Written by Aelyzabeth von Thors.
When the Wheel of Civilization turned anew beneath the divine radiance of Emperor Aerys von Thors the First, the light of dominion once again graced the earth—Not as the flame of ruin, but as the fire of unification beneath the universal heavens.
For His Majesty beheld the world fractured into a hundred realms,Each kingdom exalting itself, each lord hungering for land and vain glory,Yet none pursuing the true purpose of mankind.He saw the frailty of men, their folly, and their forgetting of ancestral wisdom,And thus did He resolve to restore the world to its ancient wholeness—Not through tyranny, but through wisdom and righteous strength.
The hosts of Saelyen were not vast as the empires of old;Numbered were they few—no more than a hundredth part of the world's armies—Yet their faith was unyielding, and their sovereign a master of all stratagems.Through wit more than number, and through faith more than steel,He marched across all continents, over deserts and seas, through forests and frost.Those who bent the knee in fealty were granted favor and self-rule;Those who defied Him were subdued beneath His just and unrelenting sword.
And thus raged the wars of unification for two thousand years—Two millennia of iron and flame, of cleansing and forging anew.Yet He conquered not merely the lands of men,But the hearts and spirits of humankind entire—Till the world remembered once more the sacred name of One.
In time, the whole of Earth lay in peace beneath His banner—From the western deeps to the frozen peaks of the east,From the burning sands to the poles of eternal ice—No king nor conqueror stood above Him.And men, in awe, hailed Him henceforth as"The Last Emperor, the Conqueror of the World."
Yet when all lay silent and subdued, He turned no longer to war,But to His people, whose blood had watered the roots of His dream.He forged anew the order of the world—An order of life, of knowledge, of enlightened progress.He founded the Great Council of Sciences, the Academies of Art and Philosophy,The Schools of Thought and the Senate of Sages.He sowed the first seeds of science,And from His wisdom bloomed the might of man beyond the stars.Under His reign, knowledge reached its zenith,And the works of humankind outshone the fires of heaven.Even the far-born races of the cosmos came in reverence,Bearing tributes to the One enthroned at the center of all creation.
Thus did Earth become the heart of the universe,The beacon of all enlightened realms,And the name of Aerys von Thors became the emblem of mind eternal—A name spoken with reverence even by emperors of a thousand thousand suns.
When His Majesty's years numbered three thousand,He rose before His people and spake with tranquil grace:
"The time hath come that a new light must shine where the old once burned."
Then did He lay down the crown of SaelyenAnd bestow the throne upon Desler von Thors,The sole heir of His sacred bloodline,A man of forty and two winters, wise beyond his years.When the coronation was done,The Great Emperor clad Himself in simple robes,Cast aside the crown and the jewels of dominion,And walked alone beyond the gates of Saelyen—To a realm unseen, to a place unmarked on any map.And from that day forth, none beheld Him again.
Yet some say He ascended unto the firmament,To dwell among the stars, watching His beloved worldAs a guardian god, ever constant, ever kind.
I, Aelyzabeth von Thors,Bow my head in reverence before the grandeur of His light.I offer praise to Him—pillar of our race,Founder of the Aryan line renewed through wisdom and endurance,Who sacrificed His joy for the peace of all mankind.
May the glory of Emperor Aerys von Thors the FirstEndure beyond the clouds of time,So long as stars yet burn in heaven,So long as mankind speaketh the word civilization.
May His spirit dwell forever in the hearts of men.— From the Final Record of Aelyzabeth von Thors, Concerning the Twilight of the Saelyen Empire —
Thus ends Chapter B-IX.