the new kingdoms, a particular phenomenon occurred, which was the appearance of unusual moongates from entirely different worlds. Through these moongates came a number of unique individuals. Through both their qualities of character and enduring lifespans (through differences in the passage of time between Sosaria and their homes) these people grew to positions of great prominence. They include, at the least, Lord British, Lord Blackthorn, their jesters Chuckles and Heckles, Iolo, Gwenno, Shamino, and Dupre. When Lord British arrived in Sosaria, he found himself in Akalabeth, ruled by King Wolfgang. Wolfgang's second son had an evil heart and was called Mondain. Mondain slew his father and stole the inheritance intended for Wolfgang's first son: the Sun Ruby. Through dark arts, Mondain transformed the Sun Ruby into the Gem of Immortality. Aided by the gem, Mondain gathered armies of creatures created or summoned by magic to plague Akalabeth. The monsters created by Mondain included the lizardmen and ratmen, while his apprentice Minax created orcs, trolls, ettins, and ogres. For driving Mondain and his hordes from Akalabeth, Lord British was hailed as the proper ruler of Akalabeth, which became known as Britain; however, his strength was not enough to destroy Mondain. As Mondain's understanding of the Gem grew, he became well nigh invincible. Seeing that hope was nearly lost, Lord British employed his silver serpent medallion to summon a new champion.
The hero who answered this call is known to us only as "The Stranger." The Stranger was a mighty warrior and a spellcaster, but even he could do no harm against the power of Mondain, since Mondain had reached full mastery of the Gem. Yet, the Stranger prevailed by traveling backwards in time, and putting an end to Mondain by shattering the Gem just as Mondain was realizing its power. As his life was bound with the Gem, Mondain died immediately upon its shattering.
At the death of Mondain, the future that had seen his rule disappeared, utterly, and a new future began its story. Yet, this story plays itself out not in the Stranger's Sosaria (of which we know but little) but inside each fragment of the shattered Gem of Immortality. In fact, in every facet of every shard there exists another Sosaria. Many are similar, but no two identical. Some are even so similar that the same individuals live in them and perform the same deeds.
Chapter 2: Ilshenar
Together, Minax and Mondain's most tremendous effort was to create the being, Exodus. Exodus was a bizarre fusion of daemon and machine, created to solidify Mondain's control of the world. Its being was woven inextricably in the fabric of time and Sosaria's physical material. When the Gem shattered, there should have been but one world in each shard: one facet, whose history until the shattering was entirely the same of the world that contained the Gem itself. Instead, Exodus was a bridge uniting time, the Gem, and the land of Sosaria. The shattering left each shard at the beginning of one of many diverging futures, but Exodus gave each shard many diverging pasts as well: the facets.
In each facet, Exodus was projected to a different point in time, and that is the time when history begins to diverge from that of the true world that contains the Gem. For the facet of Ilshenar, that point in time is in the distant past, during the reign of the Juka and Meer. Exodus continued there to attempt to fulfill its purpose, which was to control the world. The Juka took Exodus as a leader and under his guidance began a new offensive against the Meer, more devastating than anything ever conducted in the original timeline. The Meer in turn escalated their attacks to the point that the existence of both races was threatened. To escape destruction, Exodus again traveled through time, abandoning their home city of Mistas. The Meer put themselves in hibernation to follow, leaving their home of Lakeshire. Zog either was never born, or never had the chance to gain the Armageddon spell, and life continued.
Through the vast expanse of time the other facets stood barren, humans and gargoyles in Ilshenar multiplied yet remained primitive, until finally culture began to advance, still thousands of years ahead of the rise of the Esidin Empire on Felucca. The primitive humans and gargoyles eventually evolved civilization as we know it and peacefully traded and shared their knowledge. They came to understand magic and the power of the virtues more deeply than any people known to our history. They built the shrines that still stand in Ilshenar and the facet gates that stand by these shrines and learned from the buildings left by the Juka and the Meer. They where learning from what cultures they found in other facets, they pieced together the nature of the facets and their world.
What they discovered disturbed them, because they realized that their entire history should never have come to pass. They named themselves the Followers of Armageddon, as of all the facets they visited, only theirs escaped the casting of the spell. Only they were descended from the people who, in every other facet, were destroyed. The question that transfixed them was, since they found themselves in time before the event that created their world, could the shattering of the Gem still be in their future? What would be the consequences if it happened, or did not happen? They resolved to prevent the shattering, thus preventing their own history and uniting the shards; however, this proved impossible. The history of Ilshenar was so changed that Mondain never existed ("Mondain est an-ailem.") There was nothing they could try to prevent.
As the facets' histories passed the moment of the shattering in unison, great cataclysms assailed them all. The lands were all changed, and not one facet was left untouched. The facets most divergent from original history, however, were changed the most. Ilshenar was among these, and at once its people found themselves in a new world, having the geography as we see it today. Survival was the immediate concern, rather than contemplation of what had come to pass. The gargoyles sequestered themselves in a new home underground, and the humans built the city of Montor in the Northeast of the new world. At this time lived a woman, Ilshen, who rallied the peoples' will to survive in that difficult time, and this fact is honored in the present name of the facet. The unity of the humans in Montor was not to last, as the place was destroyed in a volcanic eruption. From the refugees of Montor several bands each settled in various places, now called Terort Skitas, Mirtas, Lakeshire, and Mistas.
Another group made a home in halls delved into the mountains near the Shrine of Honesty. These scholars were called the Zog Cabal, but have also been called the Followers of Armageddon, since the other inhabitants of Ilshenar have long ceased to think of themselves as such. They were scholars and turned their study away from the facets to the many planes of existence beyond Sosaria. These planes, they found, were not copied within the Gem, but were outside the Gem and in contact with all of them. One of these planes was the source of the wisps, and the scholars learned many things from them. The wisps offered any knowledge, quid pro quo for answers to the many questions of the wisps' own. One important thing the scholars learned was that Xorinia was not the sole inhabitant of its dimension. There were others, and one of these was the dark wisps. The scholars questioned the dark wisps for answers their lighter brethren could not answer, but what they learned and what they did with that knowledge are difficult to determine. It is clear though that it lead to the downfall of human civilization in Ilshenar.
A timeline cannot be constructed, but it seems that the dark wisps revealed a new interpretation of the significance
of Mondain's non-existence in Ilshenar. Whereas to the scholars of Terort Skitas, Mondain's failure to appear was the undoing of their plans, the Zog Cabal believed that Mondain's non-existence was necessary for maintaining some inscrutable "balance." Based on this, the scholars accepted the dark wisps' urging to summon... something. There is no surviving record of what they summoned, nor a better explanation of why. In the records available from Terort Skitas, this being is called only "bal-lem," meaning "evil one." Apparently, the other humans achieved a limited victory and imprisoned this being. Four leaders of the Zog Cabal, whose names were Martoo Saul, Junin Pince, Zendella Kxriss, and Miron Vehl, were banished to another facet as punishment for their involvement. However, for some unknown reason, the people of Terort Skitas and Mistas felt that there was still great evil at work in Ilshenar. They evacuated their people and sealed the facet gates, to protect the other facets from whatever evil lingered in Ilshenar..
After the evacuation, growing numbers of monsters encroached ever further on the few remaining civilized inhabitants, until after many years Gilforn the mage of Britannia opened the facet gates again. The Britannians tentatively explored Ilshenar and began piecing together the facts of what had recently transpired there. Yet, the situation became complicated by ghosts of Ilshenar's most distant past. Exodus and the Juka had ended their time travel to arrive in our present, and with them the Meer emerged from their hibernation to renew their war. The affairs of Ilshenar and Britannia are by this time fully intertwined, and so our tale will rejoin the war of the Juka and Meer after the histories of our own facets have been told.