All images by Nightcafe
Approaching the end of
The Second Era, the Order of the Central Forge committed an atrocious ritual. This ritual was made around a malformed tree, a tree that later came to be known as Stablewood. When the world was split apart into the realms of
Growth,
Stability, and
Decay, Stablewood was the one thing that stayed through all three of them, kept alive by the balance of energy it consumed from the three.
The Order of the Central Forge
The first era after The Shattering came to an end due to the cultists of the Order of the Jagged Whole, who obssessed over trying to return the land to its former glory under King Llarbyn. Their attempt failed, leaving the world highly unstable and constantly changing shape. The order disbanded very early into this Second Era, but their members spread their hopes of a reformed world. These ideas were passed down for thousands of years, ultimately forming a new cult, the Order of the Cenral Forge, whose mission it was to stop the world's constant oscillating changes. At last, in the year 10000, they committed their atrocious ritual. In a flat land they gathered at midnight, the time most constantly dark, around a willow tree, so decrepit that its malformations seemed uniform. In a uniform triangle they placed objects of consistency: bodies with blades in their necks to keep them dead, wings of the faire folk of single hues, pieces of the tree's own bark to tether all objects to the ritual, and many more nameless atrocities. They held themselves to the consistency of death by plunging long knives through their hearts into the tree's flesh, speaking with their final moments ghastly words to never be repeated. At the end of an era of change, the final transformation was a willow tree with three long roots streching to the corners of the rapidly splitting world and blood red leaves.
Dawndrinker
At the start of a new era, peoples found their worlds split apart, randomly condemning creatures and structures to differently disciplined worlds. At a new dawn, people and lands started on a consistent route, through constant evolution, never-ending decay, or a forceful state of unchanging stability. Stablewood drank them all. The tree with the bright red leaves stayed in an unknown flat plain in all three worlds, drinking away the continuity brought about by its long-dead garments. In Growth, it grew eternally, thick and tall. In Decay, it shrivelled far past what even something in that realm could sustain. And in Stability, it stood just as it did on that midnight, the center of a triangle defined now only by its own roots. It drank away that energy, the decay that it sapped from Growth, the evolution that it sapped from Decay, and both energies that it sapped from Stability. It feasted on them so merrily that it unknowingly took away from itself, an unknown course to both king and waiter.
Nexus Sickness
Unknown to Stablewood, in the land whose growth it promoted devloped a way to travel between its realms. A structure called
Nexus was made that could travel through its unseen roots to the other worlds. As more citizens of Growth spent more of their lives inside Nexus, they unknowingly spent travelled to Stability and Decay, letting Stablewood feast on their growth and increasing their levels of Decay. Hundreds of years after the Nexus program started, nexus sickness became the only plight to afflict the citiznes of Growth, as it was the one they couldn't stop. Afflicted people moved slower, had decreased cognitive function, and sometimes withered away altogether. To the peoples who had spent so long only moving forward, such a decay was bewildering. Their grief only led them to stay in Nexus more, however, as it had become a refuge of escapism for them. They unknowingly fed Stablewood even more, and unbalanced it, as well. The increase of growth energy overcame the decay inside of it, and the two energies collapsed across all three dimensions. At the end of a 5000 year long reign, the blood-leaved willow fell as its creators' wishes were once again put to the test...
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