The Kenku Manifesto - A Story from Old to Young

"Once, long ago, before the universe was as it is, before we ever came to the Broken City, before the gods were wiped from existence, we were a proud people. The Kenku stood tall over their fellows as a beacon of light and nobility. Our feathers were not blue, but gold; our throats were not empty, but had voices; our backs were not bare, but bore grand wings that carried us through the sky. Once, we were the chosen of the children races, the guardians of mortalkind. For millennia we were the vanguards against the forces of Destr, the vanquishers of evil… until one day we overstepped our bounds, and declared ourselves gods over the lesser races. The Multiplicity would not have this, and stripped us of our golden feathers and cast us out of the heavens.

"No longer could we proclaim ourselves as their chosen, as their representatives. They sent after us monsters and evils unspeakable, hoping to humble us and remind us of who ruled the cosmos. But still we carried on, refusing to give up and striving to earn our color back. We took to the skies, we rallied our fellow mortals, we once again held ourselves high and made ourselves a bastion of nobility, a beacon of light. We fought and toiled for centuries against the gods' monsters, and drove them back to the heavens from whence they came.

"But, once again, we pushed too far. One great king wanted not to earn back our golden shine, but to take it by force. He amassed a great army and took to the skies, only to be batted aside as though he were no more than an insect, an annoyance. The gods once again punished us for the actions of this king, and stripped us of our wings. This king and those who went with him perished, and the rest of our kind would never again take flight.

"Still, we carried on. We would not rest until we had redeemed ourselves. For centuries, perhaps millennia we toiled, sacrificed, died in an attempt to appease the gods. Eventually, though, we recognized the truth for what it was. They were done with us. Our time had passed. Our glory days were over. In an act of defiance, an attempt to find some form of retribution for all our wasted efforts, we committed our final and gravest sin: we forsook the gods. We cut ourselves off from them, preachers and priests abandoning their posts, holy books burned or buried, temples left to decay. We, as a people, turned to them and shouted "We are done serving you. From now on, we serve ourselves." This was when they took our voices, and this was when the darkest days in our history began.

"From there, our history becomes clouded. We became nomads, scavengers, and in some cases, street rats and thieves. Over time, we learned to make our own voices from the use of others. We learned how to survive on our own. We no longer had our white feathers, our grand wings, our melodic voices, but we still remained proud. Not as the guardians of the mortals, but as those who defied the gods and held themselves high because of it.

"We need not wings to be seen. We need not voices to be heard. We need not color to be proud. We will be seen. We will be heard. We have always been, and will always be, proud to call ourselves Kenku."

Purpose

This is a story of Kenku, told from generation to generation.

Type

Record, Historical

Medium

Oral Tradition / Word of Mouth