LENES: That Noisome Silence

The Talakron Phaet do not tell a creation myth of the elves as it was forgotten with the Cursed Lords. Instead they sing of the time before the foundation of Talakron Naal.

The song tells that the elves once resided in a warm and peaceful land under the benevolent patronage of the gods. For an age the elves and the gods were at harmony and strife was unthinkable, until the Celestial Battle came.
The war began between the gods, none remember the cause, and at first the elves were oblivious. But the fickle deities soon began to use their worshippers as weapons. Speaking to their followers the gods inspired in them a concept novel to the elves - violence.

The contagion spread quickly as the devoted followers of one god destroyed the holy places of their masters enemies, only for their own to be razed in return. In the midst of all this some held to the ancient principles of harmony, attempting to mediate a peace. For their efforts all turned upon them.

Forced by circumstances the mediators took up arms to defend themselves, but their numbers were small and their enemies many so with heavy heart they were forced to abandon their once beautiful land. The journey was long and the fanatics harried their trail, forcing them into the mountains to the north. Many fell victim to the ice and rock but they pressed on, urged by a vision from their Diviner that at the end of their journey would be a new home of peace and beauty. Eventually even that hope failed when their supplies were all but exhausted and half their number dead.

Just when all hope was lost Berreth, the greatest geomancer of the time, collapsed with a scream. Few stopped to help, so many had been left behind. An old woman helped him back to his feet. "Tell them to stop," he whispered to her, "here is where our new home shall be."

His words were greeted with rueful laughter but some stopped nonetheless. He placed his hand on a frozen cliff and spoke words of power. A terrible cracking followed as the cliff split as if hewn by an axe, sending the elves scattering.

When it was clear there would be no landslide or avalanche they returned to the cliff. The old geomancer was prone in the snow next to a new tunnel into the mountainside. The old woman helped him set up "through there is our new home, the Heart of the Frozen Rock" he said before he died, his last vital energies given to save his people.

The surviving elves went into the tunnel, discovering a vast cavern. A cave river flowed through it, filled with blind fish and lichen grew on the damp rocks by the river. Although the food was meagre the shelter was good and allowed the elves to survive. In accordance with the geomancer's last breath the cavern was named Talakron Naal, the Heart of the Frozen Rock, and became home for the elves who called themselves Talakron Phaet, People of the Frozen Rock.

The Silver-Haired Child runs through the forest. A robe, richly bright-embroidered, has slipped off one skinny shoulder.

A mother's voice calls: not patient nor urgent. The child attends this with the same interest as he sees the bush, the flower, and the fascinating rustling of the grass. He tears off a moist leaf from a tree and toss it into the air. It blows madly about, blown upwards again and again and again as the child dances back and forth.

The mother's voice interrupts his little game. The child spins once more and dashes towards dinner.

The leaf flutters about in the air, but there is no wind. It circles a tree and rises to the highest branch and clings there. It seems to bend this way and that; then it casts loose and drifts determinedly after its thoughtless maker.

The child does not understand the power he wields. He does not understand the role he will play in history. The story of the Would Be King thus begins in the forest of Malich.

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A simple wooden house in the forest. Heavy beams of wood frame the hall; it is dominated by a high table. At the head of the table, a tall figure with silver hair stands in intricately stitched robe.

A young boy at the side of the table frowns, and begins to ask the figure a question, but suddenly a hush falls across the room. The door opens and two well-armed men appears, carrying with them a bundle of cloth.

A guard, moved by the silence, unfolds the cloth. Eyes jerk, but there is still no sound. It is the flag of Malich, the city which banished the Would-Be-King and his mother nearly a decade ago. Eventually, the tall figure moves a hand again.

The embroidered symbols in the flag sparkle, glow, and slowly vanish from the cloth. It is simply a gesture; it is nothing.

The Guardsmen of the Empire nods and stands apart as the silver-haired figure walks out of the door. The Emperor will be pleased to know that yet another has pledged himself in his service.

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In a darkend library, someone walks alone. The tall shelves are crowded, but the rows of titles fade into shadows. Only the desk is illuminated. A map is spread upon it. The pen, moving across its face, annotates and speculates. A single window to the side of the desk reveals a sprawling city-the Seat of the Empire.

Nearly half the map is tinted red. Along the border, marks and notations cluster like wasps. Those marks and notations for another person-the silver haired figure is merely borrowing the map for another purpose.

An officer enters. He holds a pale cylinder, the length of a tall man's finger. He places it on the desk; he bows; he turns and leaves. At no point do his eyes rise from the floor.

The cylinder proves to be a length of parchment. The tall figure reads it once. Then the pen is taken up once again. The granary stockpile within the Empire was running low. He draws in the name of the Wind in the seas between the Empire and the province of Mal.

Hundreds of miles away, the Wind stirs from slumber. It only knows and has one purpose: to make certain that the little wooden beings from the banks of the rivers reach a great city safely and as quickly as possible.

The silver haired figure leans back from the map, satisfied with his work. He is saving and improving lives.

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The Silver Haired Figure frowns upon the message in the parchment before turning his attention to the notations and speculations stenciled at the borders. Erngrym required 5000 more men to shore up defenses and launch counterattacks against the hated elven foes. Yet the Silver haired figure knew that any army that he broke off to send to war would most likely be slaughtered; the province that the soldiers were drafted from most likely left defenseless against the barbaric hordes that always loom.

He sighs and draws in a glyph of the Wind in the seas. There is nothing that can be done. The Empire must be victorious against the elves. The Gods must be thrown down. He takes solace on the Shining City out the window. History will eventually vindicate their works.

A woman stands in the town square, clearly visible from the window. She shouts curses and points at the great palace, pointing upwards and to his tower. The crowd disperses around her. But the guards are coming, pushing through the crowd. In moments, the ragged woman is cleared from sight.

For a moment, the Silver haired Figure is satisfied. Not, perhaps, pleased, but satisfied enough. He turns back to his work on the table. If the Emperor wishes him to help win the war, then he shall.

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The Silver-Haired figure watches in disbelief as the the Emperor's Statue is erected in the town square. As he walks through the city, he notices that more and more people have took to wearing a small stone figure of Tyrarth around their neck, as if wearing a talisman. Many did believe it to be one too.

He walks past a small temple-that is the only way he could describe the structure, devoted entirely to the Emperor. A regal statue in gold decorates the alterpiece, around which fervent priests preach the evils of all other gods and praise the virtues of the Emperor.

The Silver-Haired Figure is shaken. Has he helped a dragon ascend to Godhood? Why has the Emperor not stopped this? Filled with doubt, the silver haired figure vanishes into the streets of the Grand City. Just one face among many, at least until he returns to his study.

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The Doom has come to the city. The Emperor is dead or missing. Only the gods know what has happened to Erngrym. Whereas a hundred mage served the Emperor before, now only a handful remains alive.

On a ship away from the burning wreck of the Imperial City, the Would-Be-King vows to not allow the Empire break apart with the death of the Emperor. Even though madness overtook Tyrarth, his will: his ideology, needed to continue. He unscrolls the map of the Empire on the desk and begins to speculate and annotate. The few knight-commanders that survived worriedly looks over his shoulders to see the magelord's plans. They cannot fathom how the Would-be-King seeks to reconquer the Empire.

Elsewhere, the other surviving mages have very similar plans. All of them seeks to claim the Empire for themselves. None of them care about the plight of the border states.

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The Would-Be-King made no sign of acknowledging anyone's presence as the guards dragged in a beaten and bloodied figure into his tent. The bloodied figure lacked any teeth: they have been beaten out of his mouth by a mace: the common fate of captured mages.

The trembling bloody figure carried no weapons, although the guards dragging him looked as though he could pull it out of a any puddle if he wished to. The figure reached into his robe and pulled out a cracked wooden scepter with the figure of a dragon atop it. Once, it could have been a symbol of office. Now, it was simply junk.

The Would-be-King made the barest effort to glance upon the wooden scepter and the trembling figure at his feet. In an instant, both were set alight. The screams lasted only for a second before only things left of them were ash and embers.

The guards bowed and left the tent. Further interruptions for the rest of that day were unlikely, and the Would-be-King needed some time to think. In retrospect, the mistake in his strategram that cost him 4 company of soldiers was obvious. However, now one of his rivals were dead and his armies had pledged their allegiances to him. He planned to make use of them all.

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All heads turned upwards into the sky. There hovered a silver-haired figure, terrible to behold, a great stormcloud gathering around him. The mailed figures drop their weapons. From the lowliest of the skirmishers to the highest commanders, they all drop their weapons and flee. They cannot hope to best the Magelord in combat, especially not the Would-be-King, whose cruelty was known even to the Horselords of the Steppes and the Dwarves of the North.

But it is too late for these men, for the Would-be-King's terrible wrath had already stirred. The silver-haired figure watched their life force separate into strands. He regards the scene with interest until the last tendril dissipated, noting the patterns beyond the overlay of animal pain and terror. Further experiment would be necessary, he notes.

He returns to the city of Malich with a thought. He plans to make the city into a new capital of a new Empire. After that display of power, further interruptions from his rivals would be unlikely for some time. He would make good use of this time.

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The silver haired figure watched as the city in the distance burned. The city that had sworn its loyalty to his last remaining rival-he ordered it burnt to the ground. Its inhabitants slaughtered. He let out a sigh as the column of smoke rose far into the sky. Peace had finally returned. The Empire was preserved. No other mages existed that could challenge his rule-he's made sure of that.

There was a saying going around. "I was born in an Empire and I died in a Kingdom." There was some truth to this matter. He failed to preserve the border provinces-he had no authority that far out of the Empire. He was still only one man. But now, that was over. With the rivals gone and the civil war ended, he could turn his focus onto other, more important, matters.

When he returned to Malich, the people cheered in the street-perhaps more out of fear of what he would do if they did not rather than adoration. A new library, dedicated entirely to him and filled with books plundered from the ruined Empire, now ruled by arcane might, was shown. As he listened to the adoration of the people and the Wordsmiths lay praise to him in the steps of the Great Library, a mere glorified temple with books, the Silver Haired Figure felt doubt for the first time in 10 years.

Was this not the path that the old Dragon Emperor had passed through? Was he and the Silver Haired Figure nothing but some piece in a game that Gods played, destined to repeat the cycle of destruction and chaos? Had he killed those people-to pursue Tyrarth's ideology of stopping the worship of impotent gods-for nothing?

It couldn't be.

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The night before the coronation, plagued by guilt, the Silver-Haired figure walks into the library. His statues glared menacingly as he wordlessly passed through the stacks of books. In the end, nobody had gotten it.

Sometimes, things just reverted. Things reverted and everything felt so horribly different. Perhaps his head was twisted by all the evils that he committed.

Or maybe he remained the same and the world was just twisted around him. How could you even tell?

He found the book of Names in the deepest recess of the library and drew a magic circle around him. As he chanted out the spell and felt his consciousness slip away, fading into a 2 dimensional figure and slipping into the Book, his final thought was that it never mattered.

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Without its ruler, and with nobody left to take his place, the Empire of Men and Dragons crumbled into nothingness.

To speak of the Would-be-King's name is still a taboo among much of Mal and other parts of the Empire. To this day, people say that the Great Book of Names hidden in the library of Mal still contains the Name of the King-so powerful that it will appear on the page no matter how one opens the book.

The small cult devoted to the Would-be-King and the Dragon Emperor still maintains that these two figures would one day return to reclaim their Empire.

The Origin Story of the Ogyr

"Let me tell you, wee younglings, of the origins of the Ogyr."

"In the beginning, there was only the Cosmic Grub. The Grub was ravenous, and in its hunger it began to eat itself. From its juices flowed the seas, and its flesh became the land, and its skeleton supports the land as it bites its own tail. Its spines became the mountains, and its curves became the valleys, and so it was that all became as it is now."

"But upon its carapace two of its teeth broke, and from its flesh sprang Sheshu and Ka-u. Sheshu and Ka-u were brothers, and great friends, and were wise and strong, for that is their names - Wisdom and Strength. They were the First Walkers, the First Beings to walk upon this Land. The First Walkers looked upon the Flesh and saw it was barren, and forged the trees and flowers from the Earth. And so it was that the Land was flowered."

"But Sheshu and Ka-u now grew hungry, and they did not desire to eat the flowers, for despite their form they tasted bitter. So they made from the Flesh the beasts of the Land, and the beasts of the Sea, and the beasts of the Air, and dined upon them until they grew full."

"Ka-u was strong, but he was not wise. He was quarrelsome, and angry. Ka-u was envious of Sheshu's wisdom, and desired to make quarrel with him."
"Sheshu," said Ka-u one day, "I question your wisdom. Is it not wise to make only one form, slow and fat, so that we may dine upon it without difficulty?"
"Ka-u," said Sheshu, "I think not. Would we not ourselves grow slow and fat, and if we had no test of our skills?"
"I think you yourself have grown fat and slow, for it is I who did all the hunting today," said Ka-u, "And I think that it was just as our mother, the Cosmic Grub, was when you killed her."
"I take offense!" cried Sheshu. "For not only am I strong and fit, but yours was the first fang that pierced our mother!"
And Ka-u grew enraged by this, and drew his spear, and cried that he would smite Sheshu where he stood for this insult. And Sheshu was wise and saw that he could not overcome Ka-u, and so he fled to the Forn-e Pyran, the Sky Pillar, the highest mountain of the earth where he was hidden."

"Now Sheshu was wise, as that was his name, and he knew that he could not overcome the strength of Ka-u alone. So he ruminated atop the Pillar for a hundred cycles of the sun, as Ka-u searched for him. Ka-u was wise, and heard the spirits of the beasts call to him, and thought of how he could overcome his brother. Suddenly, the idea came to him. Sheshu used his wisdom to summon to him the spirits of the beasts, and of the flowers, and of the birds, and all those beings that had died, for their spirits did still linger around the earth at that time. And using these spirits, he bound them into his spear, and made the greatest weapon the Land has ever known, the Kundar-him, or the Spiritspear. With this weapon, Sheshu knew that he could smite Ka-u."

"Ka-u had heard the spirits gathering, and knew that Sheshu was near. So he climbed the Pillar and saw Sheshu ready. With a mighty cry, Ka-u hurled the pillar at Sheshu, but Sheshu was swift and moved. Sheshu struck at Ka-u with the Spiritspear, but Ka-u was yet swifter and the Spiritspear merely struck the ground."

"Sheshu was dismayed at first, but then, all the Spirits of every being that had ever lived was poured into the Sky Pillar. The mountain came afire, and burned with great might such that Ka-u was hurled into the sky to never been seen again. And the Sky Pillar became the Bro-e Tarmysal, the Mountain that Smokes Eternally. And since then so many spirits were gathered there that the spirits of all that ever lives is drawn to that Holy Place, and it is the resting place for all the beings of the land."

"So it was that Sheshu became the sole Deity, for Ka-u was never heard from again. And all was his, and there were none to quarrel with him."

"Now Sheshu was sated and wanted not. But still he was lonely, and desired someone to speak with. So he forged from the Earth the first Orc, the Great Amun, and the first Rhinoceros for him to ride, and breathed into Amun the breath of Will and Strength, so that Amun would have these. And Amun and Sheshu were in good company, and roamed the Earth, naming the beasts and the plants and feasting on those beasts that were wholesome."

"One day, Amun was out walking, and grew hungry. So he rode his rhinoceros, and caught many animals, but the earth was then plentiful, so he tossed the carcasses where he ate. From these carcasses spawned the other races of the Earth, the Men and the Elves, and the Dwarves, and all the other races. And Amun was pleased with this, for all these races were wholesome to feast upon, and he gorged himself for a thousand years more."

"However, the other races grew faster than he could eat them, and soon the land risked despoliation. Amun spoke to the First Walker, and said unto him, "The delicious races spawn faster than I may, and I cannot eat them all. Soon they risk destruction by their own numbers, and then they will all starve. The First Walker took pity upon Amun, and said to him, "I shall cause my spirit to merge with yours, so that you may too create and make. I shall make for you an Orcess, who is wise and beautiful and kind, and you shall make love with her, and thus create your children." And Sheshu made for Amun the Orcess Amut, and she was wise and kind and beautiful, and so Amun was content.

"And so Amun bred, and so did his children, and his children's children, and the Ogyr became as a great tribe. And they learned the ways of fire, and the ways of metal, and the ways of the hunt, and they made the Broghyr Mountains their home, and feasted on the flesh of the delicious races. But all this is another story, younglings."