A brief history of what we are.
Scribed by Mortez, the Ancient.
Long shall we praise the God of Rebirth, the Lord Gogel! He who defies death and infuses our souls in the material plane with new shells and bodies, to forever spread the word of the undying to the fleshborn legions.
And so, uneducated one, you must begin your knowledge with the understanding of how in the earliest days we did exist on a world known as Maea, far beyond the reaches of the black void, and it is here that our Lord first surfaced with his own breath. He was but one of a legendary race known as the Khettata--the Warlords of Maea. To the races of Barbarians and lawless gypsies, the Khettata provided discipline and societal structure for centuries, ending primitive tribal warfare and introducing organization and education.
Yet, the Khettata were born merely of flesh. After a great epoch, the waning decay of time brought the Khettata to weakness and rot. However, their tribes had eventually grown into a vast and mighty kingdom known as the Ganymide Empire, and as the Khettata slowly died, they worked feverishly to preserve their overseers, their teachers. And so, great machines were made, built into their very chest cavities, so that the souls of their masters would not escape their bodies in death.
Yet, even this invention would begin to falter as thousands of years would pass in the halls of their mountain citadel of Tarmenex. The Ganymide understood that only the Khettata could protect them from the forces of the Dakatta, whom were the treacherous kin of the Khettata that disagreed with our core philosophies, and desired to stop at nothing short of our annihilation. As the Khettata faced extinction, and the Ganymide realized their own doom, a hero emerged, a single ancient and wise Khettata, the Lord Gogel, whose wings were illuminated like pearls and whose maw clenched with unyielding strength.
"To bend the natural laws of the physical world, to interweave the spiritual and the material is our only salvation." So spoke Gogel, one of the eldest of the Khettata. Through the sheer willpower of his omniscient mind, Gogel created a seperate dimension where time and space do not apply to our world. Here, he could study for decades and allow it to pass as mere minutes in our world. He called this great plane of endless study the Van'Ci. In order to save his people, Gogel retreated within this plane.
It was here that The Lord had discovered a way that the rules of nature could yield to the thoughts of men. And thus, on our eighteenth day of his study, the powers of Magic were created. With a newfound weapon of war, the Ganymide assailed the armies of the Dakatta, pushing them to the far reaches of the world. With newfound freedom, the rest of Maea were soon indoctrinated to the Virtues of the Khettata; of pleasure, bloodlust, and fulfillment with self happiness.
For some ten-thousand of our years, all was well. Through the power of the Van'Ci, the Khettata would remain undying, and the priests of Gogel were satisfied in their studies of what we call Necromancy. Death was no longer feared but understood and controlled. And, that would be when the opposing tides would again stir.
The Dakatta, led by the wicked Nebuloth of Gaea, believing our studies contradicted their vague moral interpretations of what is allowed and not allowed, managed to discover a way to destroy all that we created; by using an opposing force to our Magic, a sundering light that could destroy the purity of our darkness.
The War of Maea began on the year of 10,031 of the Van'Ci calendar. The Dakatta unleashed a war which ravaged not only the planet but even shook the stars around us. The tale of this war is too long to be told here, but in the end all was lost. The Dakatta destroyed themselves along with the Khettata. In the aftermath, the whole of the Ganymide were massacred. It was believed most, if not all, life on Maea became extinct. However, save for one group of men.
The Lord Gogel's priesthood remained hidden from battle having foreseen defeat, and within the rubble they found the gigantic body of their King under the ruins of Tarmenex, with his spirit stuck between worlds; because of the ancient machinations within his chest cavity, his soul was stuck between the Van'Ci and the physical plane, in a state of torment.
The priests of Gogel understood that the existence of the Van'Ci rested on the shoulders of Gogel, and that eventually Gogel's body would be fully destroyed, releasing his spirit and destroying all which he struggled to create, for the Van'Ci and Gogel were linked together as a single entity. To preserve this, Gogel used the last of his magical energy to impart his will, and his spirit, on a select human mind within the priesthood, and this would therefore give the human mind a complete control and power over the Van'Ci plane. The Prince of Gogel would be born.
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