PROLOGUE FROM THE CHRONICLES OF TRYTERRA: FOUNDER’S DAY

Prologue

The midsummer night air outside was thick, humid, and stifling, the kind of night where lovers lying asleep in their beds cuddled by touching hands or fingertips, and where children left open their windows and tossed aside their covers, monsters be damned. Man, woman, or child, those who could sleep did so miserably.   

Not everyone slept.

Somewhere within Ebonriver County, a gathering sat silently in crowded hall, waiting with hushed anticipation. A man, plainly dressed and rather nondescript, approached a podium set before a massive hearth at the front of the hall.

The gathering shifted and shuffled in their seats, the heat of their bodies and the hearth’s fire making the unbearable night even more so. Their discomfort was intentional, the hall’s atmosphere created to make the audience more receptive to the message the man had come to deliver.

He stood silently at the podium for a few moments, just long enough for the murmurs and rustling of the audience to subside, then began speaking, his unnaturally loud voice resonating in the gathering’s ears.

“We are taught”, he said, “that our world began with the founding of the Orders Librum. But we know that the birth of the Orders was not the birth of us. The first book tells us this, even if the Orders refuse to speak of it.”

“In that unspoken age before light and life, there was the first world: a lone sphere, adrift in a place of infinite darkness, called Nothing.”

“Then, from deep beneath the surface of the first world, from a place hidden within the core of that primordial land, there came a explosion of purifying light so bright that it cleaved the first world in two. This was the event that the Orders call the Sundering.”

“That light took on shape and with shape came awareness. From that awareness that which man calls Troien Eynim was born. In its wake, smoldering embers cast off from Troien Eynim’s birth floated adrift between the halves of the broken firmament which was the second world. Those embers, each possessed with a shard of awareness, ignited and became the stars in the sky. These stars, which shine down on us even now, were the servitors of Troien Eynim. The servitors were tasked with maintaining the mechanism of creation.

“Troien Eynim from its palace in the sun, saw that it was whole but realized that the world it had emerged from was now broken. So, the first book says, it bled forth its essence, merging with everything that was. Troien Eynim’s essence collapsed back into itself, pulling creation along with it, and thus remade the world.

“But no action is without consequence. In the process of remaking the world, Troien Eynim split itself, initiating a second Sundering by becoming the three-that-are-one:

“Kriatus, who binds the world together, father of the fomori and the gnomes;

“Par Acletae, who seeded the world, mother of the krysalians and the halflings;

“And Inun Garae, who brought life to the world, creator of man, the inheritors of the third world, Tryterra.

“The consequences of the second Sundering extended beyond the birth of the triune god head. A small fraction of the Troien Eynim’s servitor refused to recognize the triune’s dominion over all things. These renegade servitors grew jealous of the newborn triumvirate, and laid claim to Troien Eynim’s creation. They became corrupted through their overwhelming envy, sparking warfare among the stars and throwing the divine mechanism out of its natural balance. Their corruption spread, infecting the three-in-one’s children. Only the halflings and gnomes, rooted closest to the firmament, were resistant.’

“The fomori and the krysalians – beings of monstrous beauty and preternatural power, each species more spirit than flesh – at the behest of the corrupted servitors divided Tryterra between themselves and made humankind their slaves and concubines.

“Vile unions between the species of Tryterra begat the bresians – half fomor and half krysaliani – and the children of men and krysalian called the perkrysalians, or elves, while from the unions between halflings and gnomes came the dwarves.

“The corruption born among the stars spread to these new hybrid peoples as well. The elves and the dwarves, having forged a tenuous alliance, together overthrew the fomori and the krysalians. They claimed their territories and riches for themselves – including dominion and control over mankind. The two fledgling empires drove all but a handful of the krysalians and fomori into the realms beyond summer’s twilight.

“The dwarves turned on their progenitors as well, pressing the halflings into their forces as spies and guerilla fighters against their former perkrysalian allies, and sending the gnomes into forced exile in the otherrealms where their machines could secure the way, ensuring neither krysaliani nor formor could ever return.”

A loud, exaggerated yawn sounded from the back of the room.

Mumurs and whispers spread through the gathering as it turned en masse towards the back, searching for the source of the interruption. The man at the podium cleared his throat loudly, continuing his remarks once attention had shifted back to the front.

“The abbots of the first book tells us that the Three-That-Is-One did not see any of these things occurring until they had already come to pass, that the triune godhead was unaware of our plight during these dark times. The abbots tell us that when Troien Eynim finally saw the evils wrought upon the world, the triune granted one lone man named Onas Heman, called the uplifted - the first cleric of what would become the Orders Librum  – access to its incarnate power, and commanded its faithful halfling children to secede from the dwarven armies and become Heman’s army of liberation. The Orders’ historians teach that the elves and dwarfs tried to quell the enslaved’s uprising but against the divine might of the uplifted and the prowess of the halfling warriors, they had no choice but to free humanity, surrender their lands, and isolate themselves into small kingdoms.”

“After the rebellion, once Onas divested himself of his divine gifts, returning them to Troien Eynim, the triune again splintered itself, recreating itself into eight aspects of divinity who transmitted the knowledge and philosophies that form the canon of the Orders Librum and guide the world.”

“In the time since the Orders Librum were founded, man has prospered…and in that prosperity, man has grown weak. While his enemies play at diplomacy and plot in their hidden kingdoms, man grows fat and soft.”

“Falling prey to the promises the fallen servitors in the stars and fey creatures of the otherrealm, man is tempted by the prospect of power hidden in blasphemous grimoires, corrupted histories, and false legends. All because once, more than a millennia ago, one man gave up true power for peace rather, than wield it to seek the vengeance we deserved.”

“We celebrate this every year…every year but this one.”

“This Founder’s Day, we will cull the weak, the corrupted, the compromised, and the defiled. This year, we ride for vengeance!”

The room was filled with the sound of thunderous applause as the gathering stood in ovation.

Guntyr Skangual, looking out of place with his disheveled hair and an unkempt beard grown long to try to hide the long scar that gave his face a perpetually leering smile, remained seated at the back of the hall. He cleared his throat loudly, silencing the room and drawing the attention of the speaker.

“We’?”, Guntyr inquired, rising from his chair, hand rested on the hilt of his sword. Two others seated beside him - a balding, burly older man in an eyepatch, and a beautiful, dark-skinned woman, rose as well.

“Seems to me”, Guntyr continued, “that ‘we’ aren’t likely to get ‘our’ prissy little hands dirty…”

“…Sir”, he added with a mocking bow.

The man behind the podium scowled. A few men seated closest to the speaker stood and positioned themselves like a wall in front of the podium.

Guntyr laughed.

“We”, the speaker said, dismissing the men before the podium back to their seats with a slight wave of his hand, “have given you enough coin for you to be our hands, and we certainly don’t mind if you get a little dirty, so long as you do what is commanded of you.”

“And…that is what?”, Guntyr said, spitting on the floor, “Precisely--?”

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