I] In ages past,I walked as a godess among my people.I was their lady,their divine High Queen,the great creator who was credited with shaping their blessed isles where food and water was plenty.Those days are still remembered as the golden age,the time when immortals walked among men.
Alas,I was no god.Like my beloved consort,we were merely the sole survivors of a race now long dead.The children of another world,one far older,we came here when it begun to die,hoping to save our people.Ironic then,that only the two of us escaped when the great clamity befell them.How were we,in our supreme confidence,to know that our creation would develop a mind of it's own and turn against those who had raised it from the watery maw of the ocean? Yet it did,submerging the central plains where the great city lay,destroying everything and everyone.Tarrod we call it now in our lost tounge,meaning ''monster.''
The very creatures we had created and partioned from each other for our amusement,the creatures we had overseen like silent gods for millenia,we now observed as they escaped their failing boundaries to explore the world that had now passed into their hands with the demise of their creator.
Savage Eshal,proud Anura,ravening Lurdi,arrogant merfolk,docile and gentle humanoids,we witnessed come into violent conflict.Despite our own tragic loss,we could not help but mourn silently for them as they found themselves menaced by cruel foes they could not defeat.And soon we resolved to help them,these gentle beings were suffering so much.Using what remained of our power to escape the foul abombinations drawn from a dark unknown place and which sought to keep us imprisoned here forever(Black Ones),we left the ruins of our once noble city and sought out the humanoids.
At first,they were so dazzled by our wonderous and dazzling appearance,that they fled in fear.But with great effort,we succeeded in convincing them that we meant them no harm and were here to lead them from this savage land to a world where they would be better off.At this,they prostated themselves and begun declaring us gods that had been sent to save them.Though this embarrassed us to no end,we realized that playing the role of divinities would aid us greatly in saving them.And so we proceeded to amaze them further by teaching them to construct great ships of wood.Then urging them to gather all their belongings,we set sail with the humanoids in search of a new home.
After wandering the open seas,we finally stumbled upon a great chain islands not too far away from what had once been our home,bur far enough that none from that now monstrous place would be able to find our haven.Great was the joy of those we had saved at finding this new home and doubled was their awe and devotion for us.
It was in this tranquil place that they encountered the Great Serpents.Though I like them was intitally afraid of these seemingly fearsome animals,I soon learned that these great beats were gentle things that sought only to slay if attacked. Slowly winning their trust,I thought
my new people to do the same.And with the Serpents,they discovered a unity that was strong and pure,learning much from their reptillian wisdom,foremost among them being the value of patience and caution.
Admist all this plenty and joy though,there was one pressing concern though. To the extreme north,there was a great land mass which seemed to radiate an aura of great power,but a power so dark and twisted and dark that it made our skin to crawl just to feel it.Fortunately,the people we had saved lacked our facualties and thus remained oblivious to that which so troubled us.
We for our part,convinced ourselves that since whatever it was on that landmass remained ignorant of the existance of these islands,it would
never cross the leauges of watery wastes separating us from it to seek out and destroy our haven.And so they lived,giving us a island far bigger than the rest and a great distance from the rest of the chain,for our abode.Meanwhile,my consort,determined that they never again be terrorized by others,thought them the arts of fighting.But no others came and there was no cause for violence.And so for millenia,we lived here,starting a lineage of our own while with the pasage of time,our people completely forgort that they had come from another land.We for our part,were glad to encourage this,for why remind them of a land where their ancestors had suffered so much ?
But time corrupts all and soon our people had become a race of warriors,squabbling and fighting with one another over petty matters,using the very arts of warfare meant to protect them from the vioence of others against one another.Evne the Great Serpents were roped in,serving as mounts to their beloved human companions that rode into battle.A few millenia back,we would have been shocked and troubled by this.But we too had changed,turning into deities that approved of blood shed in battle,deities that were in every respect,what a warrior culture would demand of it's gods.For among these simple people,we had actually come to believe ourselves gods.And we chose to parade this by wandering among the people and impressing them with our power,our children choosing to do the same.And thus it was,that to those mortals who incurred my wrath,I became the Death Crone,the dark harpy of the netherworld that would choose those warriors which would be given the terrible honor of pleasing her with their company.
Gods grow tired of things easily and we were no exception.My husband would leave me often for the compnay of sweet young maids and I never resented this,for I too did the same.This too would have bothered our conscience previously,but what were such issues to gods?
Ahh,cruel hubris.We were not gods after all,despite all our pretensions. How could we have allowed ourselves to be deluded so?One dark night,our illusions were shattered completely.
They came from the great landmass we had all but forgotten now in our arrogance,dressed in strange and exotic garb.Human,but humans radiating the dark magic that had so unnerved us when we were humbler and wiser.Seizing controll of the northen islands,they declared themselves the new gods of our people,ordering us to leave.Of course,dark power or no,we were enraged that anyone would question our divine right as gods.Sallying forth from our palace,we gathered all our children for the coming confrontation,confident that we would smite these invaders with ease.
Great was our shock then,when they unleashed their dark power,slaying many of our children.This is not to say that we were weak and powerless.On the contrary,our powers had grown and expended since we had come here.But there was a whole host of them and only a few of us.And when armed with their terrible arts,they found it simple to rout us and send us fleeing.But still the war dragged on,with our depleted fighters making futile attack after attack on our vile foes,only to stagger back defeated each time.Finally,grim relaization struck us that we could not defeat this foe and those of us who survived,made a decision to flee into the astral relam,that strange etheral place where the shades of men wander and faeries dwell.Though the idea of being refugees in that ever shifting place galled us,we knew the alternative would be sucide,even my stubborn consort that chaffed bitterly at having to forsake the trappings of our godhood.And so,using the great gateways we had created to help channel otherworldly forces to aid us in our previous divine efforts,we fled the relam of men,never to return.
Moving into our former dwellings,our victorious conqurers,overflowing with savage esctacy,tampered with the gateways and turned them into specail windows,that while never allowing us to come back,gave us ample oppturnity to helplessly watch all that happened in it under the reign of the new masters of our people.Their purpose behind this was two-fold.Firstly,they knew it would be the ultimate insult to the fools that dared style themselves ''gods.''.Secondly,it would be a useful tool to awe and cow into submission,those wise men and wizards among our people,that monitered the gateways on the other islands and still remained loyal to their old rulers.For who,after witnessing their might and skill,would be tempted to defy them?
But Fate was fair.She brought our foes down as cruelly as she struck us from our own lofty perch.All of us,both former gods and mortal wizards,watched as they used their dark arts to twist life itself.And watched as life struck back at them in savage retaliation,wiping them out utterly.The details of their fall are bizzare and macabre,no doubt of interest to those of you that enjoy such tales.But they have no place in my story.Suffice it to say that this became history admist the great rejoicing of our newly liberated people.Of course,like with all other things,this history became legend with time and legend in turn became myth and myth fianlly became obscure lore that only a few grey beards remember.
And now I watch,as they once again return to the dreadful land that their ancestors left behind eons ago.As they encounter there the final curse left behind by the vile sorcerors,a curse that might destroy them yet.And all I can do is watch.
