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DispatchAccountCulture

by The Lore Masters of The Grand Global Archive. . 624 reads.

Epic of Kirinna


Epic of Kirinna

To the ruler,

It is the understanding of the scribe that the histories of the known world, of the garden after the deluge, is one which is veiled in divine secrecy and ancient relics. Ours is a realm of faded magic and bronze, of divine order reborn in the days after the deluge—and often those secrets are as plain as day. One may walk through the burning sands of the desert and find the remnants of a golden age behind us, when gods walked among mortals; or even see within the cities of now the ruins of old. These things have survived the ages, and in the case of the divine doorways, connecting persons across all the known garden, we know very well that some divine energies do indeed persist through these relics. If not in the gateways, than the monuments left behind, which cast their own magics which bring awe to all. We have little understanding of these tools by the elder gods, having fathered the gods of now—but we must be thankful for what little we have left of those golden days before the deluge. I myself regard these things, even what is used, as part of the secrets of this land. That is the approach of the scribe; for what do we know more than the old stories? What do we have but those fleeting memories?

Of those distant days, there is very little we can say for certain. Across all the world, inscribed on the many surviving divine stelae etched into greater ruins and relics, the story of old has been maintained; and to many, it has been passed down and reinterpreted. Who upon this world doesn't know the creation epic of the garden of the gods? Who does not know how we came to tend Kirinna in place of the gods, and how those before were wiped by the deluge, giving way to we today? Who doesn't know the sacrifice of the first goddess, the sacrifice of her children, and the birth of our gods in the aftermath of the deluge? We are children of the flood, and from the bodies of the old gods, were the scraps of divinity used to craft us; as one might create ceramics from a lump of clay.

I write this now in the hope that, as a scribe of what was, what is, and what will be, that you might come to respect these realities, and respect the ancient heritage of Kirinna; as well as how it guides we the inheritors, and the gods upon high. With my words spoken, I shall communicate to you an epic so great, that even the records of our creation shall pale by comparison; not in glory, for who can be more glorious than the gods, but in size. I shall introduce you to the epic of Kirinna, beginning with those forgotten says of eternal golden glory, and into the times of now, where metal reigns and magic wanes. We are many countries, you see, when in the before times, there was but one. Each of us is born from one of the old gods, a part of their body having spawned us, and to the many countless gods of today, we owe allegiance to they who live. The world is a dangerous place. Show thanks to your kings for your safety. Show thanks to the gods for your survival.


Ancient Creation Epic

In those distant days, there began the mingling of the chaos and order, the two beings meshing and intertwining and forming. From the shapelessness came a creator, and from her engineering, and by her namesake, she set her sights to a place of her design. Taking her flesh, she tore herself, the essences of chaos and order, the primordial powers, and crafted a garden: Kirinna. Thus was Kirinna, the garden of the gods, formed from the nothingness. Within the darkness she could not see her garden, and so was a sun hung over the world, and by night, four moons made to decorate and dimly light the night sky. As the land was barren, the creator breathed life upon the skin of the garden, her blood becoming the seas by which all drank. From clay, she created the art of creating decorations for all the land, the beasts which might walk her garden. She worked and toiled until her masterpiece was created, teeming with movement, teeming with little parts of her which then created their own life by her gifts. But as the garden thrived, her power waned, and the need for caretakers came.

From her bones, the creator carved twelve children. These were the first gods, the children of the ancient goddess, the creator. She gave her children the powers of all being, and made each to take dominion over part of her garden, and to collaborate so that it may persist. These twelve children go by many names, but those first gods, no matter the name, were memorized by their power: the six gods of Storm, Sea, Daylight, Fire, Wisdom and Moonlight; and joining them were the six goddesses of Earth, Harvest, Passion, Beasts, Seasons and Death. To each were these broad domains given, and beneath them many responsibilities. Storm watered the land, Sea carried the waves, Daylight warmed Kirinna, Fire cleared the old for the new, Wisdom provided insight to all, Moonlight bid the nights safety, Earth bore the weight of all, Harvest cultivated what blossomed, Passion invigorated all, Beasts decorated the garden, Seasons brought change and Death whispered conclusion. No god or goddess was alone in their work, and all understood the needs to till the land and maintain the gardens of Kirinna. Satisfied, the first creator, the mother goddess, lay herself to rest within the garden itself, sinking into the heart of Kirinna, beneath earth and waves, to regain her sapped strength. Responsibility became that of the gods.

For a countless age did the gods rule in calm, the land rising and falling, the garden blossoming and wilting, the days passing in welcomed eternity with the work of each day concluded. But as the mother slept, the gods became more and more restless, more and more fatigued with their charge. At first they created their own children, lesser gods to care for lesser duties, but even this was far from enough, and never could they produce the offspring needed to populate the world in caretakers enough. It was thus at a meeting of the gods that Wisdom set forth a plan, that the clay which was used to create life might be employed again, and to adorn the world in the way beasts did, that beings made in the likeness of their wants be crafted, with mind and soul. These lesser beings could till the land, as numerous as the beasts they would become, and each would be given the favor of a god and their domain so that they may serve best, and their responsibility would belong to that god.

By the work of Wisdom, twelve races of being were made first to decorate the world, the first kingdoms of the golden age of the gods. From the twelve did cultures grow, and quickly did these simplest of children come to understand their purpose and being. Kirinna came to be decorated in thriving society, adherent to the wishes of the gods, and tirelessly capable of endless feats, just as Wisdom had promised. However, these creations were slaves to the worst of each god as well. With intelligence they created terrible tools made to till the flesh of their brothers, and water their fields in venomous bloods. They were driven by their most base instincts, and all too easy did contest and conflict break out between kingdoms; and in wishing to defend their creations, so too did gods take sides and wage war on one another. As conflict existed on earth, so too did it exist in heaven. Over time, this atmosphere created one of adversity, until eventually, one god became so bold to conspire that he should reign as one eternal. Thus did Daylight kidnap Passion, and by his ambitions to create ultimate order, would the garden be promised to die.


Those days of Deluge and New Beginnings

Daylight kidnapped Passion, for in her was not only the force of love, but the force of war. Torturing and raping his newly stolen sister-bride, Daylight supped her powers, made slave her strength to his own, and furthered his desires to create order over all. But as Passion was stolen, so did her domain suffer, and the gods soon turned their eyes toward finding her. When they did so, they found that Daylight had tormented and destroyed her, chained her to his luminous throne, now drenched in the very thing he sought to tame: his ambition to become a god of order having led him to become a god of chaos. By his power he waged war on the gods, creating from light a new race, a thirteenth, having abandoned his first people. The thirteenth were beings of devastation and sky, and where their blessed light touched, did corruption and destruction rule. Over all the world, great halos of light were born, and from them did the angels of chaos bleed forth, engulfing all things in cursed light. The gods, their children, and their created peoples became locked in war. Cities were destroyed in blinding flashes, armies shattered in great killing fields, earthen grounds raped and watered by flesh and blood, the sky darkened by an eternal storm, and all the while indifferent death paraded over the harvest of life.

As the war went on, the gods returned to the heavens, ready once more to face Daylight and free Passion. They fought, the gods led first and foremost by their chosen leader, the Storm god, who clouded all the world to shield it as best he could from the wrath of Day. In heaven, the blood of the creator's children came to adorn a throne room of luminous marble. As it came to pass, did Daylight drop his throne from the heavens, and crash it down upon Kirinna, growing too weak to suspend it in the sky any longer. As it fell and crashed, the world became engulfed in a earth-shattering calamity, the heart of Kirinna obliterated. Sea lost control of his waves, and over all things did waves rise from the shock, sweeping over land, washing away much of the world which had once been in a tumultuous golden era. However, amidst the graves of all their work, Storm and his followers looked down upon the broken body of Daylight, his brother dead, the chaos ended. Passion was set free, but life was fast leaving her.

Storm ordered for the world to be mended, for Passion to be saved, but the destruction was too total. Nothing could survive, nothing could blossom, and without the most drastic of action, all would fade. Should nothing be done, their mother, the creator, would die within the garden as well. There would be no future gardens, no life amidst the darkness, no death; all things without the mother would be oblivion. With this understanding, Storm turned to Wisdom, and once more did Wisdom provide answer: each of them were carved from the creator, and each of them held part of her power. Through themselves, ripping themselves apart and taking the bone of the creator, could they reseed and save the world. However, the price would be their lives, and the gods would be no more. Storm submitted himself to fate, the other gods accepting the necessity of their demise. As his last commands, Storm turned to the children of the gods, the lesser gods who were masters still over mortals, and commanded them to rule in their stead, for they would survive. He commanded them to save as many of the first twelve as they could, and to never cease their toil until the thirteenth was destroyed; to which Moonlight was ordered to imprison their powers of Daylight under the glow of the four moons. He commanded them to carry their burden, to make love and more gods, to create new peoples to toil upon the garden and preserve it. He commanded them to, with the greatest effort and to their best ability, protect the garden until the creator lives once more.

Thus did the twelve first gods die, the deluge receded, the land grew again, seeds spread across the land, and all was set back to order again. In the stead of the old gods came the new, so numerous were their ranks and so distant from one another, that in each did they carry the order of Storm, but set to work in their own way. The survivors, the mortals, were gathered and saved, and set on a course to begin again. The age of gold and the age of hellish light was over, now came a new era, a second era, the age of heroes.


Those days before Bronze and Iron (Second Era/Age of Heroes, 0-600 AH)

The new gods, many as they were, set about their work on much smaller scales. The domains of old spanned all of Kirinna, but now the gods had only power over much more limited areas, and while it was not impossible to rise to such a feat as their predecessors, such would take time, worshippers and great effort. Many gods came to guide a people through the reconstruction of their civilizations, the kingdoms and borders of old having been wiped out near totally, and the few survivors broken from old ties besides their lingering blessings from the first twelve. Across the world did tribes take form, and to each rising culture were gods watching over them, forming their own pantheons, creating their own stories, and thriving upon much smaller scales. In time, the stories of old often bled into the pantheons of new, and what was true and what was fable became deeply blurry. Nevertheless, the gods of the Age of Heroes knew well their origins, and no matter how powerful any one of them may become, understood the orders well. How their cultures would follow this quest was to any guess, and how the gods would interact as well was a mystery, both with their people and others.

From these tribes came cities and large settlements, and ever further did cities develop cultures which fanned outward. Notable to this era, and notable to the namesake by which it is named, is that all days after the deluge were decorated by heroes. The gods, either appointing men to power or mating with mortals as to create men of power, began to direct and guide either directly or indirectly the ways of heroes. However, for all their power, the gods found themselves bound to the conditions of a new age. Their powers could not be summoned to shape the world as aggressively as their past parents, and instead, much of their power was in the hands of directing nature and setting alight the embers of men. With great enough strength they could show direct aid to a mortal, but no god could smite another, or strike down another people with their power.

Patience was thus the tool of the age, as the gods directed their subjects to till the garden and prepare for embarking on a truly new venture. This age underwent transformation when cities gave birth to territorial bodies, and with these amassing cultures and populations, technology shaped progress. Thus the Age of Heroes was defined predominantly by the products of Bronze and Iron, and much of the age was known by it. But the pivotal point in this Age was not the advent of Bronze and Iron and its workings, but the point at which states that might be known as great kingdoms, came to prominence upon the labors of gods, heroes and industry.


Kingdoms of Bronze and Iron (Second Era/Age of Heroes, 600-Present AH)

The early years of the Age of Heroes was one of relative growth and peace. Internal conflicts rocked growing kingdoms, lands were seized as dreams of empire dominated the ever expanding cultures of the new age, and contact gradually began to formalize and solidify between these growing states. In the closing months of 601 AH, a divine celestial phenomena dominated the eastern skies of Kirinna with a great aurora, stretching from Aoyan to Ouruum evrani. The aurora was followed by cryptic warning from oracular sources, telling of the gods and the unknown. 602 saw the formalization of trade routes between the states of Tanaro and Tyrrhusca. In growing frequency, these unusual events began to increase in tandem with the growth of states. While 602 was uneventful, with states continuing to work toward the access of valued resources, it was 603 which saw more of the unnatural. In the lands of Xian, a vast stretch of forest was destroyed after an unknown and devastating event. In the mid-year months of 603, an object in the skies over Zorya was brought down by a storm, streaking over Vesta and eventually crashing on an island in Salacium. Yet while the colonists of Tyrrhusca set out to claim the island, where upon they found a great bronze construction fallen from the sky, tensions soared on the mainland.

In latter months of the year 603 AH, feeling threatened by the growing alliance between Tanaro and Volyezfold, the state of Khurnn declared war—thus catalyzing the Reltasic War of 603. This declaration was swiftly followed by the declaration of alliance between Tanaro and Tyrrhusca through the diplomatic betrothal Galtis Pios and Velthuria Hurace of Caletra, dragging Tyrrhusca into the war. While the armies of Volyezfold marched into Khurnn from the west, the armies of Khurnn marched into Tanaro from the east. Unexpectedly, on advancing just over the territorial boundaries of Tanaro, the armies of the two sides ran into one another and engaged at Midellus. While the Azhurrim armies of Khurnn were well equipped and numbered, the joint force of Tanaro and Tyrrhusca proved too numerous and too courageous for an easy victory—drawing the battle into a mutual withdrawal by both sides. The casualties in deaths were: 1,507 Tanarians, 1,597 Tyrrhuscans, 2,352 Khurnn, and 31 mercenary archers from Forez-nataruk. Ultimately, as the invading armies turned to withdraw to home, the defenders gave chase and followed their assailants back into the lands of Khurnn, preparing for another engagement. Wishing to avoid further conflict, a treaty was brokered between the two opposing forces, with Khurnn surrendering a handful of territories to Tanaro. In the west, the armies of Volyezfold, who had been successfully capturing and apply pressure on the western frontier, received word of the war's end, and returned home. Thus ended the war, after just under three months.

Unsteady times followed the turmoil of 603, and enter 604. In the far north, the powers of the old war continued to contest with one another, and new colonies began to spread across Asterion, as these competing warlords sought to feed their appetites for battle. Trade began to flourish between friends and enemies in all parts of the world, turing the affairs of states into increasingly intertwined paths which grew in dependence on cooperation. In the far south, after an age of isolation and the failure of diplomatic bonds in south-western Kirinna, an alliance was established between Isklanapura and Theaca—the first in the geographic area. Tensions in Asterion began to once more rise as the victors in the last war began to turn their eyes to the rest of Asterion, hungry for more spoils, and zealous to spread the wishes of their god. 604 saw the return of terror from the heavens, as across all the world, an aurora appeared and unleashed strange floating cages which descended into and near the lands of Volyezfold, Varadun, Surestan and The parathylgonial sea. When the attack was over, the cages returned to the sky, taking with them a scattering of things—among them being gods. In Varadun the cage was repelled by their local gods, leaving a pass scattered with bronze bodied creations and monsters, and a shattered cage. While most of the world looked away from the incident, drawn into the machinations of intraregional drama, once more did the oracles call out from Kummi, Naaska, Enkir and Tilak: the gods giving warning of what was to come.

The dawn of 605 was met with war, as an envious Tanaro beheld with anger the formation of a League between Khurnn and Forez-nataruk. Calling upon their allies, the Tanarians began a war of aggression against their northern rivals—but quickly began to buckle under the pressure. With their army forced to divide into smaller and smaller groups to meet constant Natari harassment, and communication breaking down between the Tanarians and their Tyrrhuscan allies, an army from Khurnn was successful in trapping a much smaller army from Tanaro, along with their king. While Galtis fought valiantly, the odds were ultimately against him, and the king and a large bulk of the Tanarian army perished. When news of this returned to Tanaro, the kingdom quickly shattered as infighting over control took priority over the war which their dead monarch had begun. Before Tyrrhuscan forces could so much as enter a decisive battle, Tanaro had fell into a factionalized scattering of warring nobles—the Tanarian kingdom no more. Likewise with the instability in Tanaro, the Tyrrhuscans found themselves quickly trapped in a ripple effect. Already loosely cohesive, the many cities of Tyrrhusca turned on one another while trying to fill a vacuum left behind by the destruction of their regional ally—the conflict leading to the fall of their political dominance in Asterion.

A period of great unsteadiness plagued the world for many years as Asterion fell into widespread system collapse, leaving Asimiya as the lone master, and the lands of Khurnn unchallenged. As years did roll by, fledgling cities would rise to momentary brilliance, only to be brought down by the tumult adversity—an effect which saw the civilizations of the north west and south west dwindle greatly in number, while those stable who remained continued to rise into untested superpowers. To the eastern realms, a delicate peace was maintained with the passage of years between a vibrant community of great states; each carefully eying the other for weakness. Nevertheless, in these cautious years, there was no rest to be had from the chaos in the heavens. In the year 606, a warning was delivered to the oracular kingdoms of Aoyan, Khurnn, Isklanapura and Azzagrat: warning of a definitive attack from an enemy to all life in heaven and upon earthen mortality. Haunting as the warning was, the attacks by bronze automata did not cease, and gradually an anxious knowledge began to grow as to the common features of this unknown menace.

Having long been left to their own devices, and having established themselves around the prominent ruins of antediluvian empires, the lands of Tavir became the unwitting victim of an attack from the great enemy. Descending upon the city of Aurillium, the population was slaughtered and scattered by an army of bronze automata which invaded from the sky. Within days, the armies of Tavir responded to the attack and entered upon the battlefield, and in 607 the bronze men were faced in pitched battle. With heaven casualties and great valor, the Tavirians were victorious, and recaptured Aurillium and the object of monstrous intent: the Ruined Gardens. There, beneath the eclipse, did the lord of the enemy reveal himself before retreating from the battle: a vile giant by the name of Dawn. Pledging to exact his revenge, and with his plans far from concluded, Dawn disappeared once more, and the prophecy of the oracles was completed by the hands of the ailur. Nevertheless, as 607 showed a great victory for the children of the old gods and the spawn of the new age, it gave way to dark dealings.

Dawn, though defeated at Aurillium, remained a prominent and unknown force wielding impossible powers. Using his automata, a message was dispatched to the lands of Venthakro, The parathylgonial sea and Asimiya. Thus it came to pass that in 608, the former two kingdoms accepted a crown of allegiance to the declared Dawn King, and his great plan and lofty promises; all the while the latter deepened itself with internal feuds as some lords pledged to Dawn, and others refused. From this eerie dealing came a period of long stillness. The raids continued, the movements of the unknown menace proceeded, and great states postured and traded with one another amidst a great game across the continent. The oracles returned with new prophecy in 609, summoning the hero of Asaiiora to claim a great antediluvian weapon to aid the forces of mortals against Dawn.

The operations of Dawn continued, and struggles between empires persisted. These attacks by the divine lord came to a head when in 611 AH, Dawn's army invaded the oracle of Boudiss, located in Varadun. The cry for help quickly made its way to the Doniens, who dispatched an expeditionary force to liberate the oracle from the unknown assailants. When the fighting was concluded, Dawn was revealed to the Doniens, making them aware of his threat and intentions, before he disappeared. From the attack, Varadun learned the location of a major attack being organized. In 612 AH, the attack came, alerting Khurnn as word quickly spread that an unknown enemy had taken hold of the Star Disk of Zenobium. Joining forces with the Doniens, the two armies faced Dawn in a pyrrhic victory; fending off the monstrous master from his aspirations. However, as a result of this battle, nearly 8,000 soldiers lay dead.

Defeated a second time, Dawn once more dispatched his armies to achieve lesser objectives to disrupt world stability. In 614 AH, a tremendous motile island of bronze and earth, escorted by submersible monsters, began moving from the Qingurian Ocean into the area of Inari. This advance culminated in the arrival of the motile isle in southern Inari, annihilating the major trading hub under the ownership of Aoyan. With their target destroyed, and trade becoming strained, the Isle of Dawn began moving northward, toward Azzagrat, with word spreading like wildfire of the impending danger.

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