Waydren/Books/The Primal Spire

Preface

I began tracking this trail with little hope of running my quarry to ground, or even what shape my quarry might take. An endless scree field of history lay in front of me. Too many details confusing too many senses. But "forward" remained the only option.

Little clues sprinkled throughout time and place soon emerged. Zemmunhu the Leviathan provided one. Roopardua the Dwarf, another. Anmuva the Kather several more. A secret pattern began to emerge. And like all hidden things, they are far easier to find when you know the shape of what you are looking for.

But rather than reveal the destination before discussing the journey, let us pause and reflect. Let us take stock of those who have helped along the way with their words, wisdom, or actions: Aaiyaah, Akeiro, Aislynn, Albuam, Allye, Anmuva, Asildu, Ayrell, Crobin, Dantia, Ezerak, Golameth, Hanryu, Illiya, Karthor, Kethrai, Kiiryn, Lexxa, Lupdels, Madigan, Malkien, Natarian, Navesi, Paglar, Paven, Rileos, Selame, Strithas, Tambellis, Valynn, and Xelten.

Thank you for the part you have played as we have walked this trail together.

First Steps - Dragon Magic

To appreciate the end of the trail you must understand the journey. And every journey, every Hunt, starts at the beginning. Your first steps direct your course. You cross the threshold from where you once were to another place entirely. So was it here.

On the 10th day in the month of Akroeg the Ram in the year 440, the Masters within the Ranger Guild began to teach a new spell. They revealed little at the time (and little since) aside that River in the Sky was a form of total-body shapeshifting as practiced by the Life Dragons.

Life Dragons. The very thing that Aaron Albuam wrote about in his Journey to the Forbidden West sixty-nine years prior to the draconic gift being given to Rangers. Albuam and his work were often criticized, the work being called "fiction" by many reputable scholars (or so I am told).

The first clue. The first track seen upon the trail. Perhaps Albuam's words were more trustworthy than most thought. Still too early to tell the shape of the print, though. Still too many details lost to time or intentionally hidden. Just a hint. Just a whisper. But a start.

One year and two months later, on the 6th day in the month of Lirisa the Archer in the year 441, the Masters of the Guild revealed additional draconic magic to Rangers. The spell, Embed the Cycle, taps into the natural world and embeds it within the Ranger's flesh. A fine coat of protective scales is formed, strengthening flesh against harm.

A second print. More dragon magic from seemingly nowhere. Both spells could have been ancient lore, long locked away by the Guild Leaders. But consider another possibility: Albuam claimed that the dragon he met offered to teach him. If the claim is true then the truth becomes simple.

Someone, something, somewhere, was teaching the Ranger Guild Leaders magic from dragons.

Trail Sightings - Anmuva

Switchbacks are a common sight for those who walk the wilds. Often they take you nearly as far back as the direction you came from. You are left wondering whether any progress is being made at all. As with a switchback, let us move back before we again move forward.

On the 34th day in the month of Moliko the Balance in the year 440, six months after River in the Sky began to be taught, our trail led to Anmuva the Kather.

For those who have not yet met him, his ways are not the ways of civilization. He is an apex predator. He does not think or reason as others do. His motivations are not those we are familiar with. He is unfamiliar and alien in his responses. Physically, he stands as tall as an Ogre (unheard of for his kind) but rarely walks fully erect. He most commonly wears an antlered mask. He has been known to appear in the form of a deer and a bird on more than one occasion.

Several times we have sighted and spoken to Anmuva. There is far more to tell than fits in the space of this tome. So we focus on the essentials to the trail we are traveling. We had just finished an initiation ceremony for the Grey Dragons when Anmuva sought us out. We discussed concepts of Balance and Instinct. He led those gathered in wisdom. But he also spoke of Magic. He made two comments that become the next two tracks upon our trail:

"Perhaps Roopardua was not wrong in bringing you the magic that we showed him at Sawstwar -- showing you the River in the Sky, and the Cycle."

"In the other, new life -- life that inspired a spell that Roopardua brought to the guild, from sources far to the west."

Here, we have discovered a pattern to the tracks. The shape of them. The gait of the creature leaving them. One leads to the next, to the next. More easily spotted now. Albuam’s claims that dragons could teach others are verified by Anmuva’s words. His account is increasingly verified. And if those statements are true, perhaps others as well?

The first set of switchbacks nears its end, though we see others further ahead. Let us consider other words from Albuam that point to the next turn in the trail.

"In the distant past something happened that disrupted their species. Many dragons died, for centuries or millennium they were focused strictly on survival, and when the dust settled they had been severed from their past."

Voices from the Deep - Zemmunhu

Our trail leads next to crystal clear water. Some say that “there are more secrets held within water’s depths than there are grains of sand upon the beach.” There is much wisdom in those words, for here is found the next tell for which we track.

The Leviathans are ancient creatures. We have known that for some time. But perhaps most do not understand just how ancient. Zemmunhu, one such creature, is described by the Merelew as “one of the younger leviathans.” Yet he witnessed the fall of Grazhir. The birth of islands. The drifting of continents. This is a creature whose lifespan is utterly foreign to our quick-burning candles.

Taken from Navesi Daerthon's account of her interaction with the titan: "I reeled with the weight of the ocean crushing all around me, and I remembered the birth of islands and the movement of the tectonic plates.  The leviathans have watched creatures arrive, adapt, and die, and danced in the waters before there were singing whales or clawing kraken to hunt, even bigger creatures to flee.  In ages past, the depths were set ablaze by shards of the fallen moon, and the leviathan remembers the great revisions, the murky gaps and broken pieces of sequence rearranged."

Two distinct long-lived races with a common thread of calamity. While the dragons simply described the event as “something,” the Leviathans mention “great revisions.” I respectfully differ with Navesi in her interpretation that Grazhir falling directly led to the revisions, that the two go hand-in-hand. Instead, those are two separate events. Both ancient beyond ancient. Grazhir fell. And at a later point, someone or something rewrote history. But who? And why?

Reflection

Much has been written thus far. On any journey, especially one ten years in the making, it is wise to stop and reflect. To trace the steps you have traveled thus far. To plan for the second leg of the journey. I will summarize the ground we’ve walked:

• Dragons are real. They, or their chosen messengers, have taught several pieces of dragon magic to the Rangers.
• Some, part, or all of Albuam's works are indeed fact and not fiction. They find validation in the words of the Kather Anmuva, and in the magic Rangers now wield.
• Dragonkind was disrupted in the deep and distant past. They lost much of their history in their fight for survival during this time.
• The Leviathans are even longer lived than dragons, and remember a pre-revision Elanthia.

A wise reader is questioning many things at this point on the journey. Where is this trail leading, when it began in a simple hunt for dragons? What quarry do we seek now? What part do Dragons, Kather, and Leviathans play in the larger Hunt? Who worked the “great revisions” in Elanthia’s ancient past, and why?

The impressions are larger now. Different. Deeper. There is a heaviness to that which we now hunt. The trail climbs sharply uphill from here. There is hardship ahead, and a storm brewing on the horizon.

Writing on the Walls - Origins

Into the Western Mountains, the home of the Kather. An in-depth examination of their society and origin myth began on the 3rd day in the month of Akroeg the Ram in the year 441, four months after our encounter with Anmuva. While there is much to admire about their kind, our next clue is found in their declaration of how all things began.

"From the nothingness came the most ancient and perfect beings in existence, the Dragons, born from the pure flames of the Sun which destroyed the nothingness. Their own lives established, these great beings used their Fires of Life to create these planets and all life contained upon them. And for ages they ruled over all, giving more and more life with their purifying fires."

"Then the upstarts came. Foul creatures who fought against our Creators and Maintainers. They defiled the perfect existence made by the Dragons by forming four moons to steal the glory of the Sun. Soon, though, the upstarts declared war against the Creators, the Dragons. Inside one of their filthy moons the upstarts created a new being; a Moon Dragon. Blasphemy against the true Dragons, the gods were left with no choice but to take hand against the upstarts and end their profanation of existence."

"The war between the Sun Dragons and the upstarts with their Moon Dragon was long and harsh, but the upstarts could never withstand the powers of the Dragons. They were defeated, and cast from the planet, forbidden from ever returning."

"The Sun Dragons again began their peaceful and kind rule over our world."

This account differs sharply from the accepted teachings of the Temple. The Temple's view can be most easily summarized by an excerpt from Origins of the Realms:

"Elanthia was a mass of fire and ice, vapor and seas, from which the Immortals fashioned continents to shelter and provide succor for the First Beings, low creatures of all ilk. From the First Beings came the races. From those with scales that crawled or slithered upon their bellies through swamp and desert came the S'Kra Mur; from the brutes who walked bent over upon their knuckles in savanna and upland were descended the Gor'Tog; from those small, furry, clever creatures that darted among the roots of trees, the green glades and the bases of rocks came the Halflings; from the strong, stout beings that supported the very ground itself upon their backs and dwelt in the maw beneath the earth, came the Dwarves; from the sturdy, crafty beasts of the fields and plains came the Humans; from the blithe beings that mastered the currents of air and water in wildwood and cascading rill, came the Elves, and from the pure thought and will of the Immortals themselves, came the Elotheans."

Abjectly different accounts. With everything seen and heard, with every clue upon the trail categorized and included, questions began challenging long-held assumptions. What if the Kather myth was true? What if the Heralds were the Sun Dragons? What if the Immortals were the “upstarts” with no rightful claim? What if they invaded Elanthia and fought a war against those who came before? What if their presence was a poison instead of salvation? Are they responsible for the "great revisions" of the world’s history?

Visions of the Past - Elanthia

The end of the trail approaches fast now. We see our destination. There is but one more stop between here and there. We stand at the edge of the precipice. Ten years on this journey. Ten years of piecing together clues and half-hidden truths. Ten years culminating in an uncomfortable truth, the rotting carcass of realization: the Immortals lied. Their accuser is Elanthia herself. Elanthia, our ally. Elanthia, whom Rangers have turned to since our inception. On the 18th day in the month of Akroeg the Ram in the year 450, and again on the 26th day of Ka’len the Sea Drake in the same year, Elanthia laid bare the truth of the past during a pair of Beseech rituals.

Under the careful watch of a cultivating eye pruning and fertilizing the natural life on the planet, you feel the influence of guardians maintaining the balance between wildness and civilization.  Existence, self-contained and free of outside influence, remained in balance such that life could thrive.

There came a time when these gardeners sustaining the balance could no longer entirely fight off outside influence.  As each civilization learned to harness the flowing streams of mana, it crumbled beneath a localized extinction, leaving a bleeding wound where no life could bloom.  What was an embrace of wholeness now twists into a litany of trauma, as unnatural blights spread from festering eruptions long forgotten.  Loss of Life occurred within each wound, as disease propagated alien, twisted life from outside of the plane in each laceration.  As portions of Elanthia have died, outsiders have planted their seed and began cultivating to expand their own presence through new pathways into existence from elsewhere.

Let us stop and examine what was shown. The Heralds, Guardians of Primal Elanthia. Balance maintained. Civilizations thrived. Misuse of magic. The downfall of those self-same civilizations. With their downfall, wounds. And with the wounds? An Invasion from outside.

The Immortals, outsiders, are not native to Elanthia. They did not create. They did not make man. They forced their essence through puckered wounds.

As new pathways came to take what was here, lesser guardians attempted to assist the Heralds.  They attempted to contain the wounds, and to cultivate life, but their impact was severely limited, as it was dependent on a connection to the outside, as if drawing from a well some distance away to put out a raging fire.  The wounds continued to fester and bleed.  The primary guardians, who were reliant on the balance of life to continue cultivating, focused on what good they could do, leaving the outsiders to attempt to contain the blights.

The Immortals took on a task as lesser guardians that they could never accomplish. Their influence here was dependent upon the very wounds that they sought to contain. Forgone failure was their lot.

This is a complicated topic. Let us use another example: Elanthia That Was is akin to a carefully prepared remedy with all of the necessary environmental considerations taken into account during its creation, and then sealed against the outside. The misuse of magic, and the resulting wounds, are akin to tiny pinpricks in the wax of the seal, leaving the contents exposed to the outside. The Immortals, ever living outside the remedy jar, attempted to fix the very thing that gave them access to the interior. They could not mend the wax seal without cutting themselves off from all that is good and right inside the jar.

But the visions from Elanthia continued.

A strong breeze stirs, and your senses flood with floral scents that belong to no plant you have ever experienced. As you allow this connection to fill your senses, your vision returns, depicting a thick, verdant forest in the spot you once stood. Branches and shrubs part in front of you, revealing a harmonious grove of wild growth that seems untamed, and yet orderly -- as if all somehow connected. At the center of a wooded grove, a spire of twisting branches towers above you, growing inward to create a lattice upon which you now see hundreds of animals living inside an ordered existence. Crouching low, a mother clad in woven vines kneels next to her child, her deliberate movement fostering a jadice seedling to sprout -- and the child mimics her gestures, causing the flower to blossom. You sense Empathy within both mother and child, and as you expand your perception, you feel an Empathic connection with countless other humanoids inside the tower. A tropical bird of no species you are familiar with descends from a tree, landing deliberately on your hand.

Upon touching the bird, your consciousness now flows into it. You soar upward along the spire, and as you reach the canopy of the forest, the massive form of a green dragon swoops along the leaves above you, rustling them in its wake. Pausing to regain stability in your flight, you flap your wings and settle yourself on the tip of one of the highest branches. Surrounding you, you observe dozens of similar lifesculpted spires stretching across the horizon, surrounded by forest as far as the eye can see. You hear the nearby roar of two rivers meeting, and in a moment, you send yourself flapping toward it.

Beneath you, you observe predators stalking prey, but nowhere do you see waste or excess.  There is a balance teeming through this life -- one in which every being participates in actively.  Where you expect a bustling city, you find more lifesculpted spires at the intersection, and atop one, you witness a dragon speaking words of creation to assist a Druid in merging the spires.  With those words, the branches of each grow and intertwine, forming a nexus of life about you, as if a voice urges you to nest in this place.  

From this perch, you see out to the glistening ocean, and watch as an ancient Leviathan leads its young to nest inside the Segoltha Bay, coming incredibly close to shore.  You hear its call sound proud and loud, relishing in the untamed ocean that belongs to them and them alone.

This Primal Elanthia, pristine and glorious, quickly fades.  You sense that Elanthia holds this memory dear, and identifies itself by a time when it was a primordial, cultivated, and untouched garden tended by the Heralds in what they intended to be a perfect balance, unspoiled and untamed.

We see now the full cost of the Immortals’ refusal to do what had to be done. We have been shown Elanthia That Was. Elanthia as it should have been. The death of Elanthia’s dreams. We see the fork in the trail, forged millennia ago, where selfish intent won out over duty. The trail now stands broken, marred and pitted by their inaction.

Journey's End

A destination reached, but not the one we originally set ourselves toward. As was said when we began: "You cross the threshold from where you once were to another place entirely. So it was here." Every clue, mark, track, and impression along the way has led us to necessary conclusions:

The Heralds are the Sun Dragons of Kather lore. Gods and Guardians of the world. In the beginning Dragons, Druids, and Empathic Man worked in concert with one another, tending the Balance and shaping Primal Elanthia.

This is how it was. This is how it is to be.

But it did not last. Misuse of magic by mortal Man wounded the boundary that separated Elanthia from the Outside. One must contemplate why the Heralds did not reset all of creation then. Compassion for those who had betrayed their trust? Mercy and a second chance for their partners in Balance? Indifference? Underestimating the significance of the wounds?

Action and inaction both carry consequences.

The Immortals gained access to our world through those wounds. Powerful beings to be sure. Interested in the protection of the mortal races, proven repeatedly. They are not of the same race of powerful beings as the Heralds, but sought a place on the Plane of Abiding for reasons not yet known. Upon their arrival, the Immortals fought against the Heralds. They brought terrible weapons to bear during the battle, destroying one of Elanthia's moons in the process.

Recognizing that an actual war for the Plane could destroy it or act like a signal torch to other things Outside, both sets of beings entered a truce. The Immortals took up the task of tending the wounds in the Boundary, but never truly in earnest. Their power is found in the Outside. To heal the wounds completely would be to cut themselves from either Elanthia or their power. They instead withdraw to the outer planets, but not before using their power to remake Elanthia to their own liking in a series of great revisions.

The Heralds found themselves weakened by an unbalanced Elanthia. Every bit of their perfection had been altered. Gone was partnership between Dragons, Druids, and Man. Yet the Guardians still had a garden to preserve. A different type, a lessened variety, of Balance could still be maintained. The Plane of Abiding could endure. But a different tactic was necessary. The Heralds disappeared from view, only appearing infrequently when Balance or misuse of magic reached a tipping point.

The Heralds are the rightful rulers of Elanthia. They guided it. Shaped it. It is theirs. Let us return to what once was.

No feet are propped upon the table. No bow hangs on its peg. Our provisions are packed and ready. Our quiver is once again full. Our destination begs another beginning. We step once more upon the trail, tracking once again.

Waydren Amlir
Druid of the Spire

Written on the 34th day in the month of Ka'len the Sea Drake in the year 450