The Cosmology of Râmd'Ankellé & Icínq-Régn

The world comprised by the various kingdoms of the world came to be through the creative works of the Cadásur and their omniscient and omnipotent leader, the Kingfather. But before they created the world, they were locked in a battle for control over creation.  The Cadásur existed in two factions, the Kélez'ál and Envérd'ál... essentially the holy and the unholy respectively.  While they balanced the cosmos between order and chaos, the Envérd'ál initiated a war for control to the Rites of Creation.  They lost, their numbers scattered throughout the cosmos and - eventually - creation itself.

 

And so the Great Work began, with the Kingfather and his designers building the earth and all living things populating it.  The Great Work was overseen by the Kingfather's greatest commander, Lúcana Sha'Dón.  Before the forming of sentient species, the Kingfather selected three of his most trusted builders to go into the world and set about creating such beings.

 

The Fire Flyers

The first builder the Kingfather sent into this new world was Drách Asár, who at the time was called Alád-Voh... his name meant "Firewing" in the ancient tongue.  Alád-Voh created the Dragons, initially taking the form of the first Fire Flyer, a majestic white and gold-scaled beast with wings spanning the length of a battleship and a body as powerful as a mountain.  He used his control over the elements to forge children from Fire, Earth, Metal, and Water, giving them a trace of his power to wield these elements.  Over time, successive generations and interbreeding resulted in more diverse forms of Dragons, though at the cost of concentrated forms of elemental magic.  Those strong enough in a particular element became elders while Alád-Voh instituted the formation of the Dragon Council to govern themselves.

            Eventually, Alád-Voh took a wife - a Dragon made by the Kingfather specifically for him - and sired true hatchlings of his own.  Alád-Voh and Adel-Nuí - his mate - performed their skyward dance of love, which became the ancient explanation for the Sun and the Moon moving through the heavens.

            During the reign of Menonias and the travesties of the Menonian Wars, Adel-Nuí as well as her three hatchlings were killed during Artorma's raid on the ancient Nests, located in what is now known as the Sovereign Empire of Ronso.  The discovery of the crime broke Alád-Voh's heart.  He then transubstantiated into a lesser sentient being - a Human and became the founding leader of the Order of the Prómasúst, spending his days as a priest and using his heavenly immortality to train generations of monks.

            Dragons became the first of the sentient races, their migrations spanning across the world from Râmd'Ankellé to Ronso, the Frostlands to the Southern Deserts and the isles in between.

 

The First of the Forest Folk and their Inheritors

The second builder the Kingfather sent into creation was Orman, a philosopher and poet.  While he was as much a warrior as Alád-Voh, or any other Cadásur, Orman liked to keep an aesthetically simple life.  He created beings in his image; they took on a similar humanoid appearance, with dark hair and tapered ears.  They stood tall, lean, and lived among the forest to learn from nature and be one with it.

            Like the Dragons, the newly formed Elves possessed an innate access to the leftover energies brought into the world by the Cadásur, tapping into this energy as Magic through conjuring spells based on the language they developed, passed onto them by Orman.  This newfound power became just as much a part of Elf culture as their history, art, and other aesthetics.

            The Elves lived nearly immortal lives, and their species proliferated quickly until they realized just how much longevity they possessed, which resulted in slowing down the need for newer generations.  As a result, Elves matured at a steadier rate; an individual could be half a century old and still be considered an adolescent by mortal standards.  As part of their recognition of their celestial heritage, they built a pyramidal structure in the middle of what became the Three-Sands Desert, naming it the Temple of Orman, a key structure within the region.  Due to their partnership with Dragons, they helped construct other locations, such as the Citadel of Belaryn, Témád's grotto on the Dead Island, and Pyrius' lair in the core of Izdefúche's volcano, Vólkus.

            Wanting to see what else he could create, Orman eventually transubstantiated himself into a Human like Alád-Voh after him.  He thus became the first Human, living in the region that became Ronso.  Like the Elves, Orman realized he couldn't create offspring on his own.  The Elves he formed from a pair of evergreen trees, breathing the breath of life into them, but he needed to give them dimorphic likenesses, the make them male and female.  He called upon one of his kind, a Songmistress named Shanzón, to be the template for the she-Elves, and he did the same for the Humans after forming their bodies from the dust and clay of the earth.  However, Because Shanzón was required to serve the Kingfather, he called upon his life-long friend, Lúcana Sha'Dón to be the template for Human women.  Like the Elves, Humans propagated quickly, but they had not received the Elves' longer lifespans, so offspring became more important to them, and they developed their languages and cultures quickly.  Eventually, Humans migrated east, leaving Ronso for the shores of Râmd'Ankellé, continuing to flourish there as they became introduced to Dragons, Elves, and Dwarves.

 

The Children of Erda

The third builder sent into the world by the King Father was Erda-König whose progeny became the beings known as Dwarves.  The Dwarves - or Svérk as they called themselves - existed after the Elves but before Orman gave rise to Humans.  They felt a deeper connection to the Earth and its resources and so made their homes deep underground and in the moountains.  While many of their number lived on the surface just like the others, their preference for working the earth and in the rocks dominated their culture.

            The Dwarves were warriors like their maker, though they spent most of their time refining the earths treasures, using the magic bestowed on them to forge some of the greatest armor and weapons, and sculptures the world had ever seen.

            They mostly kept to themselves until the time of the Age of Menonias and the wars bearing the Magus' name; they offered their skills and services in both battling Menonias' forces as well as rebuilding after the wars came to an end.

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A Separate World

As part of the creative process, it was recommended to establish a remnant of humanity selected to be special keepers of some of the most valued treasures and dangerous secrets of the Cadásur.  The Kingfather raised an island from the sea, and spread a small population of Humans there.  He established a containment for the seven worst prisoners taken during the confrontations with the Envérd'ál, each of these demons being offspring of a yet-unknown greater threat simply refered to by her children as the Womb of Shadows.​

            Part of the remnant farmed and fished, caring for the land and providing food for those serving the Kingfather's purposes.  The remnant thrived on this island, kept away from the rest of the world, untainted by the greed and vice humanity would eventually come to know.

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Corruption of the Weak

The Kingfather had not known the terrible power of these Seven demons and was not aware of how easily corrupted Humans could be when left alone to be influenced by the prisoners they were selected to guard.  He had not known that one of his own plotted the downfall of his creation from within.

            It started with the island... the Womb of Shadows birthed an infection, a sickness with the transformative power to turn Humans into her fallen, demonic children.  The illness spread amongst the first established settlements, an entire generation of the youth becoming corrupted and turned, killing their loved ones and destroying everything they loved.  The first settlement - Bed'deth Village - fell before the island's guardian - an empowered Human - brought an end to the Womb of Shadow's destructive plans.

            In the aftermath, it was discovered by Orman that his one-time partner, Sha'Dón, had actually been a halfbreed, betraying her mother's Kélez'ál heritage for her father's Envérd'ál connections.  Raised in the light, she excelled in her duties as the Kingfather's most trusted ally, wounding him figuratively and literally in a bid for power.  It had been her first seven children with Orman who became those most dangerous demons imprisoned on the island.  Orman stripped Sha'Dón of her spiritual powers by separating her physical form from her metaphysical form, imprisoning the demonic half into the pyramid bearing his name.  He erased Sha'Dón's memories.  She would reach the end of a mortal life, only to be reborn from her own ashes a generation later, perpetuating this cycle of imprisonment.

            The island became renamed R'Hókh Parpel, the name drifting into obscurity and eventually evolving into the now-known name of Farfell.  While Sha'Dón could not remember, her seven children could.  Contained in silver medallions, they eventually broke free without the Island's guardian to keep them at bay.  Unlike their mother, their bodies could not continue living without their spiritual essences and thus died, but the demons could inhabit bodies as they needed, riding out these hosts for generations, each one taking a turn as leader until their body gave out and they needed to find a new, much younger host.

            Eventually, the Seven discovered their long lost mother and provided her with memories of who she once was.  They used their abilities to corrupt the local people, eventually creating the Citadel around their entrapment and bringing people in droves to live within its safety, adopting their "religion" and awaiting the time when the Cadásur sent a new armor bearer to come so they could fully resurrect their mother's true power once more.

            In the meantime, however, the disembodied spirit of J'Hadahiri N'eth-Bani, the Womb of Shadows (Sha'Dón's dark presence), corrupted a young half-elf named Ménas íl Sagáth during his time as a trainee at the Mystic Academy.  Her influence aided him in becoming Menonias, thus prompting the Menonian Wars which led to the slaughter of nearly every Dragon in existence.  She further corrupted Alád-Voh when she influenced him into reassuming his Dragon form and attacking the Shadowkin living in the Maígan forests.  He resumed his Human appearance but something in the magic corrupted him, imbuing his feral Dragon nature into this humanoid form, causing his animalistic bite to turn the Shadowkin into the first generation of pureblood Vampires with him as their god and progenitor.

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Hope for Life and Light After Death

There was hope despite this darkness and despite the tragedy of a second fallen Cadásur.  During his time as a Human, Drách Asár fathered a son with a former Cadásur woman named Eíya who retained her powers unlike her husband.  They gave him the name Asher, a derivation on Asár.  Unfortunately, after Asár's vampiric transformation, he returned to the Monastery Tempílcra and slaughtered his wife, draining her of every drop of blood.  Asher grew into a hero in his own right, becoming the patron guardian of the Vampires and restoring them to their rightful place as Shadowkin once more.  During his mission, he married Princess Kirara of Maíga and inadvertently fathered a daughter, whom Kirara instinctively named after the mother-in-law she never met.

            Eíya íl Cadásur was adopted and raised by Ceris, the last scion of Menonias.  Her abilities developed after a bite from a Vampire, bringing her into her true heritage and the powers of the Lightcaster.  While her father is capable of reversing the Vampire curse, she is capable of bringing the light of the Cadásur back into the world, ushering in a new age of heroes.