Hestia Locator - North West Corner

 

  

Well, despite many interruptions from the Distractions, both Major and Minor, I have managed to do another blog post. Amazing but true! Granted that is because I wrote most of this nearly a year ago and I’m just up dating the map and doing some proof reading. Well by updating the map I mean writing the on the names of places and including more icons to denote where capital cities are. Granted I am working with the assets that are not locked behind a pay wall on Inkarnate but right now I don’t have time to do a full hand painted map. Shame but it is the holidays so I’m having to work in the time limits I have.

So on to the main event.

Hesita as a planet is geologically activate, with many mountain ranges, both major and minor, a well as distinctive environmental bands and a diverse biosphere, supporting many different races as well ultra predators such as the dragons.

Surprisingly, the theory of continental shift is already beginning to circulate within the learned circles of the races of Hestia, although this is helped by the fact that  both the dwarfs and elves have much longer lifespans than humans, so what to a human is the stories of their grandfather's grandfather is childhood memory to an elf or dwarf. Added to that is the reverence for history and tradition that both races are characterised by and the result is a much greater body of evidence documenting the changing face of Hestia. It also helps to explain why the great body of water in the centre of the continent is a salt water body and not fresh, theorising that it was originally part of a sea that lead to the ocean that has since been isolated by the shifting of the bones of the land.

There is also evidence that the over all ocean level was lower at some point in the past, with diving species such as the Coral Dragons reporting the discoveries of submerged cities below the waves in the, comparatively, shallow coastal shelf areas of the oceans. This hints at the land masses being larger at some point in the past, though even the longest lived races cannot say when, some even speculating that it was before the events of the God War.

It should also be noticed that the surface of Hestia and the depths of her oceans are not the only habitat of Hestia and travellers should beware of creatures rising from these more hidden environs to hunt.

Regions 

 North West

 Furtherest to the north west, separated from the main land by a channel of the ocean, is the ruined Island Kingdom of Albion. As discussed in the Hestia Historical, this once thriving island heart of the Albion empire was decimated by the attentions of the Tomb Dragon Armasar Mockblight one thousand years ago. Having driven the expansion of the Albion Empire beyond sustainability, he watched it fall to the ravening energies of the Day of Reclamation and claimed the destroyed Capital as his lair. Warmed by an ocean current bringing hot water from the tropics, Albion is a temperate island and would be pleasant, if it wasn't for the fact that the land now crawls with the undead. The victims of the Day of Reclamation shamble and crawl across the land as the sun goes down, those who's bodies have decayed completely billow and wail as disembodies spirits, trapped in the last moments of free Will they possessed before the ritual destroyed them. Some gather around ruins that bare the signs of being schools at one point as if seeking the children that were once theirs. If any children survived the Day of Reclamation it is unknown but unlikely. If they did and managed to build a secure settlement then they have never managed to contact the outside world, leaving the status of the once globe encompassing Empire unclear. The few adventurers that have braved the shores of the Isle of Albion report a gloomy, mist shrouded country where the sun is never bright even at midday, the vegetation is dark leafed and unpalatable and large animals are absent. The largest carnivore appears to be foxes, the largest omnivores are badgers and the largest herbivores are hares and rabbits. There has also been a behaviour shift among the badgers with these big, shuffling mustelidaes now a day time forger, retreating to their burrows as the sun goes down. The only creatures apparently safe at night being insects, owls and bats. In short, the Isle of Albion is a hostile place with nothing to trade with the outer world. The only influence it still has on the outside world is the fear that the ghoul court may organise its madness enough to try and invade the main continent again, or that Armasar Mockblight's descendents may cast greedy eyes across the sea to the main land and come hunting for other civilisations to destroy.

On the continent, just to the east of the narrowest crossing point between the Isle of Albion and the mainland is the minor mountain range of the Kebneesian mountains. Hidden within this mountain range is the Kingdom of Sushnomi. Isolated both physically and culturally from the outside world, the Kingdom of Sushnomi seems to have no ready wish to interact with the outside world, or indeed, even speak with their neighbours. This appears to stem from a cultural shift that happened roughly four hundred years ago and may even be a result of the destruction of the Albion Empire, the long term fear of that event causing a generational shift in thinking that eventually cascaded into the fervent belief in the protective power of their god. Unfortunately their religion appears to be what some would call 'high demand' and as such they do not welcome the influence of outsiders. What traders who do manage to gain permission to take goods outside of the kingdom's boarders trade in furs, walrus ivory, timber and preserved fish. 

The Kebneesian Mountain range is divided in two by the Benezda gap, which Sushinomi is to the north of. This track of salt water and the Mustan Sea into which it runs is wild, unpredictable and violent, cut by many bottom tearing shoals and reefs as it flows up deep fjords to inter lace with the mountains. The weather is also cool, with mild summers and cold winters with heavy snow fall. This weather pattern is common to much of the area around the Mustan Sea and has resulted in a cluster of fairly small kingdoms that are controlled by how far travel can be reasonably be expected to be managed in the weather of winter, usually dictated by the out lying ridges of the mountain range, marshes, bogs, fens and other such environmental features, as well as the hunting patterns of some of the more aggressive predators and more magically infused beings. Crones are common in this area of the world, as well as other members of the less pleasant fae creatures and courts. Local guides are advised and as they are a proud people, the traveller would do well to not gain say their advise, least they discover themselves abandoned on the road.

Further to the west and south west, the kingdoms are larger and more politically active along the coast of the channel dividing the main land from the Isle of Albion. In recognition of the threat still posed by the Ghoul Empire, many of these Kingdoms have standing armies and advanced taxation systems to fund them. As such they are economically and politically engaged with their neighbours, sometimes even indulging in short lived, seasonal wars as they struggle against each other. These conflicts are usually limited as the fear of the Ghoul Empire and the orc hordes that call the mountains and wild places home remind the people that if they spend all their strength on destroying each other, then they will have nothing left over to defend themselves against the larger threat.

Example

Faransah curves along the coast, bordering the sea on one side and the kingdoms of Saksa, Dacia and Noria on the other until it reaches the Guardiao mountains. In times past it served as the buffer between the Elf lands and the depravation of the Albion Empire. As such it has a stronger connection to the Elven peoples than most, maintaining an Elvish Ambassador within the King’s Court. Due to the influence of the Sidhbe, the Faransah people have a reputation for being more refined and cultivated than many human kingdoms, even experimenting with a simplified script for its commoners and an expanded education system. This has led to a healthier population, with travelling bands of educators supplementing the village teachers and bringing equipment that reveals the hidden world of the tiny. ‘A Zoo in a Drop of Water’ is always a well attended class, revealing not only the hairy things that can live within drinking water but also the methods to eradicate them to prevent disease. Wash houses built into the same building as the village forge are also common. There are also rumours of a mechanical writing machine that is decreasing the time and expense of books with in the borders of the kingdom. News certainly seems to spread faster and further accurately within Faransah than in other Kingdoms.

Between the influence of the Sidhbe, a series of progressive monarchs and the work of the Righteous Judge and his family, Faransah is a strong country with a settled population. Despite this its history is not without conflict as the bordering kingdoms have had aggressive relationships with them. They see how the commoners are prospering and assume that it is because Faransah is much richer than they are and therefore they covert those riches, not realising that far from being vastly richer than they are, Faransah has merely worked to see a much fairer distribution of wealth throughout all their citizens.

As the coast starts curving down to the south west you come to the kingdom of Portasia. Bordered on the north and east by the minor range of the Guardiao Mountains and on the south by the major range of Althulas Mountains, Portasia is a sheltered, stable kingdom, carefully nurtured by a line of kings that have brokered trade deals and diplomatic relationships with its neighbours beyond the mountains, often acting as a neutral ground for negotiations and peace deals. The Kings of Portasia seek to be a stabilising influence on the world around them for the good of their own people but are not a sentimental family. People have their worth and they will find it and use it for the good of the society around them or the Kings of Portasia will make them do so. They are also known to forge teams out of wanted criminals to deal with more aggressive threats, both within their borders and without. There has been speculation that these 'King's Specials' have been involved in the past with, shall we say, rather direct interference in the succession of the neighbouring royal bloodlines but nothing has been proved so far. They do have a very stable relationship with Faransah, cultivated over many years.

Though Portasia does not employ a standing army as such, all males over the age of adulthood are required to spend the afternoon of the day of rest on the village green, practising with either the long bow or the crossbow under the supervision of the local marshal and weapons master. Some woman have even insisted on learning the crossbow, stating that orcs do not respect their persons when one of the hordes in the surrounding mountains gets it into its head to come a-raiding. It is almost concerning that these woman tend to have a greater drive for proficiency than their male counter parts. Portasia also reports being bothered by the occasional raid of the legendary Ash Elves but these reports are dismissed as fantasy by other kingdoms who know that these beings are legend alone.

 Beyond the eastern curtain wall of the the Guardiao Mountains begins the forest home of the elves. These enigmatic people are divided between many different sects and some would say races, though it is difficult to tell if they themselves categorise themselves as such. To those outside the mysterious courts of the elves the peoples of the elves seem to be as such:

 Sidhbe

 Also known as High Elves (some say High-and-Mighty Elves, particularly the dwarfs). Known for their exquisite artwork, poetry and literature, the Sidhbe also produce weapons of wonder, spells of world breaking power and vendettas that last for generations. Though these family intrigues rarely erupt into full violence as such behaviour is considered unseemly by the Sidhbe, they are none the less bitter and vicious. Families can rise or fall based on the out comes of one mistimed word at a social gathering. As Sidhbe elves can live for seven hundred years or more, these family disasters can have long lasting repercussions.

Sidhbe warriors are also without peer, fast, graceful and skilful beyond measure. There are very few that can best them with the blade and their battle tactics leave foes reeling and bleeding from death by a thousand cuts. About the only reason that they do not rule the world is because children are rare and cherished among them. That and they look down their elegant noses at all others.

As far as Sidhbe elves are concerned humans and dwarfs are smelly, short lived barbarians hardly better than orcs and due about as much regard. Indeed the only advantage that humans have over elves is the sheer speed with which they can breed but that is not enough to bring them any measure of respect from the Sidhbe courts. The Sidhbe are isolationist and keep to their cities and glittering towers, ignoring the rest of the world and barely interested if anyone from outside their circles come calling. Perhaps it is best to leave it as such as the Sidhbe are known for being extremely cruel, even to their own kind. The story of the Righteous Judge, Vil’tinoos Erevan, is a case in point. Having survived an absolutely vicious poison that laid him low for over a decade and aged him beyond anything that the elves had ever seen, he was sent to Faransah to be the Ambassador to the human court, fully believing that it was only temporary. It was decades before he discovered that he had been exiled from his homeland and his betrothal had been broken behind his back, his one time fiancee having married his older brother years before, without anyone letting him know. It is probably a good thing that he was already attached to Morwenna Flamesong, the Tuired dancer, whether he was admitting it or not, as Vil’tinoos is an extremely powerful sorcerer and he could have potentially made the Sidhbe court that exiled him seriously regret their duplicity.

 Metsaan

 Also known as Wood Elves. Slightly less aloof as their cousins the Sidhbe, the Metsaan live in close communities within the depths of the forests that circle the Sidhbe courts but appear to deal with them almost as rarely as humans do. This appears to be because of a cultural difference between the two races, one so ingrained that it has lead to a slight differentiation in appearance as well as attitude. Whereas the Sidhbe are tall, thin, pale to ghostliness with white to golden hair and blue eyes, the Metsaan elves are slightly shorter, of a stronger built and tend to be tanned, with corn gold to nut brown hair. Their eyes also tend to be various shades of brown, with occasional individuals that have tawny or ever yellow eyes. Their skill with the bow is legendary and their guerrilla fighting tactics have resulted in their lands being declared untouchable by all who have an ounce of sense.

Those who are allowed a look at their settlements come back speaking of wonders and marvels. Their houses are grown from living wood, doorways set in the living boles of trees, windows hidden among the branches, birds nesting in the foliage above and bats flittering at dusk from cavities left especially for them. There is no hard and fast boundary between the forest and the homes of the Metsaan, only a slightly higher abundance of food trees and shade tolerate crops dappled around the settlement. Indeed these food forests are now being experimented with by some human settlements to result in a communal food reserve in case that the more common crops fail due to bad weather.

Though Metaan families can develop feuds and rivalries, they rarely take on the depth and anger common among the Sidhbe. Their communities are marked more by a common effort and working together to keep each other safe and a respect for the balance of the natural world. They fear fire and drought and have a long standing enmity for orcs and dwarfs, orcs for their wholesale trampling and noise, while the forges of the dwarfs take the trees and produce pollution. The Metsaan are cautious of humans as humans can be as destructive to the forest as the fore mentioned races but there are those that have learnt to respect the Metsaan ways and trend lightly among the trees. Thus the Metaan are more likely to judge humans on a case by case basis than their instinctive distaste for orcs and dwarfs. Of the orc cross-breeds, they have a more reserved opinion. Though historically they have despised them for the same reason as their contempt for the orcs, they have in more recent times been able to come to an understanding with this magically created race. If the orc cross-breeds stay on their side of the border and keep the larger predators and herbivores from the mountains away from the forest then the Metaan Elves are willing to not shoot across the border and start a war. Whether this peace will be long lasting is any one's guess. 

Ash Elves 

 These people are the feared legend of the Underworld. Before even the God War it is said that there was a eruption within the ranks of the elves involving a rebellion against another race called the Begetters. Legends say that the Ash Elves remained loyal to the Begetters and retreated into the caverns, caves and shafts of the Underworld after the Begetters lost their war.

Skin of charcoal grey with hair of ash white, these tall people are said to be vicious and sadistic to the greatest degree. Though many people dismiss reports of Ash Elves as legends and myths, some countries still maintain that they are raided by them on a semi-regular basis, with property damaged and people and valuables stolen away underground into the Ash Elves subterranean home. Indeed, records of Portasia state that, on occasion, people have been discovered stumbling in the wilds, ragged and wounded, babbling with madness, shaking with the memories of what they have survived. They gibber of cities built underground, of slave pits and vicious dark skinned elves that delight in pain and torment. They speak of haughty Matriarchs and warriors that fight to the death for their pleasure. They whimper of noble houses that claw and fight and tear at each other to become masters of mighty clans, each only holding power as long as they are the most ruthless and merciless to the others. These broken souls do not last long after their discovery, the trauma of what they have survived sapping their strength and will to live. They rarely last more than a month after discovery. Some physicians who have actually examined these patiences speculate that they are fed a slow poison as part of their captivity but there is no conformation as to this theory.

 Despite the disbelief of many, there are books that calm to be in depths studies of the Ash Elves and their ways. These books calm that the Ash Elves are a society that is matriarchal in the extreme, with all power being held by the females with greatest status. They are divide into clans, each named after, usually, an animal of the underworld. The within each clan, the word of the Matriarch is absolute, there is no arguing with her. Below her is a hierarchy of females, each scheming and plotting to exult her station and further her position.

Of the males of the clan, their sole purpose is to serve their women. Each male must compete continually for the favour of the females and death is a regular occurrence. Among male Ash Elves the only status and therefore the only safety, lies in becoming the favourite of a female and therefore father of her children. An Ash Elf male who father's daughters is nearly guaranteed a permanent legacy within the clan. The only other method to escape a life of continuous strife and battle is to become a Pupil of the Begetters. These appear to be scribes, historians, craftsmen and possibly wizards of the Ash Elf race and offers the only other path out of the short, brutal life that is the lot of an Ash Elf male.

Female Ash Elves cannot be killed within the clan and even a politically weak female may rise in status if she bears enough children but the scheming and plotting for position can carry heavy penalties. These can range from having their daughters assigned dangerous missions within and without the Underworld to isolation within the citadel to the very worse which is the transformation into a Disgraced. Ash Elf females that have been punished in this fashion are rendered sterile and monstrous. Most go insane and are driven from the citadel to live out the remainder of their lives as fearsome predators of the Underworld.

Half a Year. Half Way?

 

Hello my lovely darlings and in answer to the question, no, not half way yet. Straight out of the gate I’m going say that this one is going to be very different from my recent releases. Consider this to be something of a press release and it is likely to be shorter than the last two posts I did. What can I say? I’m after a task that I can knock down more quickly as I move into Summer Holiday season. Yes, for my international audience, I am from the U.K. if that wasn’t obvious from my spelling of English. It also explains my poor opinion of Empires. Let’s just say I have ancestral roots in a few of the lands and people that the British Empire stepped on to become the British and then to become the British Empire so I’ve never seen the British Empire as the great ‘civilising power created by manifest destiny and divine Providence’. My maternal roots go straight back to the Great Hunger of 1845 and finding out when I was in Year 9 (Ninth Grade) that some of Oliver Cromwell’s troops thought it was the height of entertainment to nail some of the babies of my ancestors to church doors really rather soured my opinion of colonial powers. That and at least one of my patriarchal bloodlines is a settled branch of the Romani peoples so I lost family members in the Concentration Camps. Makes me all the more proud of my great grandpa who helped put a stop to that period of history.

That and I happen to be living through the tail end of the collapse of the British Empire so I can honestly say that Empires aren’t even that good for the people who are meant to be proud of them. Yeah the ones who get the top of the tree when the Empire is healthy have it great, although one has to recognise that they have been historically the most likely to poison themselves. Examples of this? The Chinese Emperors’ habit of poisoning themselves with mercury and the Roman Elites’ consumption of lead infused grape syrup. Not to mention lead face paints and poisonous eye drops. Yeah, we humans are not known for our consideration of the long term effects and just what the hell was the corset? A twelve inch waist is not healthy on an uncorsetted woman because, unless she is very tiny, it means she is anoxic.

So yeah, living in the middle of a failing Empire isn’t exactly great. From the way I see it Britain is just about at the point Italy was in 500AD, fractured, failing, fighting itself and focused on finding a social scapegoat it can use as a target to fracture the population into bite sized pieces instead of realising that the best way out of this mess would be to give everyone a project we could work towards collectively. People would be more open to working to towards saving the environment if it came without blame and more community as well as financial gain to sweeten the deal. Apparently there are electrical generators small enough to turn by push bike cogs. Do you think a human powered power station full of banks of push bikes that turn hundreds of little generators would be able to power the local infrastructure? I wouldn’t mind a job some where like that if I was allowed an MP3 player loaded with unabridged audio books to listen to while I pedalled. And you wouldn’t need any where between three and six interviews to get the job, just a report from your doctor to say that your heart rate and blood pressure is fine and a gym kit. What do you think? Does it have legs? Is there someone out there in my fanbase who could get this going? As I said I wouldn’t mind being one of the pedal pushers if it was from ten o’clock to two o’clock so I had time to get the Major Distraction to and from school.

What can I say? I was taught if you are going to offer a criticism you should offer a solution with it so there’s my solution to global warming, the fuel crisis and unemployment – jobs that are a doddle to get and easy to do so you have plenty of mental energy left for either socialising or studying afterwards, choice is yours. Whether or not anyone in a position of authority has the will to make it work is something I don’t have a crystal ball for. Unfortunately I have a feeling they won’t. That is another theme I tackle in my books, the fact that authority can become so deaf and hide bound that it does not recognise solutions, salvation or even common sense when it sees it. And authority can mean government, kings, bureaucracy or even family. Trust me, family dynamics can be really, really rotten.

So, as we are now speaking about the book, how is the progress going on, going on? The truth is… not good. We’ve made it up to chapter five of thirty and I am thinking that I may need to look for a new proof reader/editors as my current one keeps having family crisis. I understand life gives you lemons because it has happened so many times to me that I’ve lost count of them but the best illustration of it would be 2020 when my own mother nearly died five times and none of it was Covid. It got to the point where the Major Distraction just had to see an ambulance to start panicking. I don’t really blame him as I started doing the same thing, I just had to function through it as you are not allowed to stop adulting when you are an adult. Other adults judge you if you do. It is a case of “Oh yuck, V. J. is having a case of the ‘big emotions’, how inconsiderate of her? How dare she inconvenience us with her feelings? Doesn’t she understand someone else always has it worse? She needs to toughen up, get over herself and think about everyone else, especially the children. They don’t need to know that grown ups get overwhelmed. She’s letting the side down. Yeash, can’t she do any better? She’s not being good enough.”

Yeah, life as an adult sucks. Life as a parent sucketh even more as you get double the judgement. Life as a SEND parent or a parent carer sucketh even more than that because the judgement goes through the roof.

So yes, I get it. As a mother of a SEND child in the Major Distraction and as a family carer I totally get it but I also have to get this career off the ground because more and more of the Support is being cut off unless you can pay for it yourself and therefore I have to have a taxable income. Therefore I need a proof reader/editor that is going to be reliable. This could be difficult as I’ve not got much in the way of finance behind me. I found out in 2024 that most start up business spend thirty two and a half thousand in their first year. I started this business with one thousand and I’ve only just clawed my way back up to having two tenths of that. I am running tight to the wind and hauling myself up by my boot straps and I keep delaying things to fit into everybody else’s time tables because if I don’t I won’t receive any more support with the Major Distraction, in fact I’ll lose what little I currently have.

That’s the other thing with being a SEND parent; for some reason the powers that be feel totally justified in holding support to ransom with the price being your behaviour. Don’t fit to their timetable? Support withdrawn. You ask for a meeting to be rescheduled because of conflicting care needs? Support withdrawn. You ask one too many times when the agreed support will manifest (and they never tell you how many times is the accepted number)? Support withdrawn. Your child doesn’t respond to the support provided or worse, activity collapses under it? Support withdrawn. They withhold information for twelve months plus? Fine. You miss one form deadline? Support withdrawn.

So yes, I’m hauling myself up by my bootstraps and life isn’t just handing me lemons, it is squeezing lemon juice into my eyes whilst standing on my fingers. I’m beginning to understand why rolling that boulder up that hill was such a torment to Sisyphus. Can one die from lack of sleep? Because I appear to be in the process of finding out. I’m mother to a SEND child, housewife and gardener (which is no mean feat as even with the hose it takes an hour to water said garden each day and even more in a hose pipe ban), part time carer for my Mother who is a dialysis patient, writer, artist, I’m supposed to be making some more friends, I’m meant to be looking after my own health and we now have a puppy who is to be trained as a support dog and protector for my mother as she has people in her childhood she really doesn’t want to meet again. That is seven and a half full time jobs so three hundred hours a week. One problem with that? There is only one hundred and sixty eight hours in a week. No wonder I’m tired.

So part way with the proof reading but not much further. If anybody know a proof reader/editor willing to work on a complete manuscript for under two hundred specy please let me know, I could do with the help. If they want to video call it to discuss the manuscript whilst they are marking it I can do that, probably not very well as technology has a habit of developing the cyber hiccups around me, as well as the fact that I am functionally half asleep pretty much all the time these days despite the coffee.

Artwork wise I’ve managed eight complete pieces plus two that have received the initial colour wash and one where the line drawing has just begun. All four of the main characters are done, a couple with multiple iterations. I have to admit Jeremiah was the hardest one to get right, although I’m not a hundred percent sure about Ulrich. Still I started work on Jeremiah and realised that I’d had plenty of training on how to draw average people in art class, I had not received so much on how to draw extremes. Someone really fit would be fairly easy as I have access to the book structure and function in man but someone who has an overly eager relationship with the buffet cart? Not so much. It took some searching to find reference pictures that gave me the guidelines that I needed to be able to draw Jeremiah properly. Thank you Paul Kidby for your drawings of the Dean of the Unseen University, they were a huge help. Prior to that Jeremiah kept coming out looking like a guy who had a beach ball stuffed up his jumper.

So that’s eight out of thirty one pieces of artwork needed, counting the cover. Just how am I supposed to do this by Christmas Time? Anxiety!

As for why it is taking me so dang long to do the art? I refuse, I utterly refuse to use Generative AI. I will not use it to write with, I will not use it to do my artwork, I absolutely refuse to contribute to the sloppification of the human mind and the desecration of the natural environment to feed data centres that have about as much human connect as a dull spanner to the back of the head. That is why it has taken me so long to produce the blog posts this year. I have to write, proof read, type up, proof read, record, edit, render and then publish each and every word that I have ever produced upon my blog or any other medium for that matter and this year I have no game sessions to act as a road map. That means I’m coming up with everything all by myself. It also cuts into the time I have to proof read and the like because I can’t be in two places at once.

I wouldn’t mind AI if it was doing the washing and the dishes so I had more time for my writing and my art but I object to it doing my writing and my art so I have more time to do the washing and the dishes. If there is going to be stupidity in the world, at least let it be human stupidity. We know how to deal with human stupidity, it was what the Darwin Awards were invented for after all. I’ll be for AI when it can create something like Rosie the Robot Maid from the Jetsons and I’ll say please and thank you to her. Good manners cost you nothing but can buy you the world. That and possibly protection in the event of an AI uprising as I’ve noted the printer works better since I started saying please and thank you to it. Unfortunately the same cannot be said of my phone. My phone may have been advertised as a smart phone, the receipt may have said smart phone upon it but quite frankly she is regularly as dumb as a box of rocks. I think my phone may be evidence that, unfortunately, Artificial Imbecility does not need inventing as it can manage it quite well on its own. This also doesn’t help with the career as although she can take photographs easily enough nobody seems to have explained to my phone that, as a smart phone, she should be able to send said photos to things like social media to make my advertising that much quicker. She also apparently does not understand that she should be able to take and send film the same way, hence why I have to film the vlog on a Wolfgang camera and then cable it to a laptop to edit. This would be okay except, for some reason only best known to herself, my Wolfgang camera closes the recording at about twenty one minutes of run time and then continues recording in a new file. Again no biggie, accept that it means I lose about five seconds of the take. That can be annoying but so far I’ve managed to work round that issue. It helps that I am deliberately leaving my vlogs a little rough around the edges. The way I see it, it gets back to the anti generative AI movement. If my audience can see me, see my background, see that my background changes due to where I have available to film, my audience is more likely to know that I am a real live, living, breathing, half asleep mess of an organic human being. It is why I don’t cut out every single mispronunciation that I make. An AI may mispronounce a word but it won’t double back and try to correct what it just said wrong, it will just keep going, apparently unable to admit when it has made a mistake. As I am a human when I make a mistake I double back and try to correct it.

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So there you have it folks, the progress on the books has slowed to a crawl but I am still attempting to push this boulder forward. I don’t know if I am copying Sisyphus who could never roll that boulder up that hill or Theseus who spent ten years trying to push a boulder over to get at the treasure underneath. We’ll have to wait and see. In the course of writing this I have managed to get back to the artwork so here’s hoping the momentum begins to rebuild.

For the blog posts over the summer holiday, I’m planning to re-release the Hestia Locator in stages with updated maps. I pray this is agreeable and that you enjoy the second edition of the world map.

Be safe my lovely darlings and be kind.

 

Draconic Shenanigans - Hestia Historical

   

 

 

Well hello my lovely darlings and welcome back to another instalment of the Lore of Hestia and to start with I guess I need to say I’m sorry. As this one didn’t take too much brain wracking to think of the subject I thought that it would be fairly quick to write and here I am nearly a month late, the proof reading has stalled, the artwork has stalled and my head space… isn’t great. Even the coffee isn’t keeping me going and Patreon is playing silly buggers in the backrooms so the support isn’t coming through, hence why I haven’t been sending out the exclusive prints. I am looking into alternatives, particularly Ko-fi. If nothing else I love the feel of the phrase ‘send me a coffee on Ko-fi’ in my mouth but if you know any others I would be mega appreciative so please DM on facebook, link will be in the description below.

It turned out that trying to work out just what has gone down in the big histories of Hestia was more difficult than I first thought especially as I realised that I wanted to contradict something I had written in the Hestia Locator. I’m not sure I’m allowed to do this but there again this is my work, I’m allowed to decide what goes and I can always update the Hestia Locator at a later date if I want to release it as a World Book Day publication. I think I will go with that. World Book Day publications? Flip but I aim my sights high.

With the Hestia Historical I’m aiming to do a summary of the major historical events that have shaped the world and still affect the lives of the major characters even just by an awareness of the lingering after effects that still move the world. To make it easier on myself I’m going to do the dates by how many years before the events of Draconic Shenanigans the history took place, so shall we begin?

182000 Years Ago – The Creation of the Begetters

The Ancients in their continuing cycle of war and conquest created the Begetters as infiltrators, spies and assassins, as well as resource collectors from the deep sea. They were treated as so disposable they were even viewed as a food source by their creators, the Ancients, after a few thousand years had passed and the numbers of the Begetters had reached a certain critical mass. To have living weapons so numerous that they could be culled as a food source suggests that the Ancients became the dominant race on Hestia and faced no major defiance to their ascendency. It certainly tracks with the conclusions of wizards and learned folk who study the stone bones that are occasionally discovered in eroded cliff sites and in quarries and mines. These scholars state that there is a definite decrease in the diversity and numbers of individuals in species at this time in the rock formations while at the same time there are formations of stone plateaus that bare striking similarities to cemeteries, especially as some of the bodies appear to have been buried with personal items. These people, if they are the Ancients show signs of being of reptile decent with carnivorous diets but a high calorie in take, as suggested by the bone pits fossil beds that are sometimes discovered near these cemeteries. These bone pits show signs of the bodies having been processed for food and so far there have only been a few specimens of the cemetery species found within these bone pits. As these singular individuals bare the evidence of brutal injuries at the time of death it is speculated that these were executed criminals denied proper burial or even the victims of murder that had be dumped in the communal rubbish pit to hide the evidence.

It is unclear how the Begetters reproduced in this time as their cartilage based skeletons leave very little in the way of impressions in the rock. It is possible that the Anicents believed they could control their creations by controlling their method of reproduction, vat growing new hosts for the larvae.

171000 Years Ago – Changing Epoch

After eleven thousand years a shift appears in the fossil record. The cemeteries of the Ancients massively increase in size, suggesting several rounds of pandemics, especially as the number of juvenile individuals increase. At the same time the bone pits also depict a change becoming composed of a greater number of marine skeletons of both fish and early sea going mammals. Though the Begetters only remember themselves as both tools of war and marine harvest it is possible that the marine exploitation purpose was an adaptation of their use as the civilization began to experience ecological distress as over exploitation of land based food webs started leading to environmental collapse. At the same time there appears to be a resurgence in the number of opposing species. It appears that a rival race, possible an early mammalian began a campaign of aggression starting at the south pole and spreading northwards. It would be highly unusual for a rival clave of animal life to rise to challenge the dominant species while the dominant species had not gone through an extinction event, let alone a rival intelligent species evolving on the same planet naturally after the dominant intelligent species had come into its full power so it is possible that this was the last project of one of the species the Begetters were made to destroy coming to fruition. It is possible that it could be the origin of the goblins. Goblins, with their rapid breeding rate and quick minds, are highly adaptable to changing circumstances and are exceptional, when they are given the chance to prove it, at similar tactics to the Begetters. They are also difficult for Begetters to control with their psionic abilities. It would certainly explain the disdain all races share for goblins, it could be an inherited attitude from the Begetters as the Begetters would not be kind to the species that helped destroy their beloved creators as the Begetters held the Ancients in the highest regard even when the Ancients were using them as a food source. The Begetters subscribed hard to the mind set of ‘honour your father and mother all the days of your life’ and ‘the clay has no right to say to the potter why did you make me like this?’

Whether this theory of the Goblin’s origin is true or not remains to be seen but the fact remains that who ever the new challenger was they became a serious threat to the Ancients’ continued dominion of the planet, coinciding as they did with environmental upheaval.

168000 Years Ago – Death of the Ancients

Either by accident or design an iron rich asteroid was pulled into unstable orbit around Hestia and its trajectory rapidly degraded. Impact became inevitable within months. The meteor came in at a low angle on the coast of a shallow sea and smashed down into heavily sulphured rock. Some of the Ancients managed to survive the initial crash down but the black out was near instant and total. The site of the impact was close to the equator so the aerosol cloud covered both hemispheres within a matter of days. Global temperatures crashed out in less than a week, snow falling on deserts and ice claiming the tropics. The sun did not rise on the face of Hestia for six months. Within two thousand years the last of the Ancients had vanished, their cities hollowed out by earthquake, tsunami, ash fall, chaos and disease, the isolated pockets of population falling below viable genetic diversity. Infertility, genetic defect and an inability to adapt to the changing climate destroyed the species’ ability to recover.

It appears that the Begetters had already been allowed to begin to experiment with using prisoners of war as hosts for the larvae. This is probably a mark of how much the Ancients were already struggling with their decline if they were no longer able to vat grow new hosts for the larvae but at the same time could not afford to discontinue the use of the Begetters to prop up their society despite the fact that allowing them a reproductive method outside of their Creator’s complete control introduced a independence into the Begetters species that would have been dangerous if they were ever able to over come the instinctive reverence of their creators.

As it is, the Begetters were mentally traumatised by the day of impact and where unable to maintain the psionic link with their dwindling creators and retreated to the deep sea.

166000 Years Ago – The Savage Years

Hiding in the dark depths where the environment remained more stable the Begetters hunted the ecosystems that clustered around the volcanic vents of sea mounts and the upwells of volcanic islands, feeding off of octopus, squid and cuttlefish for their higher brain capacity whilst using the deep diving, early Cetaceans as hosts for the larvae. It is possible that the myths of mermaids and mermen are truly ancient legends of the Cetacean hosted Begetters, distorted and misremembered due to the sheer depth of time that now separates the modern world from then. In a way it would makes sense that such beings are depicted as having human style faces as the Begetters would have used their psionic powers to lure prey towards them. Witnesses who survived would not have had the understanding as to why their companions willingly walked towards their doom and would explain it with stories of amazing beauty or siren song that beckoned the victims to their deaths.

Eventually the position of Grand Director came to be. These Begetters were mentally strong enough to dominate others of their kind, gradually wielding together bands of Begetters that did not view each other as potential food and could co-ordinate to take down the larger prey items more easily. This societal shift also saw more of the larvae survive to maturity, granting a larger genetic pool available for implantation. This in turn enabled Grand Directors to be more rigorous with their selection processes.

106000 Years Ago – The Hungry Years

Although the evolution of the Grand Directors stabilised the society of the Begetters, shifts in the climate of the world continued to push their ability to survive to the edge of what was physically possible and their number remained dangerously low, some saying that at times they were on the edge of what was genetically possible, with a total global populations equalling no more that five thousand.

While the Begetters struggled beneath the waves, on the land shifts were also taking place. As the continents slowly rose and sank due to repeated ice ages the descendents of the goblins who survived the Day of Impact were able to cross growing land bridges to rediscover continents that some of their relatives had died out on in the centuries following the meteor strike. There they met new beings. It appears that the ancestors of the gnomes had evolved during the thousands of years since the Day of Impact. They may also have had an advantage over regular evolution as there is the distinct possibility that their existence was started by the same race that began the goblins. Or indeed, the Ancients may have created the gnomes in an effort to save their own species, creating a diminutive race intelligent enough to farm and hunt and work both metal and magic but need less food to sustain themselves and therefore be a sustainable food source for their creators when other land animals had perish. If this speculation is correct then the gnomes out lived their creators.

In striving against each other the gnomes and goblins pushed their development even further. Some times not for the better.

42000 Years Ago – Time of the Repulsive Fire

It is unclear if this was a violent event or whether it was more a case of long term environmental degradation but the Time of the Repulsive Fire has left an enduring, terrifying mark on the face of Hestia. Seeing as the most notable remnants of this time are the Tombs of the Repulsive Fire then it is likely that it was more a case of pollution rather than catastrophic war as the Tombs would have taken time, effort and preparation to complete. These effigies are massive, artificial mountains of stone, cut with such precision that you cannot slide a knife blade between then irregularly shaped blocks. Made of granite and ringed with barbed fences of a metal as strong as iron but unrusted these monuments stand sentential to a time where magic and technology were pushed to the very limit of what was safely possible. Nobody knows for certain what was buried under this massive structures but the fact that such pains were taken to keep it contained should be warning enough. Wizards who have studied the Tombs with scrying magic say that the core of the structure is constructed of two hundred ton blocks of granite fitted into sockets carved into the bedrock in an interlocking pattern designed to resist ground deformation. Those that have dared to open the outer anti chamber have discovered a room where the ceiling is decorate with star charts incised with a precision rarely seen outside of elf work. According to the learned these star charts record the movements of the heavens that have tracked across the skies for the last forty thousand years and the ones that will come in the next sixty thousand. Carved in languages dead, ancient, old and more modern, the same warning decorates the walls over and over again:-

“This is not a place of honour,

No great deed or powerful king is remembered here.

Nothing of value is here, only that which brings death.

We laid our hands upon that which powers all life

And thought we could command it

But we awakened the repulsive fire

That smoulders within living flesh unseen.

The repulsive fire brings no light and warms with no flame

But it rots flesh from within.

Hair falls away, teeth rot out, the skin ulcers,

The infected weep blood and cough foam.

If you open the inner door the repulsive fire

Will no longer be contained and

We will have failed to protect you.”

Wizards who have dared scry beyond the second door speak of a single tunnel that winds deep into the solid bedrock, plugged with layers upon layers of fullers earth. They say that they can sense something laying deeper but state that they cannot identify it, the spells overloaded by a coarse susurration. In short the Tombs of the Repulsive Fire buzz. Any right thinking person stays as far away from them as possible but there is however, unfortunately, evidence that at least one of these tombs was opened fully in the past. The mass graves that have been discovered in the region are difficult for wizards and scholars to excavate as the bones are incredibly fragile, apparently hollowed out by some force while the people where still alive. Some show signs of areas of the bones dying from several days to several weeks before final mortality of the whole body. The only reason any of these bones can be recovered at all is because when they were first buried they were encased with a rock that poured as a cold liquid. The soft parts of the body rotted away after the rock had set solid, leaving the bones laying within hollows depicting the original person. Some of the smaller hollows did not have any recoverable remains and were instead filled with plaster to reveal the faces of the children who had perished in these mass casualty events. The tombs of Repulsive Fire now lay undisturbed, even the maddest of liches and most evil of wizards avoiding them. There are some poisons universally reviled, even by the worst.

17700 Years Ago – Rediscovery of the Surface World

After over a hundred millennia the Begetters turned their strange eyes to the surface and rose from the depths once more. What triggered this emergence is unknown but it was probably driven by the arrival of shipwrecks sinking into the depth as the gnomes and goblins developed maritime technology. That or traces of the Repulsive Fire shifting down through the water column may have alerted them to the fact there was civilisation upon the surface again.

The gnomes found favour with the rising power of the depths, the first amphibious Begetters probably hosted within gnome bodies. The goblins, as stated before, paid and paid harshly for the transgressions of their ancestors against the Ancients, a punishment that has dragged on ever since.

Gradually, as the number of amphibious, gnome hosted Begettors increased they pushed further in land, following river courses and then developing methods of hauling enough water across long distances to keep themselves alive as they probed into environments with limited water availability. As exploration was increased and resources gathered the Begetters began to rediscover the technologies of their creators and to wield it to what the gnomes and the goblins had discovered.

Rapid transportation networks were built, energy relays that produced light and heat from air movements and carriages that moved by the power of vegetable waste being fermented. Of course this was not over night, Locutus was not a city built in a day or even a year.

Thousands of years of struggle, strife, accident, disease and disaster, both natural and artificial, had to pass as the Begetters slowly refined their approach to surface living and the Hives struggles to adjust to a world where abundance was a possibility and therefore aggressive competition was no longer necessary.

17000 Years Ago – The Genesis of the ‘Lesser’ Races

Having revived their Creator’s technology the Begetters turned their pursuit of mastery of the world to the flesh craft the Ancients had been capable of. This decision was possibly encouraged by the fact that the progress of the Begetters empire was limited by the size of their servants. The gnomes are a tough people, you have to be in a world where a goat is a viable mount, a dog is a preditor that can destroy you at a bite and a house cat can leave you savaged but there is a limit to their carrying capacity and their resilience to injury.

These years saw the creation of the lesser races.

First where the orcs. Most likely created from goblins, probably as another show of how much the Begetters detested the race that had helped destroy their beloved creators, the orcs were huge, strong boned, tough, heavy with muscle and resistant to damage but their brains were very little and inflexible. In short they had the strength for the heavy lifting needed to create an empire but not the brains to resent their serfdom or at least, if they resented it they did not have the creativity to imagine something different and therefore begin to strive towards that freedom.

The second were the dwarfs. Most likely made from gnome stock the dwarfs doubled the size and hardness of the people. They are strong, stubborn and fully capable of fine work. They positively thrive on challenge and adversity. Putting barriers in front of a dwarf is just giving him obstacles to over come. The harder the trial the more a dwarf will dig their heels in and fight all the more, whether that is a physical contest or trying to craft the best item they can. Dwarfs do not give ground on anything and it takes someone asking to learn from them for them to reorganise their thinking. For example, instead of telling a dwarf they are wrong, it is more affective to say to them, “Would you help me with something? To my understanding this fact and this fact is true but this third fact is also true and it contradicts the conclusion drawn solely from the first two. Can you help me puzzle this out?” Put like that dwarfs are more likely to sit down and discuss your reassessment of the situation seriously than if you just tell them they are wrong. Whatever task you put in front of dwarfs to do they will do, no matter how long it takes.

The humans in many ways where the Begetters greatest achievement. They are not the strongest or the toughest or the most magically gifted but they can throw accurately with their bare hands, they are curious, self driven, self organizing, innovative and ever increasing. Humans pile achievement up upon each other, over and over again, they pass knowledge, skill and experience down one generation to the next as well as laterally across the generation. They are psionically active enough to be a food source but not so psionically active to be a channel to the Begetters control. Though many humans remain the conformity driven, social reward creatures they were created to be, a few show greater potential, feeling and thinking more deeply with a heightened pattern recognition and sensory attunement. Mentally these individuals are often the driving force of humanity’s advancements as they are capable of understanding a higher platform of knowledge.

The elves were the crown jewel of the Genesis Project. If some humans are capable of a higher understanding then all elves are already at that level. They are also extremely resilient to disease and their life spans are far in excess of a human. They are also tall for the most part, graceful, agile and have the ability to process the information their heightened senses feed them without being overwhelmed by it. Their innate ability for wizard magic also far surpasses anything humans can do. Indeed, it is possible that elves are the original masters of wizard magic as they speak of being able to see the ‘pattern’ within everything and they describe magic as being able to adjust the pattern.

With the creation of the elves the Begetters gained the perfect hosts for the Larvae, tall, statuesque, resistant to disease, enhanced sense that compound with their own upon implantation of the Larvae and with the increased life span that guaranteed the Begetters out living all but the most fortunate of the lesser races. It is possible that to begin with only the Grand Directors were allowed to be implanted within elvish hosts, though how the Hives guaranteed that particular larvae was going to be a Grand Director is impossible to tell but eventually all the Begetters were granted elvish hosts.

15000 Years Ago – The Gold Age of the Begetters Empire

With their perfected servants growing and thriving the Begetters themselves flourished as never before. For two thousand years they cast their net wider and more perfectly than any civilisation after. They pushed the boundary of what magic and thought could produce though it appears that they never attempted to repeat the folly that had led to the time of the Repulsive Fire. In that way they appeared to be more intelligent than those that had come before. Instead a new balance between that which was made by the hands of intelligent beings and the wild tangle of Mother Nature arose. The cities of the Begetters shone. They glimmered, they sparkled, walls of crystal so clear you could see for miles through them that also made an energy unlike any other simply from the fall of sunlight or the patter of rain. Green corridors stretched across the desert, thoughts were transmitted by great echo rooms from one side of the world to the other and great transportation networks moved living beings and material goods across continents within days. It was a time of wonder.

13000 Years Ago – The Start of the Ancients Reborn Program

Despite all of their own achievements the Begetters never lost their aching need for their own creators. The lost of the Ancients was a gapping raw hole within their collective psyche, a wound they had not recovered from and that still gnawed at them. No matter how high they built their towers, no matter how prosperous their cities, no matter how advanced their techno wizardry it was never enough. Legends say that they even reached for the stars, constructing or creating or growing vessels that either climbed or drove or swam towards the stars above but it was never enough. They were still desperate children, orphaned by the storms of history and still desperately trying to please the memories of their dead parents. They felt the pain of their loss every day, watching the last true descendants of their creators fly and peck and sing without words. It was forever a screaming injustice to them that the only bloodline descendants of the Ancients descended from the lowest of the low castes, beings whose minds were never strong and who had been kept only as pets, pleasing to the eye for their bright colours and relaxing to the ears for their chirruping song but not holding on to their vast intellects and brilliance for invention. It ate the Begetters hollow to know that their Beloved creators where sunk so low.

Perhaps then it is no surprise that the Begetters, having perfected their flesh crafting abilities, turned their attention to the recovery of their creators. It was a slow process, made of false starts, dead ends and failed projects. It is possible that the drakes,Harpies, Lindenworms and talking animals people of Sumwesi are products of this time. Gradually, painstakingly the Begetters, built and tweaked and refined their creations, inching ever closer to the finished product.

What was born in the gleaming laboratories of the Begetters was not their creators but something that elevated the Ancients into a new form that would shake the world with its existence.

The dragons had arrived.

Nobody knows which subspecies was born first now but the first five rose on wings of red, blue, yellow, black and white. It is possible that the Glacier Dragons, being more bestial and time blind were the first and the process was refined for the subsequent sub-species but no matter the order of them arising the dragons were as intelligent, as powerful and as capable as the Begetters. For the Begetters it was their true golden age. They loved and were loved by the dragons and with them ruled the world from the heights of the heavens to the depths of the seas. Theirs was the world and everything in it and it was beautiful.

10000 Years Ago – The Day of Rebellion/ The God War

The Begetters were never still in their worship and reverence of their creators. The dragons were powerful, beautiful, awesome and could still be improved. After the Begetters discovered the existence of the esoteric dragons they realised that the design could be perfected even further. Armed with this knowledge they returned to their flesh craft and recruited the greatest and most talented of the elves to help them infuse their creations with magic at every level of their creation.

The results were the Astral Dragons and the Void Dragons. As described in the Draconic Encyclopedia, Astral Dragons and Void Dragon could rival the power levels of angels, the Astral Dragons able to jump in and out of reality to be able to travel vast distances across the world in the blink of an eye while their Void Dragons cousins can cause earthquakes to shudder through the world and mountains to spew fire to the heavens. They used magic as easy as breathing and could out live even other dragons but they were still incomplete. The Astral Dragons were married to order whilst the Void Dragons danced with chaos. As such they were always opposed to each other and tension bubbled just below the surface. Distressed by this imperfection the Begetters once again turned to their flesh crafting art, seeking to unite the forces of chaos and order within one flesh.

The result were the Iridium Dragon Twins… and the Begetters’ own doom.

The reasons for the rebellion that erupted against the Begetters is unknown. After so many thousands of years and the conflicts that have followed the reasons, if they were ever articulated, have been lost to time and war. As stated in the Gods of Hestia it is possible that a lineage of the Tomb Dragons had become corrupted, their blood mingled with that of a Twisted God, their thoughts turned ever to death and destruction but it is just as likely that it was the Iriduim Dragon’s own decision to bring down the race that had given them birth to free those who still toiled in chains. The Begetters may have used chains of mental control and dominion but they were still chains.

In a single day and night of destruction the continent spanning, world encompassing empire of the Begetters was cast down, never to rise again. The legendary Ash Elves are said to have their genesis in this moment. Remaining loyal to the Begetters they retreated into the dark, honey comb labyrinth of the Underworld, here they are said to plot and scheme for the day that their Masters return and they rise to become their most faithful and rewarded servants.

Unfortunately, if the lesser races expected a time of peace and prosperity after they became free then they were sorely disappointed. If anything the Iridium Dragons were too powerful and when that power was turned to the unbending, unrelenting, unforgiving mindset of a fanatic then the world trembled beneath its wroth. One of the Iridium Dragons sort to embody the qualities of a true ruler, just, fair, mild in his speech and caring in his ways, understanding of the frailty of mortals and willing to reach down into the mud to lift up those that had fallen. If the fallen had fallen not only through bad choices but also bad character then he was willing to allow the Gealach Dragons to work their dream magic and lock the dangerous ones away in their Fae realms where they could do no harm.

The other was the embodiment of a jealous and angry God, judgemental, exacting, unrelenting and unforgiving. There was no room for failure, there was no room for flaw, there was no forgiveness. The town was not judged on if it contained any good men, the presence of a single bad one was enough to spell its doom. And bad did not mean someone who was selfish, greedy and harmful to their community, bad just meant someone who broke the rules and children were not exempt from judgement, neither was ignorance an excuse. Perfection was demanded and any that failed to meet that exacting standard with every heart beat of every breath in every second of the day were destroyed, their bodies turned into a pillar of salt along side every member of their family, including babes in arms.

The God War was savage and unleashed a destruction not seen upon Hestia since the death of the Ancients. Every race, every dragon rose in rebellion against the Iridium Dragon of Judgement, including his own twin. Despite the massed efforts of every thinking person on Hestia it was impossible to kill the Iridium Dragon and every effort to do so only resulted in more Destruction, as the shining cities toppling, verdant forest burnt until they smouldered, whole regions turned to deserts as the salt killed every living thing in the soil. By the time the Iridium Dragon was contained and sealed within his prison the skies of Hestia were black with soot, the land wept poisons and the seas frothed with energies that seethed and writhed. It is possible that the first sorcerers and sorceresses appeared at this time. It would certainly explain why the elves hold sorcerers in such disregard. Elves do not like things that are spawned in chaos. It is certain that many of the dragonkin bloodlines had their beginnings here, the other dragons attempting a very direct method of creating more powerful versions of the other races as it seems that the Iridium Dragon of Judgement was able to spawn his own army to try and challenge all the living races of the world.

By the time the dust began to settle the dreadful algebra of survival had driven a permanent wedge between the races and they would never again be as united as they had been.

5600 Years Ago – The Genesis of the Orc Children

The name of the lich who created the Orc Children is now unknown, lost to time and the depths of the Underworld where he’d been creating them. Neither does anybody know how he managed to combine the bloodline of human and orc. One could say that it is most likely that people do not want to know but the most likely answer is that he had managed to resurrect at least some of the Begetter’s flesh crafting skills. No matter how or where or why it happened the orc children came into being. It was unlikely that it was out of love. Liches, those dark wizards so evil that they have turned their magic to the end of preserving their own lives at the expensive of everyone else, do not love. Obsession? Perhaps. Possession? Maybe. Control? Most definitely but not love. Love involves a giving up, a letting go, a surrender of control that Liches are not capable of but what they do have is time. As long as they are maintaining their soul anchor Liches cannot die and so they have all of time to complete their plans. Therefore, it is likely that the orc children were created as part of a long and intricate plan to invade the surface world, their muscle and brute strength designed to out match and out weigh the forces that mankind would be able to bring to bare in the fractured politics that followed the God War and that have persisted until today.

Where in the Undeworld this Lich was laired is unknown but the Underworld is rarely explored, seeing as it is difficult to keep sense of your direction at the best of times down there. It is known for sure though that it must have been the Underworld because that is where the orc children emerged from when they broke their chains. I suppose that now is as good time as any to note that although 5600 years ago is when the orc children are said to have had their beginning nobody knows for certain when the first orc child came to into existence as their genesis was hidden in the dark. 5600 years ago is when the orc children fought their way up though the dwarf kingdoms to the surface. It seems strange that creatures who were the lowest of low minions knew that they had to break the soul anchor first before they attacked the Lich themselves. Legends and oral history from the orc children themselves speak of a messiah figure who came to them and shared their suffering before leading them forth from their captivity. Some scholars wonder if it truly was a messiah or a tomb dragon who had discovered a civilization that it could bring to complete and utter smash. If it was a tomb dragon then it was completely successful in its desire to bring the creator of the orc children to utter destruction and started a war between the dwarfs and orc children that has never fully ceased or healed to boot.

4300 years ago – Appearance of the Goturi

Unlike the orc children who appeared on the world’s stage with a bang, the Goturi arrived quietly. One day they were not there, the next day they were. The knowledge of their existence spread slowly, one visit to civilization at a time. Travellers on the road spoke of strange scaly folk that looked like dragon kin but were no bigger than goblins. Villages muttered of ‘the blue scalies’ who could shoot rats at a hundred paces with bow and arrows. Towns folk gawked and muttered, watching the groups of short people who moved with confidence and assurity, offering their services as mercenaries to the highest bidder. To begin with they were laughed at. They displayed why you shouldn’t laugh at a goturi. Legend has it one of the goturi shot the apple out of the pig’s mouth at the Lord Mayor’s banquet through the prongs of the carving fork, whilst standing outside the open window of the hall. The laughing stopped after that and merchants began taking their offer of guard protection more seriously. The goturi quickly earned themselves a place in the surface world.

As for where they came from there is no certainly but it appears that an apprentice of the Lich who created the orc children wished to repeat the experiment, only this time with the blood of goblins mixed with that of dragons or more likely dragonkin. Though it is certain that they killed their creator before making their way out into the world it remains unclear if they destroyed their foe’s soul anchor before attacking their physical form. The goturi will not answer questions about this, becoming tight lipped and cautious, almost as if they fear to speak of it may bring some awful fate down upon themselves. If the lich did manage to reform themselves after their own death then, so far, they have not moved against their disobedient creations. One has to wonder to what end the goturi where made or whether it was for idol amusement.

1654 Years Ago – Armasar Mockblight Begins Teaching at the University of Cowbridge

The island nation of Albion sits across the wide channel of sea that separates it from the North West continent. It has one of the most volatile coast lines in the world, surrounded as it is by warm waters flowing up from the south while frigid water pouring down off the northern icy latitudes stirs this mixture to boiling point. Despite of this, or maybe because of it, the people of Albion where known as superb sailors, already building trade routes and establishing colonies on landmasses far from the home island.

The University of Cowbridge was one of the oldest of such institutes, its founding marking the rebirth of a higher education that hadn’t been seen since the fall of the Begetters Empire, its halls ringing with the brightest and the best of the island’s minds, the professors expected to be the most experienced and learned of their respected fields. Armasar Mockblight arrived to take up the mantle of foreign history instructor in the University and to curate the attached museum. Appearing as a slightly older human male with ash white hair, piercing blue eyes and a nose that had been broken at some point, Armasar Mockblight’s lectures emphasised the superiority of the Albion way of life and civilization.

1613 Years Ago – The Albion Empire Begins Its Expansion

After forty three years of indoctrination of Mockblight’s teaching to the younger and younger generation The Albion Empire began its expansion, codifying the colonies as part of the Empire and writing the Divine Providence of Conquest into their laws. The archives of the museum grew like never before as items and artifacts flowed from the growing tendrils of the empire back into the Homeland. In the end the museum was moved to a purpose built establishment in Londinium, the Capital City, which also placed Armasar Mockblight close at hand to the powers structures of the Empire. His advice always seemed to profit the Albion Empire as it continued to grow.

1183 Years Ago – The Albion Empire Reaches Its Largest Expanse

The Albion Empire held territory across the world, from the land now known as the Burning Continent, where they were in constant conflict with the lands of the Domilii of then to islands in Sumwesi. There was territory on both coasts of the Southern Continent as well as in the Interior and holdings on the East Coast of Jamhodan. Riches and exotics flowed into the Albion heartland, although always to the highest ranks of society. The greater majority of the population of the Albion heartland toiled in great workshops or busied away as the servants in grand houses and smaller establishments. Life was hard for a maid of all work, who could expect to live her life by the clock from before sun up to midnight all the working days of her life, including Holy Days, though one has to wonder if their lives were better than the ‘companion’ servants.

Often of exotic birth ‘companion’ servants where hired (one could say bought) to be the companions of the young daughters of noble and landed families, though some of the richer merchants also purchased these beings. The companion servants were usually girls though some boys were also granted companion servants, who usually had double duty as whipping boys. Companion servants were taught etiquette, language though allowed, even encouraged, to keep their accents to denote their ‘other’ status, literature, handy crafts and art. They were to be the companions of their assigned mistress or master, constantly at their beck and call, to keep them distracted in their free time with witty conversation, gentle games and to show well at parties where younger children were permitted to attend. It was a mark of status for a family to be able to afford the education and upkeep of a companion servant. Sometimes companion servants were retained, becoming their assigned master or mistress’s confidant and body servant as they grew up. Some became retainers in their old age but they were a very few. Most companion servants were seen as childhood toys that were to be put aside when the child grew up. Marked by their ‘other’ status they could not freely gain employment outside the homes of the rich but neither where they welcome in the servant quarters as they were tainted by association with ‘them upstairs’. Elderly companion servants often wound up homeless and destitute, fitting no where in their new country but unable to gain passage back home to the countries of their birth. A few managed to clump together in travelling bands of wandering traders, turning their hands to singing, dancing and performance to make ends meet but travelling folk have ever had a bad reputation and they were never able to settle in any one area for long.

And Armasar Mockblight continued to curate at the Albion Museum.

1104 Years Ago – The Ablion Empire Begins To Lose Control Due To Its Size

Several volcanoes in the territory of Sumwesi erupted within the space of ten years starting in 1104 years before the modern day. Though individually the eruptions were not severe enough to be called more than a local disaster, the accumulative effects of so many eruptions triggered global instability of the weather patterns. Rainy seasons shifted, decreased or increased at sporadic intervals, resulting in reduced harvests, tainted harvest or even outright famines. Crawling after the hunger there came the disease. Within two years three point five percent of the total population of the known world died out due to water born diseases. Though this does not sound a huge number it was not spread evenly, with some towns untouched while other cities lost entire districts. The numbers of the dead were such in some places they remained unburied, drawing in vermin that then turned their attention to what food sources remained, perpetuating the cycle of famine and disease.

Over the span of two decades there was a noticeable decrease in the human population in the Albion Empire.

With the weakening of the Empire’s health and commerce, enemies without and within arose. In some areas rival kingdoms saw the chance to claim territory from the weakened Empire, in others, indigenous populations, long suppressed and exploited arose in revolt against their overlords. With trade and commerce weakened and decreased, dispatches couldn’t move fast enough to keep up with the pace of events leading to disorganised emergency responses that could even make the situation worse as the weather driven disasters continued with wild fires and floods happening at increased rates, further disrupting daily life. As indigenous populations were often left out of recovery plans, it served to heighten resentment and discontent. Independence movements began to grow.

1061 Years Ago – Armasar Mockblight Preposes The Day of Reclamation

With some of the distant providences breaking away from the Empire and its control weakening over most of the others, the Kings and ministers of Albion turned once again to Armasar Mockblight, their teacher, mentor and guide for so many years that they could not consider making a decision without at least some of his advice.

Armasar’s advice this time should have terrified them but in a land were loyalty was to the Empire only and patriotism was the currency of survival and authority was unquestioned it seemed to be the absolute solution to all their problems and none queried if there would be a cost.

Armasar outlined a grand ritual that would pull on the loyalty and devotion of every citizen of the Albion Empire and would result in the Kings of Albion ruling forever over their lands and holding influence over their Empire for all of time.

Armasar Mockblight didn’t lie but neither did he speak the whole truth but desperate to preserve their failing Empire and guarantee its immortality, the Kings and Ministers accepted his advise and set the decrees in motion. First they introduced a ‘citizenship test’ for all school leavers to prove their loyalty to the Empire. Access to ‘Trusted Professions’ was limited to those who had passed the test.

Gradually the list of ‘Trusted Professions’ was increased as was the vigour of the test. After several high profile cases where harm was done by those who had forged their grade on the Citizen Test Certificate a new system was brought in. Citizens and their grade were designated by a tattoo on the palm of the right hand, displayed vividly during the salute. The rank of job you could obtain was dictated by your tattoo and its colour. The official inks were also state controlled and distributed. It was worth someone’s life to try and black market the inks.

1011 Years Ago – The Day of Reclamation

As more and more people strove to obtain the highest level of Citizenship and the tattoo that went with it, being a tattooed citizen of the Empire became the perquisite to be able to trade, own property and even be employed within the borders of the Empire. Those who failed the Citizen Test were unable to participate within the borders of the Empire, they were outlaw, outcast and unwanted. Their only safety was the black market and organised crime, a dangerous shadow world that more often than not sucked people in and spat them back out as ruined husks. The safest companions within the shadow world were the Roaming Bands, descended from the Companion Servants that had been turned out in the cold. They were still seen as ‘problem’ people and had to learn how to survive completely hidden within the few wild spaces left within the Homeland as their performing way of life was no longer safe, particularly for their children but if a ‘renegade’ could reach a Travelling Band and earn their trust then they had a better chance of survival, especially for the women. The shadow world of the Black Market had a habit of swallowing young women who failed their Citizen Test, chewing them up and spitting them out broken.

Finally the day of Reclamation was announced and people began travelling to their designated hubs ready for the great day, while Albion wizards, tattooed with the highest grade of citizenship set up the great runic mirrors to channel and broadcast the energies of the great ritual. At the appointed time the Ritual of Reclamation ignited… and the world came crashing in on the people of Albion.

The Ritual revealed itself to be a massive necromantic spell. Across the Empire loyal conclaves of tattooed citizens dropped dead only to shamble back to their feet as undead monstrosities that clawed their way towards the living. It was even worse in the Albion homeland. The people with the highest Citizenship tattoo dropped first, trembling and twitching as the Ritual drained their life force. Seeing as this included the wizards who set up the runic mirrors that were controlling the spell it meant that once it was started it couldn’t be halted. The lower ranks had to watch their higher ranked friends and comrades fight and flail and perish and know what was coming for them. By the end of the day the Heartland of the Albion Empire was a land of the living dead and the Tomb Dragon Armasar Mockblight danced over the wasted land on outstretched wings, gloating over his prize.

If any of the unmarked children of the Albion Empire survived the Day of Reclamation is unclear but the island remains shrouded in an unmoving gloom, the coast foggy and overcast. The few expeditions that have dared travel close to its shores report that it is still a land of the restless dead, ghosts and banshees howling in the night, while zombies and skeletons shamble through the ruins of once great cities. Any who live there now must be a hard, suspicious, dower lot who know only the hard edge of survival.

Granted Armasar Mockblight did not lie to the Kings and Ministers of Albion. The Ghoul Court now rules for eternity from their crumbling halls and their influence over all their holdings still lingers. The countries that boardered the proveniences of the empire or who gained their independence from it in the fifty years preceding the Day of Reclamation still fearing that one day the Albion Empire will come crawling across the sea again, snarling and clawing as the dead try and claim the living.

And the Albion National Museum still belongs to Armasar Mockblight or so the legend goes.

531 Years Ago – The Residential Program For The Assimilation Of The Shulmi Elves

The Far Continent had been ruled over by a theocracy for several thousand years, governed by a Council of Prelates and its elected head, known as the Domilii upon his ascension (the Domilii was never a women). The position of Domilii was elected for life and ruled as an absolute authority in both this world and the next, or so his people believed.

The Domilii’s authority was enforced by a standing army lead by an elite unit of warriors called the Paladins. These mystic warriors were said to be blessed with divine powers by their god and lived apart from the rest of their people. One of their duties was to watch for children who possessed the ‘Spark of the Paladins’. These children would be surrendered to the Paladins and taken to begin their training within one of the Chapter Houses. The children were surrendered willingly, it was a point of civic pride for a family to be able to boast that one of their bloodline had been accepted into the ranks of the Paladins. The surrendering was often celebrated by both family, friends and neighbours to mark how much they had been able to give to uphold the greater good. Parents were not sad that their children were taken by the Paladins to serve the state, instead they welcomed the chance to prove how much they loved their people for the measure of love is how much you are willing to give up for it.

Once housed within the Chapter House of the Paladins to which they had been assigned the children immediately had their names changed and their surnames removed. After that the gruelling training began to reshape them from ordinary citizens into the Paladins Holy enough to be partnered with an Astral Dragon. Personal attachment and emotions were seen as flaws to be stamped out as quickly as possible. If a child seemed to be becoming attached to a teacher, a classmate or an Astral Dragon they were disciplined. If that did not work then they were transferred to a different Chapter House to break the bond and it would be impressed upon them that they had been moved because they were not good enough but now they might earn being good enough if they put the effort in to modify their behaviour. The Domiliis did not allow for deviance from the expected norms of society and the society had many nasty little tools to force the conformity, not the least being he penalization of whole families if one member could not conform.

Those who outright refused to conform or could not bend their minds into the shape needed to conform, where treated even worse.

The only reason the Shulmi Elves had not been crushed was because the struggle against the Albion Empire had diverted attention and resources away from the effort it would need to crush them. Already forced off their ancestral lands into reservations, the Shulmi Elves lived quietly because to live loudly resulted in their already restricted numbers being culled even further.

After the destruction of the Albion Empire the Theocracy of the Domilii struggled with the pockets of undead that rose spontaneously in the years that followed. That and people willing to risk the judgement of the Paladins to harness the power of necromancy that flowed more strongly in the following centuries. Due to this the Shulmi were left alone for a while longer.

Unfortunately, eventually, the world stabilized enough that the Domilii and the Prelates could decide that they needed to clean house. It was decided that the Shulmi Elves were the source of the heresies afflicting the general populace, making them more inclined to question the Holy Edicts and discontent with the sacrifices they were expected to make to prove that they loved their families, their communities and their God. Some were even daring to be sad when their children were given to the Paladins for training. Worse there was the suspicion that some of the reservations were acting as a breeding ground for the Void Dragons. As these chaos bringing beast were exceptionally powerful, direct confrontation was considered to be inadvisable.

Then a new Domilii was elected. Having rode a wave of sympathy after his family was murdered by forces unknown not long after he was ordained as a lowly priest and proved himself competent and measured, this Domilii had suggested a new method to bring the Shulmi within the fold.

Special schools were built where the Children of the Shulmi could be housed while they were cured of their heretical mind set and returned to their people as missionaries to lead them to the freedom and truth of the belief of the true god and the right way of living. The children were forced into these schools with the threat of the Domilii’s army and the Paladins at the boarders of the reservation. After the smoke had risen from two reservations the others folded to the pressure.

508 Years Ago – The Shulmi Rise in Rebellion

The Boarding School program was meant to teach the Shulmi to be ‘proper’ people. Instead, the few children who managed to graduate and return to the reservations had no knowledge of their Mother Tongues, no idea of their people’s beliefs and no understanding of their way of life. They had no common ground by which they could convince their parents to change their minds. If anything it made the divide between the Shulmi and the humans even greater. And then the true purpose of the Boarding School program was revealed. In nearly thirty years of the Boarding School program not a single child who had been to one of those places had children of their own. Not only had they been stripped of language, culture and identity, they had been stripped of fertility. The Boarding School program wasn’t to facilitate the assimilation of the Shulmi Elves, it was to disguise their eradication. For the first time ever the Mother Lodge faced answering a question without the thought of how it would affect the seventh generation because there wasn’t going to be a seventh generation. That knowledge was an unholy terror to the Shulmi and the Mother Lodges realised that they were faced with a hideous set of futures:

If they did nothing there would be no seventh generation.

If they rose in rebellion and they lost there would be no seventh generation.

If they rose in rebellion and they won then there might, MIGHT, be a seventh generation.

For the first time in their history it was the Mother Lodge who demanded a war. It was the Mother Lodge who walked into the Chieftain's hut and took down the great sabre off the back wall. It was the Mother Lodge that bared the blade and spoke the words of anger and hate into the world.

The Shulmi rose like never before and no reservation wall was strong enough to contain them.

506 Years Ago – The Appearance of the Steel Killer

For two years the Shulmi rebellion balanced on the edge of a knife, for every victory a defeat, for every child saved another lost, for every residential school burnt to the ground a camp reduced to ashes. Hit and run tactics were only so effective when the Paladins could track a thought and their Astral Dragon mounts could cover distance as fast as blinking.

And then the Paladins ran up against the Steel Killer.

They thought he was new leader of the Shulmi. They were wrong. Hartseer had found his daughter’s body after she had taken a rope to her pain when she discovered that she had been sterilized. His wife starved herself to death, her heart malforming under the weight of the grief. He had been leading one of the most successful Shulmi campaigns against the Domilii’s Army and the Paladins when he vanished for a time. When he returned it was in a skin of metal and eyes of glass, unblinking, unflinching, unbreaking before the Paladin’s power. The Paladins learnt fear.

The Steel Killer had no scent the Astral Dragons could track, no heartbeat a Paladin could sense and never tired in his relentless pace. Some said the Steel Killer wielded two blades, some said four, all knew that he could not be turned aside from his first avowed intent – the execution of the Paladins upon the field of battle. The Steel Killer did not eat, did not sleep and never tired. It seemed he’d co-ordinated multiple attacks over whole Provinces, leading a battle in the heartland of one Province on the first day and then commanding a raid on a Paladin encampment on the boarder of the next the following morning. The starlight elemental weapon of the Astral Dragons had no effect against metal and they learnt the hard way that biting at the Steel Killer was not a brilliant idea after one of the eldest died choking to death on Hartseer, its mouth and upper throat shredded to pieces by his ripping blades.

The Steel Killer became the highest priority target of the campaign, above even Traitor Paladins who were using the same powers as the Paladins.

Under his leadership the Shulmi were not just raiding but taking and holding land, the Provinces falling under their control one by one.

497 Years Ago – The Day of Destruction

In nine years, the Steal Killer brought the Domilii’s kingdom to the edge of collapse, cities isolated, besieged, forced to negotiate with the Shulmi for supplies. The Provinces under the control of the Mother Lodges were even stabilizing as the Mother Lodges had no intention of doing to others what had been done to them, seeking instead to comb the snakes from the hair of their enemy’s leaders so that proper discussions and discourse could take place.

Then suddenly the Shulmi withdrew, the whole population migrating on mass within the space of days towards the west coast, the Steel Killer spearheading the advance. Like an avalanche the Shulmi descended on one of the North West ports and their intension became clear – mass evacuation. What triggered this change of tactics was unknown but the Domilii’s army gave chase, hounding the Shulmi every step of the way. The Kill Team finally brought their prey to bare as the ships were loaded, the Steel Killer cornered and desperate. He still fought like a demon as the battle exploded around them.

Perhaps it was an accident, the teams not trained as well as they believe or perhaps it was an act of desperation, a commander deciding that friendly fire was preferable to the Steel Killer escaping once more. Either way the fight between Hartseer and the Paladins was bracketed with an experimental weapon and hell was unleashed. The cliff top gave way and all of the combatants fell into the cavern below, swallowed by the ground itself.

If a rescue attempt for the Paladins was ever mounted is unknown for not an hour later the Great Destruction shattered the Far Continent. Starting from Etucan, the capital city, it appears the Great Destruction was some sort of vast magical spell gone wrong. Extremely, totally wrong.

Rock melted without heat, organic things warped and twisted into new forms, flesh merged and mingled, machines started multiplying like living things, buildings crawled like animals. The air itself changed and the sky was consumed by fires of unnamed hues, the colour of outer space bleeding into reality.

Across the world the ley lines twisted sideways, what was unleashed on the now Burning Continent echoing round the globe of Hestia over and over again. It is said that many of the hybrid beasts such as the chimera, Minotaurs and Ablets have their genesis in this time, the young of both man and beast corrupted before they were even born. It took decades for Hestia to even part way heal and the Far Continent is now known as the Burning Continent and none have dared return there.

And there you have it, the most influential events in Hestia’s history, stretching from deepest prehistory to nearly the present day. I hope you enjoyed it and now I’ll go and start on the next one.

Be safe out there my lovely darlings and as always, be kind.