Dendri's Account
It is hard to say where I should begin. There is a short version, and a long version - and were I to tell the long version in complete and thorough detail then doubtless I would not have finished by the time that you had passed from this world and your children's children were old and grey. My part in this spans a little shy of two millenia, and that is but a fraction of the totality. And in any case, there are so many details and tangents that it is hard to keep them all in my head after all this time. When you have lived as long as I have, so many stories begin to sound alike. Forgive me, therefore, my mistakes and omissions.
Long ago - before I was so much as an egg - there was a country called Alversa. It was an alliance of sorts, between the Tribes of Earth - the humans, the elves, the dwarves and the gnomes, the orcs and hobgoblins, the gnolls and the halflings, and probably at least a dozen or so others - who sought to take the powers of the gods for their own. No doubt they believed that their decisions were righteous and justified; perhaps they were. It was a dangerous world back then, they say, and not all those that would call themselves gods are holy.
The Tribes of Earth searched far and wide for knowledge. They sent emissaries into the depths of the Periphery, to the Djinn and the Dao, the Efreet and the Marid; to the domains of the fey and to the dark places wherein crept the Serpents of Iniquity. They came to the dragons and sought out our knowledge - and perhaps regrettably we turned them away; they even found a way to the great fastness of the giants to seek their counsel. And then, at last, they came across the ones that would grant them the answers that they sought. Those of the Oil, the Dwellers in the Deep, the Old Enemy - the ones we called Ab'ilittu. In the modern parlance - aboleth. And, alas, it was from that quarter that they learned the hidden ways of the universe - and at a price so trivial that they should perhaps have questioned why exactly the aboleths were willing to give up such secrets so easily…
The greatest among them undertook a work of magic and engineering, the like of which has never been seen before or since, and built a machine by which they would remake the world. And they built nine Thrones by which the machine would steer - a throne for each of the elements and forces, and one to hold the centre.
They were the Paragons of Azoth, and they were nine in number. And with their terrible, miraculous machine, they devoured the source of godhood - and in doing so, forever changed the fabric of reality. They reshaped the elements, tearing from them eight threads of power that you may know as the eight divisions of magic: from the fire came conjuration; from the water, evocation; from the earth, transmutation; from the air, enchantment; from fate, abjuration; from will, divination; from time, necromancy; and from space, illusion. The codification of all magic became possible from this action.
They gained power beyond all power, and stood among the gods as if as equals - but they were blind as to the true consequences of their deeds, for the Aboleths had betrayed them.
Imagine the universe as a cube, tumbling through the void. The cube has eight corners - these are the eight elements. The faces and edges of the cube are facets of reality beyond the physical - some philosophers are apt to call them "planes". And imagine that the cube is filled with a vapour, surrounding a pearl - the pearl in the centre of the cube is the physical world, and the vapour is what some call the "periphery". Now, imagine that at the centre of each face of the cube, there is a point where the elemental forces meet - these are the Great Gates, by which things might enter or leave the Cube, and pass into the void beyond. Long before the rise of Alversa, when the dragons still ruled the world, the aboleth came through these gates and became trapped here, spreading their corruption across the world as they called out through the gates to their loathsome kin. It was only through the sacrifice of the greatest of our kind that the gates were sealed, and the threat contained.
The Nine Paragons held ultimate power in their hands, internalising the very essence of divinity. They were in perfect balance, a microcosm of the universe. They spoke their will, and it was done… but one hesitated. It was but a moment's lapse in concentration, but it was enough to unbalance the wheel; and it tore the universe asunder and smashed open four of the Great Gates.
They panicked, and their fear and desperation imprinted upon the universe just as their good intentions had, and turned them inexorably to evil. In seeking to oust the tyrant gods, they became them.
There was a war, that had already been waged for a millenia before I hatched. The Paragons were mighty, but not omnipotent - and whilst they could not be killed, they could be contained and imprisoned.
There was a band of heroes that rose in that war, who had found the means to bind the Paragons. They called themselves the Oathcircle. One by one, they struck down the tyrant gods, and imprisoned them where their corruption could spread no further.
Elia was one of those heroes. She was orcish once - what she was when I met her, and is now, is complicated - and had dwelled in Tchokayahattak before it was destroyed. It was she who brought me into the fold, and who placed the geas upon the dragons that has bound us to certain obligations ever since - but all this is mere context. Tchokayahattak is the subject in question.
Tchokayahattak had been the seat of one of the Paragons. I know not their name, but the title they gave themselves was the "First Enchanter". They sought to unify the world under their rule - not just the physical world, but all the planes of creation - and there was no limit to what they would do to achieve this. The armies of the free battered at the walls of Tchokayahattak to no avail - for the power of the First Enchanter had made the city impenetrable to force of arms.
The leader of the Oathcircle - her name was Hasti, and she was of the serpent-people you call "Yuan-Ti" - developed a plan. There was a weapon, you see, that they had recovered from one of the Paragons that they had bound - I suppose it may have been Lord Shaper - which they believed would allow them to breach the walls of Tchokayahattak. They smuggled it into the city under cover of darkness, and set it to activate at the time of their choosing. But Hasti did not truly understand the weapon, and it was far more powerful than she had anticipated: the weapon incinerated the city and blighted the earth for a hundred miles around. That weapon - it is that which caused the Desolation.
Elia could not forgive Hasti for destroying her homeland… And Hasti could not forgive herself either. The guilt and remorse for what she had done, the weight of the million lives that she had snuffed out in a moment - it was too much to bear. It broke Hasti, and it broke the Oathcircle; I know not what became of her, for Elia tells me that the majority of the Oathcircle parted ways thereafter.
But the weapon that had devastated Tchokayahattak was not itself destroyed - merely quiescent. It lay buried beneath the ruins of the city, and when the remaining members of the Oathcircle learned this, they swore that they would never allow it to be used again. They weaved a spell of binding about the city, isolating it from the world so that none - save for them - could ever reach it. And for a time, that was sufficient.
Those who remained with the Oathcircle continued their mission, and in time the last of the Paragons - whom was referred to as the Merciful One - was confronted in the ancient city of Pardatheum, and bound beyond the Mountains of Na'azh. It was in this battle that I first fought alongside Elia, as a knight of the Wyrm Council, for the dragons had granted their backing to the Oathcircle many centuries before due to the threat that the Paragons of Azoth posed to us.
When the dust settled, and the Merciful One was bound to his prison of darkness, only two of the Oathcircle remained - Elia of Tchokayahattak, and Amuriel of Vash Edom. The world was - for the most part - safe once more. But the Paragons were not gone, merely bound - and just as it was within the power of mortals to bind them, so would it be within the power of mortals to loose them again. Worse, we knew that whilst we had reduced the Paragons to a state of half-existence, they were not altogether powerless.
It is a difficult paradox: the more that they are remembered, the more that they have power - that is one of the reasons why we have sought to forget their names - but to forget them entirely would be to leave open the way for their return. Whilst to bind them was the labour of many lifetimes, to unbind them might yet be possible entirely by accident - thus must a guard ever be maintained. Thus was sworn the Oath of the Long Watch:
"I call the Solars and the Paraeons to bear witness, for I pledge myself to the world.
Against Those Beyond the Gates, do I stand.
Against the Bound Ones, do I stand.
Against the Nameless Gods, do I stand.
Against all that would threaten the mortal world, do I stand.
I bind myself to eternal vigilance against all these threats.
With my Oath-Siblings, do I stand.
With the Sentinel Wyrms, do I stand.
With all who seek to defend the mortal world, do I stand.
I bind myself to eternal loyalty to my comrades in arms and to my duty.
By strength of will, do I stand.
By fire and steel, do I stand.
By all the invisible powers of the air, do I stand.
I pledge myself to eternal discipline and mastery over all these things, for they are my sword and my shield.
By the Blood of the Azoth and the dead of Tchokayahattak, this do I swear." Amuriel and Elia both swore this oath, as did we of the Wyrm Council who stood with them: Myself, Hassoreliath the Red, Morkatherit the Blue, and Zuravatuul the Brass. Many have sworn it's like since - though the years have somewhat diluted its purpose and its power. Now, I said that the wards on Tchokayahattak were sufficient - and at the time that they were made, it was true. But they were bound to the Oathcircle, and should Elia and Amuriel both fall, then wards would fail - and if one of them were to betray the oath, they could pass through easily and retrieve the weapon. And perhaps if any other members of the Oathcircle had secretly survived, they might be able to do the same. I don’t know which of these seemed the more likely threat at the time, as this discussion occurred at some time before the fall of the Merciful One, but Elia told me that they had considered all the angles and possibilities, and concluded that the city had to be more thoroughly protected. If nothing else, Elia believed that the weapon could be used to free some of the Bound - I don't recall how she came to this conclusion, but from what I remember of it, it seemed plausible enough - and so something had to be done to shore it up. And this is where Melekhandra comes into it. There was once a Dwarven city called Vash Ossai, which I am told lies far beneath the modern city of Cameri. It was a city renown for its necromantic prowess; they were not sworn to any of the Paragons, but did have alliances of a sort with the First Enchanter of Tchokayahattak, and with the Deathlords - the servants of another one of the Paragons we called the Lord of the Tower. When Tchokayahattak was destroyed, they were convinced that the Oathcircle would come for them next - thus they capitulated, and forswore their old allies. As part of the peace agreement, Elia and the Queen of Vash Ossai - Melekhandra - agreed that Vash Ossai would help to guard the ruins of Tchokayahattak, so that the weapon could never be recovered. Vash Ossai’s power stemmed from their “necromantic engines” - which through some means that I do not entirely comprehend were able to harvest the vital energy of living beings and use it as a great well of power. At Elia’s instruction, they used the engine to create a great storm of energy within the periphery that cloaked the city of Tchokayahattak from all magical interference. Nothing could reach it through teleportation, nor could it be scried upon, nor the wards pierced from outside; were any to reach the city by land they would find that their magic would fail them, and if they approached too close then the power of the storm would pull their souls from their bodies and leave them as mindless husks. Had Vash Ossai stood, this storm would have raged forevermore. But when the Lord of the Tower was bound, and his Deathlords fell into infighting as they sought to take his place, Vash Ossai fell. Its doom came at the hand of the one they called Ambrosius, who besieged the city, mortally wounded its queen in battle, and breached its engines before finally being repulsed. The magi of Vash Ossai managed to keep the engines stable for long enough to evacuate much of the city, including its dying queen, before the wards that contained the power of the engines finally collapsed, scouring the city of all that lived. Vash Ossai was no more, but there were stores of necromantic power buried in the earth which could still be tapped. The storm could be maintained - not forever, but perhaps for long enough that another solution could be found. At our last calculations, we had at least ten thousand years left - that was perhaps three centuries ago. And so Melekhandra, with her dying words, swore a binding oath to maintain the storm until the Oathcircle were able to find a way of destroying the weapon - or, gods forbid, there came such a time as it would have to be used again. Under what awful chain of circumstance that might be justified, Elia was ever silent - though I have my suspicions. The tomb that you entered was the central node by which the stores of power could be drawn and directed, and the storm maintained. Melekhandra's spirit would watch over the place, protect it from intruders, and make whatever adjustments were needed to ensure its persistence. The Tomb itself would also be warded by the power of Vash Ossai. No ward can be impenetrable, but certain baffles can be made incredibly difficult to overcome. In the case of the Tomb there was one such defence: the Unfound Ward. This rendered the Tomb impossible to locate by means mundane or magical, save by one who had visited it before; this was Amuriel's own invention, and one of the wards also placed on Tchokayahattak. The ward would persist for as long as at least one soul upon this earth knew of the place - and only three did: Elia, Amuriel, and Melekhandra. Thus if both Elia and Amuriel were to die, whilst Melekhandra's spirit remained she would yet be able to keep the Tomb concealed, and Tchokayahattak protected by the storm. I have not seen Elia in almost two hundred years. Her soul is hidden from me, and I cannot scry her location. It is possible that she is dead; it is possible that she yet lives - I have no way of telling, nor do I have any method of contacting her. Since Amuriel’s death - which was, if my memory serves, in the year that the Basilisk Queens fell - she has become increasingly distant. Even I, who was her closest confident and friend aside from Amuriel, was pushed aside - I wonder if perhaps that was one tragedy too many, and the burden of the aeons drove her to despair as it did Hasti. And yet, the tomb was found. Elia was the only one who should have been able to reach the Tomb from without. Even I did not know its location until it called out to me. That you - or any other - managed to find it is proof that something has gone terribly awry. You spoke of a shapeshifter, that could assume the appearances of others without recourse to formulaic illusion. Such things… they are not known in the modern age, but they did exist, long ago. Not all of the First Enchanter’s followers died at Tchokayahattak - some escaped, and among them were certain agents whom had been by potent magics stripped of form, that they could assume whatever shape should please them. It is an art which is dangerous indeed, for it calls upon forces that dwell beyond the Gate of Matter - an entity that is sometimes called the Formless Foulness. After the end of the War of Binding we were aware that some of these creatures persisted, and we hunted them down and destroyed them as we sought to do with all those that remained loyal to the Bound Paragons. We had believed ourselves successful. Perhaps we were not. If these shapeshifters are still out there, and still loyal to their ancient master - I wonder if perhaps they have discovered through some means the secret of Tchokayahattak’s defences. And perhaps if they were able to get to Elia, then maybe through some means they were able to compel her to give up the location of the tomb. I had thought that she would most certainly die before doing so… but perhaps her will faltered, and she gave up the secret. Though it pains me deeply to consider it, that is the most likely explanation I can come up with. Paths diverge. There are many directions that I might make my next move… many directions in which we might make our next moves - if, that is, you would join me in this endeavour? I had hoped to call upon the Wyrm Council but matters… Have overtaken, and it is not safe for us to do so. Serves me right for not keeping up with politics. Hassor has made it quite clear that he will not back my call for the council to meet unless I agree to certain conditions which I find deeply distasteful. Morkath is of the same mind. Zura… Zura, I fear, is dead, though I have no definite proof. And absent the will of the Council, Hassor and Morkath are not obligated to anything of substance. They won't be of any help for the time being. But we do have options. We might seek out Elia and ascertain if she still lives. A difficult task, though perhaps not insurmountable. There are places that I know she frequented, and caches of supplies that she concealed which might conceivably give some clue as to her likely whereabouts. We might hunt for the shapeshifter that escaped. Again, this will be difficult - but you know now at least some of its nature and capabilities and that might give you the edge you need. We might seek to enter Vash Ossai, in the hope that something there might shed light on the situation. This is not a straightforward task, but there may yet be a way; perhaps the dwarves might hold some knowledge of this. We might seek to consolidate our position. Did you, perchance, try to stop the process once the Tomb had been activated? You are braver than you look… and perhaps lucky that you didn't blow yourselves up in doing so. In any case you were partially successful - the storm has not been entirely calmed, and even if our enemies were to march for Tchokayahattak they would not yet be able to enter. They will not be able to seize the initiative as they may have hoped, and will be unable to press their advantage immediately - if we were to find suitable allies, we may be able to improve our chances of stopping them. And, indeed, there may be other options. What say you?
Against Those Beyond the Gates, do I stand.
Against the Bound Ones, do I stand.
Against the Nameless Gods, do I stand.
Against all that would threaten the mortal world, do I stand.
I bind myself to eternal vigilance against all these threats.
With my Oath-Siblings, do I stand.
With the Sentinel Wyrms, do I stand.
With all who seek to defend the mortal world, do I stand.
I bind myself to eternal loyalty to my comrades in arms and to my duty.
By strength of will, do I stand.
By fire and steel, do I stand.
By all the invisible powers of the air, do I stand.
I pledge myself to eternal discipline and mastery over all these things, for they are my sword and my shield.
By the Blood of the Azoth and the dead of Tchokayahattak, this do I swear." Amuriel and Elia both swore this oath, as did we of the Wyrm Council who stood with them: Myself, Hassoreliath the Red, Morkatherit the Blue, and Zuravatuul the Brass. Many have sworn it's like since - though the years have somewhat diluted its purpose and its power. Now, I said that the wards on Tchokayahattak were sufficient - and at the time that they were made, it was true. But they were bound to the Oathcircle, and should Elia and Amuriel both fall, then wards would fail - and if one of them were to betray the oath, they could pass through easily and retrieve the weapon. And perhaps if any other members of the Oathcircle had secretly survived, they might be able to do the same. I don’t know which of these seemed the more likely threat at the time, as this discussion occurred at some time before the fall of the Merciful One, but Elia told me that they had considered all the angles and possibilities, and concluded that the city had to be more thoroughly protected. If nothing else, Elia believed that the weapon could be used to free some of the Bound - I don't recall how she came to this conclusion, but from what I remember of it, it seemed plausible enough - and so something had to be done to shore it up. And this is where Melekhandra comes into it. There was once a Dwarven city called Vash Ossai, which I am told lies far beneath the modern city of Cameri. It was a city renown for its necromantic prowess; they were not sworn to any of the Paragons, but did have alliances of a sort with the First Enchanter of Tchokayahattak, and with the Deathlords - the servants of another one of the Paragons we called the Lord of the Tower. When Tchokayahattak was destroyed, they were convinced that the Oathcircle would come for them next - thus they capitulated, and forswore their old allies. As part of the peace agreement, Elia and the Queen of Vash Ossai - Melekhandra - agreed that Vash Ossai would help to guard the ruins of Tchokayahattak, so that the weapon could never be recovered. Vash Ossai’s power stemmed from their “necromantic engines” - which through some means that I do not entirely comprehend were able to harvest the vital energy of living beings and use it as a great well of power. At Elia’s instruction, they used the engine to create a great storm of energy within the periphery that cloaked the city of Tchokayahattak from all magical interference. Nothing could reach it through teleportation, nor could it be scried upon, nor the wards pierced from outside; were any to reach the city by land they would find that their magic would fail them, and if they approached too close then the power of the storm would pull their souls from their bodies and leave them as mindless husks. Had Vash Ossai stood, this storm would have raged forevermore. But when the Lord of the Tower was bound, and his Deathlords fell into infighting as they sought to take his place, Vash Ossai fell. Its doom came at the hand of the one they called Ambrosius, who besieged the city, mortally wounded its queen in battle, and breached its engines before finally being repulsed. The magi of Vash Ossai managed to keep the engines stable for long enough to evacuate much of the city, including its dying queen, before the wards that contained the power of the engines finally collapsed, scouring the city of all that lived. Vash Ossai was no more, but there were stores of necromantic power buried in the earth which could still be tapped. The storm could be maintained - not forever, but perhaps for long enough that another solution could be found. At our last calculations, we had at least ten thousand years left - that was perhaps three centuries ago. And so Melekhandra, with her dying words, swore a binding oath to maintain the storm until the Oathcircle were able to find a way of destroying the weapon - or, gods forbid, there came such a time as it would have to be used again. Under what awful chain of circumstance that might be justified, Elia was ever silent - though I have my suspicions. The tomb that you entered was the central node by which the stores of power could be drawn and directed, and the storm maintained. Melekhandra's spirit would watch over the place, protect it from intruders, and make whatever adjustments were needed to ensure its persistence. The Tomb itself would also be warded by the power of Vash Ossai. No ward can be impenetrable, but certain baffles can be made incredibly difficult to overcome. In the case of the Tomb there was one such defence: the Unfound Ward. This rendered the Tomb impossible to locate by means mundane or magical, save by one who had visited it before; this was Amuriel's own invention, and one of the wards also placed on Tchokayahattak. The ward would persist for as long as at least one soul upon this earth knew of the place - and only three did: Elia, Amuriel, and Melekhandra. Thus if both Elia and Amuriel were to die, whilst Melekhandra's spirit remained she would yet be able to keep the Tomb concealed, and Tchokayahattak protected by the storm. I have not seen Elia in almost two hundred years. Her soul is hidden from me, and I cannot scry her location. It is possible that she is dead; it is possible that she yet lives - I have no way of telling, nor do I have any method of contacting her. Since Amuriel’s death - which was, if my memory serves, in the year that the Basilisk Queens fell - she has become increasingly distant. Even I, who was her closest confident and friend aside from Amuriel, was pushed aside - I wonder if perhaps that was one tragedy too many, and the burden of the aeons drove her to despair as it did Hasti. And yet, the tomb was found. Elia was the only one who should have been able to reach the Tomb from without. Even I did not know its location until it called out to me. That you - or any other - managed to find it is proof that something has gone terribly awry. You spoke of a shapeshifter, that could assume the appearances of others without recourse to formulaic illusion. Such things… they are not known in the modern age, but they did exist, long ago. Not all of the First Enchanter’s followers died at Tchokayahattak - some escaped, and among them were certain agents whom had been by potent magics stripped of form, that they could assume whatever shape should please them. It is an art which is dangerous indeed, for it calls upon forces that dwell beyond the Gate of Matter - an entity that is sometimes called the Formless Foulness. After the end of the War of Binding we were aware that some of these creatures persisted, and we hunted them down and destroyed them as we sought to do with all those that remained loyal to the Bound Paragons. We had believed ourselves successful. Perhaps we were not. If these shapeshifters are still out there, and still loyal to their ancient master - I wonder if perhaps they have discovered through some means the secret of Tchokayahattak’s defences. And perhaps if they were able to get to Elia, then maybe through some means they were able to compel her to give up the location of the tomb. I had thought that she would most certainly die before doing so… but perhaps her will faltered, and she gave up the secret. Though it pains me deeply to consider it, that is the most likely explanation I can come up with. Paths diverge. There are many directions that I might make my next move… many directions in which we might make our next moves - if, that is, you would join me in this endeavour? I had hoped to call upon the Wyrm Council but matters… Have overtaken, and it is not safe for us to do so. Serves me right for not keeping up with politics. Hassor has made it quite clear that he will not back my call for the council to meet unless I agree to certain conditions which I find deeply distasteful. Morkath is of the same mind. Zura… Zura, I fear, is dead, though I have no definite proof. And absent the will of the Council, Hassor and Morkath are not obligated to anything of substance. They won't be of any help for the time being. But we do have options. We might seek out Elia and ascertain if she still lives. A difficult task, though perhaps not insurmountable. There are places that I know she frequented, and caches of supplies that she concealed which might conceivably give some clue as to her likely whereabouts. We might hunt for the shapeshifter that escaped. Again, this will be difficult - but you know now at least some of its nature and capabilities and that might give you the edge you need. We might seek to enter Vash Ossai, in the hope that something there might shed light on the situation. This is not a straightforward task, but there may yet be a way; perhaps the dwarves might hold some knowledge of this. We might seek to consolidate our position. Did you, perchance, try to stop the process once the Tomb had been activated? You are braver than you look… and perhaps lucky that you didn't blow yourselves up in doing so. In any case you were partially successful - the storm has not been entirely calmed, and even if our enemies were to march for Tchokayahattak they would not yet be able to enter. They will not be able to seize the initiative as they may have hoped, and will be unable to press their advantage immediately - if we were to find suitable allies, we may be able to improve our chances of stopping them. And, indeed, there may be other options. What say you?
Comments