NationStates Jolt Archive

((This is the history of a world loosely based upon some of aspects of life in ancient Sumer. I've changed a lot to make it my own world, after all.))

Part One: The Time Before the Ender

Age of the Dawn

Only fragments of legends remain of the eldest age. Whispers of myth drift through time to carry old tales and, perhaps, a tiny grain of truth.
Some believe the world was born when Nammu, goddess of the ocean, grew bored with the eternal perfection of the primordial sea and sky. She drew the waters of the sea back, and dry land was laid bare for the first time. Others insist that the beginning was more violent. Gods waged war in the heavens; where their blood was spilled became oceans, and the bodies of the fallen became continents. A few legends say that the world was lifted from the ashes of a world that went before, that time flows through a cycle that sees born and dead worlds as countless as the stars.

All that is known for sure is that the first age, the time of the gods, was an epoch of glory unmatched in the long years since. The Dingir walked amongst men, bringing civilization and justice. The Divine Laws mandated peace.

In time, mortals grew prosperous and numerous. They grew to be so many that the noise of their lives reached all the way to Heaven, and the gods could not bear it. They covered the world in a flood to quiet the mortals. Ea took pity upon them, and warned the mortals in time for some to be saved. This is how the first age ended.

Age of the Day

It came to pass that the survivors of the flood came to settle mostly upon a plain made fertile by the waters of the gods' deluge. It was secure, being hemmed in the north and east by mountain ranges, a desert to the west and a sea to the south.
The Men settled near the headwaters of the easternmost of twinned rivers, naming their city Enoch, or "Rebirth" in their language. They came to be known as Plainsmen. In the north, the Ul'qibish settled in the mountains and hills and were called halfmen. They worshipped a god new to the world. They called him Old Man of the Mountains, and his female descendents spoke for him and were called Daughters of the Old Man.

The elves settled in a forest to the east, taking up their duties as gardeners of the holy trees once more. Dwarves, too, returned the roots of the earth, to rebuild what they could of their soggy domain.

Generations passed and nine cities grew up out of the plains: Adab, Akkad, Bad-tibira, Byblos, Kish, Lagash, Nippur, Ur, and Uruk. The ten cities of Men formed a Covenant beneath the rule of Enoch, to govern in peace and unity.

Enoch became a city of learning and wisdom, shunning magic as the crutch of a superstitious mind. The knowledge of some became so great that creatures of metal pulled the carts of the city, and clockwork men stood vigil upon its steel walls. At last a great thinker devised a way to take off his body and place his mind into a machine.

The gods felt the death of his soul, and were furious. They marched with the army of the Covenant against Enoch and the Soulless Machine, and they tore down its walls, and cast the man out of existence.

Part Two:


The Ender's War: The Relics and the Beasts

The fury of the gods shook stars in the heavens. Their fear made the earth tremble. When they cast the Soulless Machine into the oblivion of Beyond, their scorn created the Ender.

They threw open the gate into that terrible gulf, and found they could not close it again. The least of Those Who Do Not Exist squeezed through the gate and took form for the first time. He smote Nammu and Utu, who sat in judgement over the Soulless Machine, and they fled, naming him Velth, "Ender" in the tongue of the Annunaki.

Velth went down into Enoch and gathered to him the people of that city. They were eager for revenge against the gods who had struck at them and the allies who had betrayed them in the name of fear. They bowed to the Unmaker of All, and fed him their names, and he grew fat upon their souls, and they became as he: demons clothed in flesh.

He took the names of the demons and used them to craft an eye pierced by thorns. This he gave to Ghroth, who was called the Harbinger, and who was the first bearer of a Relic. He was the first Great Beast, and he bore the Relic of Revenge.

The gates of Enoch flew open then, and a tide of unwholesome flesh broke over the army of the Covenant. Many died.

The Ender then left Enoch to lay seige to the Underworld. The Dingir greatly feared him, and would not ride to the aid of Ereshkigal, who was slain when the Underworld fell. The dead of that realm became fodder for the demonic army. Many of the souls were forged into a terrible blade named Relic of Power, which was given into the hands of Kingu, the mightiest demon below Velth and the second of the Great Beasts.

Velth took them to the Shadowed Lands, a dark reflection of the living world, a fragment of that which went before. From the almost-matter of the Dark Lands, Velth built up a fortress to turn the souls of the dead into the most base of demons, little more than mad animals. He also forged from shadowy metal a pair of wings, the Relic of Speed. These he grafted onto Nergal, a king in life who was a demon of pestilence after the fall of the Grey House. Swift as death became the third Great Beast.

Now, then, the Ender returned to the world which gave him birth. He burned the holy forest of the elves for a forge-flame as he wrought a collar. This he called the Relic of Life, which he placed upon the neck of Tarrasque, an elf who betrayed her people and her forest. It twisted her body, until she was as massive as a siege-beast and could never die.

Northward traveled the Ender and his horde, to the entrances into the Deep, whence the Dwarves had fled at the receeding of the floodwaters. Into the Deep went Velth alone, and he returned with an animated suit of stone armor. Golem was the name of the armor, and also the Relic of Armor, a living shell into which was bound the soul of a dwarven tyrant stripped of mind and body.

With the rolls of the Great Beasts nearly filled, and the power of the Relics nearly ready, Velth returned at last to Enoch. There he found the tattered remains of the army of the Covenant, who had become wicked men in long years of isolation. These men he touched, and their bodies were fouled and grew malformed. Men, they were, but they looked to be more feline than man. Into each Velth placed a shard of his power, and an entire race of new creatures became the last of the Great Beasts, each one gifted with part of the Relic of Rebirth.

Thus were the weapons of the Ender crafted from sorrow and pain.