With the primordial cataclysm concluded, one might assume a time of healing, a period of quiet convalescence for the wounded world. Well, one would be profoundly and utterly wrong.
For they arrived, drawn from the void beyond the stars by the scent of primordial power, these upstart claimants to a vacant throne arriving in the wake of the first disaster. These lesser divine entities found a broken world and four races of potent, malleable beings, ripe for patronage, manipulation, and conscription, and so began the War of the Claimants: a free-for-all of a thousand ambitions, a brutal, multi-front conflict of ideologies and divine will. The Four Progenitor Races and their descendants became the currency of divine power, pawns in a devastating game played on a continental scale.
Yet, the original races were not the only pieces on the grand board. This period, known as the Ashen Age, also saw the terrifying rise of the New-Born. Unnatural creatures, known simply as the Risen, were wrought from the chaotic energy of Kuros and the concentrated will of the new gods, shaped to serve as unique instruments of their creators.
Fortunately or unfortunately the Ashen Age did not end with a decisive victor, but with an exhaustion that permeated even the seemingly boundless divine. The pantheon of Claimants realized they were shattering the very world they sought to claim.
Therefore, a fragile, silent truce was struck, a divine stalemate that persists to this day. The gods retreated to their respective domains, their influence now more subtle, channeled through faith and ritual rather than open warfare and direct manifestation.
They left behind a world forever changed, littered with the ruins of failed divine ambitions and populated by races who now fight their own wars, often forgetting the godly masters whose echoes still guide their hands.
We are all, every one of us, children of that war. Our hatreds, our alliances, our very natures were carved not in the first disaster, but in the bloody, ashen centuries that followed.
_Excerpt from "On the Scars of Ofoni: A History of Divine Meddling" by Philip the Mad Sage_
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Her expression changed slightly, the playful light in her swirling eyes dimming to become more somber, as if recalling a painful memory.
"New gods appeared," she began, her voice taking on a graver tone. "Drawn to the world's raw, bleeding power like moths to a flame. And like those before them, they fought among themselves for dominance, their struggles shaking the foundations of reality."
Femi's brown eyes were partially on Melin's shimmering figure, and partially gazing around as they moved trying to see the ending of the path they were taking.
"Some allied in fragile pacts of convenience that lasted barely a hundred years."
That statement drew femi's attention again. 'Barely hundred ke, is that not double of what I might live for?'
Melin continued, unaware of his thoughts.
"Some schemed in shadowed realms beyond mortal sight. And others just died, screaming their divinity into the void, their divine essence scattering to the winds to seed the land with strange miracles. This age was known as the War of the Gods, but I have known humans to call it the Ashen Age. For it left the world covered in the grey, bitter ash of fallen divinities, a blanket of despair that smothered the sun for centuries."
Her words, conjuring vivid mental images of epic battles between towering deities, and the cataclysmic fallout that must have scarred the land.
"During the war," she continued, the air around them growing colder with the tale, "the gods needed soldiers. Vast armies of the faithful to clash upon countless fields with the followers of other gods. They needed champions, mortal vessels of immense power, to carry their banners into mortal combat."
Melin's voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper that seemed to draw all the light from the surrounding white path foot beneath their feet. Femi instinctively leaned in, his body tense with a nervous eagerness.
"So they used the four races," she revealed.
Femi's eyes narrowed slightly at implications sank in. "But...wait, why use them? Are they not weaker than them...what would be the point." It doesn't make sense for this so called beings of such immense power, to rely on mortals.
"Right, what would be the point," she echoed, offering a graceful, enigmatic shrug. "Think of it this way, why fight yourself when you can send someone else to do it for you, to bleed in your place? Why risk your own divine essence when you can expend the countless, renewable lives of mortals?"
"mmm...true," Femi nodded slowly. "If you put it that way it actually logical."
"See, even if the races were weak compared to the new gods, they all had the profound ability to grow, to learn, to adapt, to become more. The four races all had something unique, a core trait that attracted the various, hungry gods to them, for instance."
"The Humans and Uruks were the most favored." She began to elaborate, "Humans, with their fleeting lives, that always burned bright with passionate, desperate intensity, were the most sought-after and also the most divided.
A single human generation was just long enough for a cunning god to cultivate a fanatical following and spend it entirely in a single, glorious, suicidal campaign. Gods of conquest, civilization, fire, and plague all found fertile ground in the ambitious, fearful hearts of men. Truly th..."
As they walked through the endless, eerie expanse of the Mares, Femi while listening noticed something vast and simply impossible to imagine moving sinuously at the far edge of what his eyes could see.
"I...i.. hope I didn't just see a galavanting whale in that place just now," he murmured to himself.
"Did you say something?" she asked her attention momentarily pulled from her history lesson.
"I saw something moving in the darkness," he confessed, slight unease in his tone.
"Oh, that," she said, her tone dismissive and light. "Don't be worried about it. It is just another inhabitant of the Mares." Her glow flickered softly as she gathered her thoughts. "So, where was I...."
"Yes... So as I was saying, while the Uruks were a prize most coveted by the more militant, straightforward deities. What god of battle would not desire an entire race filled with relentless, untamable bloodlust yet bound by an unbreakable, internal code of honor? They were the perfect soldiers, their culture already oriented around strength and battle, their societies built for war. "
"Deities of war, strife, and even necessary destruction vied for their souls, offering them eternal glory and a righteous outlet for their inherent, roaring fury. Their personal struggle for honor became a struggle for divine approval, their great tusked champions became mortal blades for impatient, scheming gods."
"These were just some of the reasons the gods wanted them" Yet even that wasn't enough for some of them," she added, a note of dark anticipation creeping into her tone.
She suddenly stopped and turned fully to face Femi, her luminous form blocking the path ahead and forcing him to also stop and give her his complete, undivided attention.
"During the long, exhausting war, some Gods grew impatient with mortal limitations, with their needs and their weaknesses," she said, her voice low and serious
"So...they created their own soldiers, custom-made monsters you might call them, born not of nature but of pure, malicious will." She said, "They were called the Risen."
Femi tilted his head, his whiskers twitching. "What are those, if I may ask?"
"Well, wouldn't you like to know," Melin said, her smile returning, though it now held a more dangerous edge.
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As Melin finished her tale, the last echoes of her words seemed to ring in his head. Making his face settled into a serious look as he processed what he had learned. His mind felt like a overfilled cup, threatening to spill over with revelations.
"So, first of all," he began, his voice measured and careful, "you're telling me that, all those..... creatures you mentioned are part of the risen race."
"Yes," Melin answered easily, as she made two chairs shimmered into existence, looking to be made from the same faintly glowing energy that composed her own form.Femi, took it as a sign to sit down, and he collapsed onto one of the chairs, his thoughts distracting him, which caused him to fail to release he was sitting on chairs that just materialized from nothing.
Melin sat down on the other chair opposite him, her eyes never leaving Femi's face, watching his every reaction with keen interest.
Femi's imagination was racing, trying to map this new, information of this very dangerous world, he had unfortunately found himself in.
"Hummmm." 'I will have to find a way to confirm all this information from some where, he thought. I can't fully trust this glowing woman, spirit, whatever she is. She could be weaving a tale for her own malicious purposes.
Suddenly, a thought cut through his internal deliberation, Femi's face contorted in fresh confusion. "Wait," he said, his voice rising.
"You didn't answer my second question. Why am I here?" He leaned forward, the glowing chair was cool and strangely comfortable beneath him.
Melin smiled, a subtle, knowing curve of her lips, her eyes glinting with open amusement at his frustration. She watched him from her own identical chair of light, a picture of perfect composure. "So, you're not able to piece it together?" she asked, her voice gentle, almost teasing, as if coaxing a child to solve a simple puzzle.
"It's not funny, you agreed to answer," Femi was frowning at her amusement, his shoulders tense with a building exasperation.
"Pardon me," she said, her tone light and airy, as if she was trying not to laugh at his struggle to grasp the vast, game he had been so unexpectedly pulled into. "But it seems like you're having a bit of trouble understanding ."
She then gestured again with a slender hand, and two cups of a strange, shimmering liquid, steaming gently, appeared in both their hands as if woven from the air itself. The scent was unfamiliar, both floral.
"Enjoy." After saying that, she took a sip of her own, closing her eyes for a brief second as she savored the taste, and sighed in quiet satisfaction. Meanwhile, Femi gazed at his own cup with deep suspicion, watching the opalescent liquid swirl of its own accord before he finally set it aside on the pristine, seamless white floor, wanting a clear head.
But Melin didn't seem to mind his refusal of hospitality, and continued, her gaze turning slightly more focused, though the ghost of her smile remained.
"To put it simply," she began, "the colossal, world-shattering clash between the primordial titans Tamara and Kurak eons ago created a unique, chronic energy that still resonates within the very fabric of this world, a resonance which, in turn, drew the new gods to this particular realm." she said, pausing to let the scale of the statement sink in.
"This lingering energy is the raw, untamed embodiment of their eternal struggle, with Tamara representing absolute order and Kurak representing pure, chaotic disorder."
"As you said," Femi interjected, seizing on the explanation, trying to steer her back to his pressing concern. "this ancient energy is still active, a wound that never quite healed, and it's been subtly influencing the course of the world all this time, shaping its history from the shadows." He shook his head, his confusion returning.
"But it still doesn't answer the question."
He spread his hands, a gesture of helpless confusion. "Why me? Why here? Why now?"What does any of that have to do with me?"
Melin nodded, her smile enigmatic and deeply knowing. "Be Patience," she soothed, her voice calming. "I am getting there. Some truths require the proper foundation to be understood."
"Remember the tale," She leaned forward slightly, "when the time was right, at the moment of greatest need, Tamara's dormant energy activated, blessing the progenitors of the four races to counter Korvath's corrupting curse."
Femi's eyes narrowed as he slowly pieced together the puzzle, she had laid out before him. "So, that's why I'm here?" he asked, "To counter Korvath's influence? That's the grand reason I am here ?" The words feeling both heavy and unbelievable on his tongue.
In response, Melin simply waved her hand. The space beside her shimmered and coalesced, and a small, three-dimensional map materialized between them, hovering just above the floor. Femi's eyes widened as he saw the intricate details, glowing details depicting continents he did not recognize and l then seeing them shift and change over eons, dotted with tiny, glowing points of light that flared and faded.
"Throughout the long ages," she explained, her gaze fixed on the luminous map, "countless heroes and champions have been taken from their homes, from different realms and distant worlds, to be instruments in the hidden, eternal battle between the primordial forces of Tamara and Korvath."
She pointed, and a series of tiny, sparkling lights flickered across the map's surface.
"Even during the bleak and violent Ashen Age, when the new gods used the first four races to clash bitterly among themselves, these selected heroes emerged from the chaos to fight valiantly, though blindly, on behalf of their respective sides, unaware of the greater war they served."
Femi's face contorted in dawning, unsettling realization. "So, what you're saying," his voice laced with incredulity and a spark of anger, "is that I was just taken to be another pawn, another disposable soldier in their endless, game of who strong pass?"
Melin's smile grew wider, but it was not unkind; it was the look of someone revealing a delicious and complex secret.
"You were originally meant to, by the old rules, to be a combatant on the side of Tamara's order," her words dripping with intrigue.
"But the board was shaken. Your thread was intercepted. You were taken by... another player, a new and ambitious power who wanted to join the battle and decided to claim their own piece."
"You."