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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Amaroq" data-source="post: 1281249" data-attributes="member: 15470">BONUS INSERT: A brief historyPaks finds Saraya in the court of the inn with a group of children, teaching them the history of the Titan’s War. She sits and listens.“Before the Gods,” Saraya tells the youngsters, “There were the Titans. Great elemental powers, they were, and you children should not speak their names. “In the Time Before, all the world was covered by water. Then came the titan Kadum. Out of stone, he crafted all the lands, gouging great trenches in the ocean floor and lifting vast continents above the waves. “Then came Gormoth, who created the plants and animals upon the land. He was not benevolent; his creations were his servants. When they say what he had wrought, however, the other Titans became jealous. Though they also attempted to create life, and some succeeded, none were able to create the equal of Gormoth’s creations. In anger, then, Mormo, the Mother of Serpents, poisoned Gormoth. Though horribly wounded, he could not die. Horribly tortured, he divulged his secrets, and the other Titans learned to craft their own beings. He became known as the Writhing Lord.“The other Titans turned away from Gormoth to practice their new art. Golthain discovered that some of the beings had feelings and thoughts. He nurtured the races, gathering up those cast off by his fellow Titans and gifting them with sanctuary. His creatures, including we humans, prospered. When this was discovered, he was punished by the other Titans, who blinded him and deprived him of his other senses, and destroyed many of his children.“The other Titans had learned to have children, however: and from their children were the Gods. Vangal was the eldest of the gods, wrought by Chern, Thulkas, and Lethene. Two of the female Titans, Gulaben and Lethene, bore Enkili the trickster. The other Titans had children in the normal way. Denev the Earth Mother had three children: Corean, son of Kadum; Hedrada, son of Golthain; and Tanil, daughter of Hrinruuk. Mormo, the Mother of Serpents, also had three children: Chardun, son of Gormoth; and the twins, Belsameth and Madriel, daughters of Mesos, the Sire of Sorcery.”One of the children had started speaking to his neighbor, and Saraya stopped to stare at him. He stopped, blushing. “Whose telling this story, you or me?” she asks, her eyes laughing despite her stern tone.  “So,” she continues, when she has silence again, “Golthagga took many of the creatures which were created, changing them and crossing them with others. Thus he earned the name “The Shaper”, as he created many of the strangest creatures: creatures half owl and half bear, creatures with the head and body of a lion, but the wings of a great eagle. Corean learned the art of forging from Golthagga, and the dwarves tell that they learned their smithing from him as well.“I will not tell you children of the years which followed; you are too young, and what little is known is terrifying. You need only know that over many Epochs, the Titans nearly destroyed the mortal races: Chern with his great plagues; Gaurak with gluttonous insects; the Serpent Queen with poisons; Lethene, when she blanketed the earth in darkness; Gulaben’s ice age; the Fire of Thulkas; and the many predators unleashed by Hrinruuk the Hunter.“Finally, Mesos, the Six-Armed One, taught the mortals the arcane arts. Previously, only sorcerers had access to the arcane, thanks to their titan blood; now, Mesos taught wizards. This was not good, or evil, by itself: for every good wizard, there was also a necromancer. However, the rise of arcane magic allowed us mortals to discover the Gods. “Many had worshipped the Titans, but the Titans spurned their worship. The Gods accepted worship, and in fact seemed to seek it. As the divine races worshipped them, they grew in power, eventually gaining enough strength to appear visibly on the earth. Seeing the way in which the Titans treated the divine races with such disregard, and hearing the many prayers of their supplicants, the Gods turned upon the Titans, and the Titans’ War began.“Great armies marched across the land, while Gods and Titans strove against each other. Great civilizations were destroyed, lands were knocked into the sea, and great mountain ranges grew where once there had been plains. The very Sands of Time were stilled, I know not how. The key to victory, however, was that the Titans were unable to work together, while the Gods made alliances, and strove together against them. Finally, Denev the Earth Mother sided with her children, and eventually the other Titans were struck down, one by one.”The children cheer. “They could not be killed, remember,” she says, “But each was trapped for eternity in different ways. Beneath the Mourning Marshes, forty miles south of us, Chern is entombed, which makes it a festering stinking wasteland, filled with disease. The Blood Sea runs red with the blood of Kadum, who is imprisoned beneath its surface. “With the defeat of the last Titan, the world was suddenly silent. Battles taking place at that very moment stilled, storms quieted, and fires seemed to pause and wait. Then, the Gods began The Great Remaking.“Madriel started the sun along its course through the skies, while Belsameth did likewise with the moon. Chardun bound the seasons with chains, balancing winter with summer, and ordaining that each shall give way to the next in its time. Vangal rekindled the fires of the earth, while Corean plucked sparks from his Forge to light the stars and Enkili restored the winds to their courses. “Denev was horribly wounded from the war, and Tanil helped her mother to lay down within the earth. She made a solemn oath that she would look after the plants and animals while she rested.“When all was ready, Hedrada touched his Hammer of Law to the Hourglass of the All, and set the Sands of Time in motion again. And that, children, was only one hundred and fifty years ago; it is that day from which we mark our calendar.”The children look suitably impressed. One child, however, the one who had spoken before, and been chastised, raises his hand in tentative question. “So what’s a titanspawn?” he asks.Saraya smiles at him. “Some think,” she tells him, “That it means ‘a creature created by the Titans.’ But all creatures were created by one of the Titans. It has come to mean, ‘one who worships the Titans,’ as opposed to we, ‘the divine races,’ who worship the Gods. You should not speak it, especially around the elves, for they worship Denev, and hear it as a slur. And you do not want to make an elf angry.”</blockquote>

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