Escalonia

Escalonia is a world in a part alternative-history and part fantasy setting, where civilisations akin to those on Ancient Earth battle alongside and against non-human races for dominance.   This is my first and greatest creation that I have been working on for my upcoming series of novels and accompanying wargame system.   Deep in the galaxy of Chydros, the Kraken Lord of Space and Time, Cosmodoros, and one of his many wives, Seravas, the Sky-Serpent, had a powerful son - Versulinos, god of the earth. When he was born, Seravas surrounded him with her coils to protect her firstborn from her rampant and careless husband. Forever without the willingness and perseverance to help raise a family, Cosmodoros left to visit his billions of other wives and mistresses, including the sun goddess Rama, who was the Sky-Serpent’s sister and nearest neighbour.   During the next few centuries, Seravas reared her young son firmly and strictly to ensure a good upbringing, but it was not long before Cosmodoros returned, feeling the need to have another child with the Sky-Serpent. The next to be born was Andreina, goddess of the water, who Versulinos helped his mother to raise. Both of these young deities had never experienced the chaotic world outside their mother’s coils, so had spent all their childhood entertaining and playing with each other. They became close friends, and as they grew up, their feelings grew up too.   Seravas began to notice the displays of romantic affection her children started to show towards each other, and attempted to divide them, but Versulinos curled himself around Andreina’s body to protect her from the Sky-Serpent’s anger, just as she herself had done to shield them from their father, so that only Andreina’s beautiful face could be seen. This fair visage became a shimmering lake, and her brother’s body formed a solid core of earth around that lake’s water supply. The individual hairs on his body were proud and tall trees, and the contours of his body formed hills and canyons.   Believing her son had degenerated into a lustful monster, the Sky-Serpent lost control of her emotions, and began to weep for the calamity that befell her eldest children, her tears falling as rain. So many tears did she cry that seas and oceans formed over Versulinos’ body, so that only the hump of his back remained above the watermark, with Andreina’s beautiful face at the very centre of it. This solitary supercontinent became the land of Escalonia, and it is here that our story is set.   Since then, Seravas continually shifts between crying more tears that fall as additional rain, scolding her son for his carnal desires with her many-pronged tail striking him as lightning, or merely hissing to herself, her children and her husband, the magnitude of that sound manifesting as thunder. Hearing her cries Cosmodoros returned again to the Sky-Serpent, and gave her two more children, Sigrida and Mardan. The former, as a conscientious child, took it upon herself to mediate between her elder siblings and her mother, her continual rushing between them denoting her role as the goddess of the wind. The latter, the god of fire, was eager to impress his mother, and began to assist her in her punishing strikes upon his older brother. Wherever his mother struck her eldest son with her tail, Mardan lacerated great trails of flame across his skin whenever she commanded him to, yet Versulinos never yielded, for though he understood the reason for his mother’s anger, he could not surrender the love he had for his sister, and neither could Andreina reject him.   In time, Andreina became pregnant with four children, but was unable to give birth to them in the normal way due to Versulinos covering most of her body, having no choice but to expel her offspring from her mouth. Each one, as soon as they were born, instinctively ran from their mother over their father’s back in a different direction, all the way to the ocean that lay around it.   Bannordus, the eldest, strongest and most aggressive, immediately took off to the north before the others had barely emerged from their mother’s mouth. He charged across the continent of Escalonia as an irrepressible torrent, the only obstacle that stood in his way for even a second being the highest mountain in all the land, Mount Olymni. Even then he was unperturbed, tearing the mountain asunder with his bare hands and wading through the wreckage. He quickly reached Escalonia’s north coast and peerlessly dived in, his trail forming the Northern River.   Epunara, the eldest daughter, boldly set off in the opposite direction from her headstrong and tactless brother, not as quickly as he but with her own confidence and knowledge on where she was going. She travelled south in a leisurely way, and found that much of the land there was sparse and barren. She planted many of her hairs into the ground here, and encouraged her grandmother to weep upon this area more frequently, so that the landscape transformed into a sprawling rainforest, except for the easternmost regions which, bathed as they were in Rama’s light, were too hot for any of Epunara’s trees to survive. Otherwise pleased with her handiwork, she slipped into the ocean as soon as she reached the south coast, her trail forming the Southern River.   Her twin brother, Cataros, staggered to his feet and yawned quietly, for he had spent the entire time inside his mother sleeping and dreaming. He started to wander off to the west, curving off into tangents as he got lost in his own imagination, before turning back again as he would momentarily return to reality and realise he had diverged from his path. The most peaceful of the four younger gods, Cataros always avoided any obstacles that got in his way, rather than attempting to cross or damage them, and he took longer than any of his siblings to reach the ocean, his trail forming the Western River.   Finally, Erestia, the youngest child, crept from Andreina’s mouth and looked around her. Already exhausted from simply being born, the frail fourth child saw that her siblings had already gone their separate ways, and reluctantly set off to the east. As she journeyed further and further, she became hotter and hotter as she exposed herself more and more to Rama’s scorching aura, and grew weaker and weaker. When she finally reached the eastern coast, she collapsed, but did so before she could enter the sea, and thus could not be nourished by its cooling waters. Unable to do anything but watch her youngest child die, Andreina began to weep, her tears travelling over the Aquius Falls, the tallest waterfall in Escalonia, and filling the furrow made by Erestia’s trail anew. The Eastern River, now as fast-flowing as its siblings, reached Erestia’s prone form and carried her the remaining distance into the sea, allowing the heat to fade and her strength to return.   With this, Escalonia as a habitable land was born, for the Central Lake and the four great Rivers that stemmed from it helped to moisten the dry continent, encouraging plants to grow, so that in time it became a verdant paradise.