Sunday, February 24, 2008

The First Age

The Simsaur were lizards; giant lizards. They had great power granted to them by L’cn’Bok, who granted them the ability to act as his stewards, placing them over the Seven worlds and the inhabitants thereof. A part of them was thus in license to control these things and to grant over themselves as well.

Their power came through a small gland in the back of their head that tied their essenence to L’cn’Bok. Their eyes were large but only capable of seeing in black and white since they were not tied to any of the seven worlds directly. They did not have hands, and only had very limited intelligence at first. They ate, drank, mated and moved about the realm in tranquility. They dance by moving in tide with the stars in the heavens. They were not stoppable by any of the creatures on Green, and could eat and do as they wished with no harm or fear. They worshiped L’cn’Bok through their slow low rumbles in the night.

2nd Passing – The S’ims’aur began to change when a few of them created a cave network within a mountain as shelter from the rain and elements of the planet, since Green was quietly against them since L’cn’Bok had given them license over her without her permission. Nothing overt of course, but here and there a little hostility and consternation where she could. Once the other S’ims’aur saw this they began to follow suit. More importantly, they began to try and think of other ways to improve their situation.

The first S’ims’aur to realize the qualities of life were passed on to other life did so before any other major discovery was made by their people. They already lived very long lives and thus began a series of agricultural breakthroughs that greatly improved their food stores. As time improved they began to have more time for other pursuits. Eventually, one of them realized the same principles could be applied toward non plant species.

First, they began to use this to improve themselves. Before, they had simply selected whatever random traits appealed to each other, including social grace and physical appearance. All of this went by the wayside as they determined that mental agility and spiritual essence were the most critical to their well being as a species. They planned very long term. There were some false starts, since they believed that by improving themselves they would improve their progeny further until this was disproved, but in the process they facilitated new and improved methods of learning. With all of this focus on the intellect and learning new things, combined with their extra time that they could spend in the cities, they began to want for things to focus their newfound time and intelligence upon.

The S’ims’aur realized that they could breed their livestock and other animals for intelligence as well. They began to increase the intelligence of one animal in particular, the Gorinfa, which they had amused themselves with by watching its aggressive behavior towards others of its own kind, a concept alien to the S’ims’aur. At one point, the Gorinfa rebelled against the S’ims’aur, but it was a primitive and paltry thing, easily put down. Still, the S’ims’aur learned the lesson well and began to also breed tameness and loyalty toward the S’ims’aur into them as well.

At one point, an idle bet between S’ims’aur showed the strength and aggression that they were willing to show towards one another in a whole new light. What started as small individual matches, soon began to be organized team events. Eventually, one of the S’ims’aur houses realized how effective that they were at other things, and quietly used their Gorinfa to assault a rival house.

This caused a major uproar among them, with many who were determined to find the culprit. An investigation ensued, and the Gorinfa were destroyed and their owners banished to the world of Indigo. However, once the tactic had been used once, little by little the old order passed away as armed city-states began to rise up. Fierce warlords began to fight each other and lay waste to the countryside all around them.

Green wailed at the blood being spilled on her sacred soil. She called to L’cn’Bok in pain and pleaded with him to reign in the S’ims’aur. L’cn’Bok was moved and so he commanded the S’ims’aur to stop fighting one another. Green rejoiced, and for a time there was peace. However, as long as the S’ims’aur were, they eventually died away, and when the fourth generation after L’cn’Bok’s mandate had died, they began to once again pick up the powers of war, and breeding Gorinfa in large numbers.

One amongst their number, Ka’las’sade, remembered the warnings of L’cn’Bok and was afeared that the S’ims’aur would lose their powers and dominion if they were not stopped. He tried using reason first, but proved unable to do so. So he used his mind, and used his powers to grant of his essence, and the essence of Green (who gave her consent) to give the Gorinfa power to defeat the smaller armies of the S’ims’aur. Bit by bit he conquered them until he united them all into one dominion that covered all of the face of the land.

3rd Passing – The empire reigned for tens of thousands of years. Massive works were built, and two other servant races were created; the Gorfim, flying reptiles with extremely agile hands, and the Gorhiss, slow but powerful humanoids that had the strength of the S’ims’aur but the shape and utility of the Gorinfa. The Gorhiss were far more docile, even almost pacifistic. When further rebellions were attempted, the Gorinfa’s numbers slowly began to decline because they were seen as weapons of war and a threat to the state.

There were those who saw the number of S’ims’aur as a threat since they had no natural enemies on the planet. Since they had no natural or unnatural enemies besides themselves, and since war had long since been almost eradicated among them, their numbers swelled until they began to become more than the world of Green could handle. It did not help that Green did everything in her power to harm them. Their license over her, granted by L’cn’Bok limited what she could do against them, but in the end it was enough to cause S’ims’aur to begin to want for food; at least the poorest among them. While even the least S’ims’aur had tremendous magical power, they were not able to replenish their essence with magic. They could force Green to obey them, but since they were not able to harness its essence, they were forced to use their own or that of other lesser creatures. This could create food, but the law of entropy showed that sooner or later they would run out of resources.

As the population began to increase, the pressure for revolt grew. Eventually, the emperor was slain and several large city-states emerged yet again, ruled by bands of powerful families that claimed lineage to the first emperor. During this time, two of the states threw off the shackles of the previous ruling class and established a new order. The first, St’orh’ista, claimed rule by power. They had the backing of the clerics of L’cn’Bok and claimed that any government should be based on the usage of the powers granted them by their god. The second, Ls’ys’tra claimed government by intelligence. Those who were the best educated and well versed in the vast stores of knowledge that had been accumulated over time were the most fit to rule. Wisdom, in their view, was the source of triumph, not power or blood.

They were far more efficient in the organization of their societies than the cities that ran on the old ways. The St’orh’istan and Ls’ys’tran ideologies grew stronger and more popular, with factions in every city believing in their way of life. Finally, St’orh’istan managed to convert another city to their way of thought through a bloodless revolution. Ls’ys’tran would have none of it and began to increase their pressure on other cities. Soon, almost all of the cities had formed with one league or another. War, real war, the likes of which the world had never seen loomed on the horizon.

It started civilly enough at first. Both sides wanted to maintain moral superiority over the other, so they agreed to a code of conduct with each other. They maintained this for a while, but things began to escalate and the stakes became higher. Finally, a surprise attack on the city of St’orh’ista caused them to panicky. They pulled out all the stops and began to attack the softer targets that they had honorably ignored before. Problems began to arise.

They began to work on larger and larger weapons until finally they were able to store up enough destructive energy into a stored essence crystal that they could destroy an entire city. The devastation was tremendous, and three cities were destroyed before they finally realized the horror of what they were doing. As magical recreations of their efforts were passed around from place to place, people demanded that they take action.

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