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0 | THE LOST AGES
Titans
When the Earth was young and even the Gods themselves were but an unrealized possibility, beings of power raw and roughly‐formed held dominion over the land. The Titans, they were called, for they were the very definition of might. Kronos, the greatest of them, and Gaia, his wife, ruled them and in turn they were masters of all the Earth. Tethys, Bor, Themis, Atum, Hyperion, Oceanus, and many others made up the ranks of these Lords of the Lost Ages.
For time untold, Kronos and his fellows in power ruled unquestioned. A multitude of mainly-forgotten beings and creatures walked the lands, some created by the Titans themselves, and all paid homage to the unquestioned lords of the eternal Earth. Two amongst these races are of concern to us, for they were chief among the servants of the Titans and their influence persists even today, many Ages hence.
The Faeries
First, the Elemental Dragons. Winged creatures of fearsome and fundamental power, each of a type – Fire, Ice, Earth, and Air. Upon these ancient monstrosities the Titans rode to war against armies we know – the Shadow Legion foremost among them – and forces we know not even the rumor of legend.
Next, the diverse folk of the Faerie Folk. Noble and callow, beautiful and hideous. If the Elemental Dragons were steeds of the Titans, the Faerie were the stable masters and the sergeants, the priests and the princes. In all their forms, the Faerie were filled with the pure, chaotic potency that characterized those who managed to survive the wild, brutal Lost Ages. The Faerie differed greatly in both form and ability, and there was a roughly‐enforced hierarchy among them with King Oberon and Queen Titania ruling their race and reporting directly to their Titan emperors, and the lowest of the Faerie, whom the rest deemed fit only to perform menial tasks, chief amongst these being the Cyclopes.
Beyond Oberon and Titania, though, lay one Faerie that exceeded them in power, and to whom all Faerie owed allegiance and perhaps eventual survival: Agalarna, the Spirit Mother. The Faerie had been created by Hyperion, and the first born to Hyperion’s craft was Agalarna. Potent beyond any Faerie after, the Spirit Mother was nearly a God in her own right and though she did not exercise formal authority over her people, even the Faerie King and Queen treated her as an object of adoration and near‐worship. From her, it seemed, the strength of the Faerie blood flowed, and for this reason Hyperion deemed this first Faerie creation a mistake, for he saw that Agalarna might serve the Faerie as a symbol around which to rally and perhaps as inspiration to be more than servants to the Titans.
With time, the Faerie did indeed grow discontented with their state of servitude. “Why should we serve? They may be greater in power but we are far greater in number. It is time for the Folk to chart the course of our people.” Rumors of rebellion reached the ears of Hyperion, their ultimate father, who brought it to Kronos and all of his kin. They met in council, and debated the fate of their chief servants.
The Titans were nothing if not capricious and arbitrary in their power and they determined that the Faerie would best be punished for their impudence by sending their Spirit Mother away. They could not slay her, for her death would greatly diminish the power of their Faerie servants and perhaps even ruin them as a race. By exiling the beloved Agalarna, the greatest power among the Faerie would be safely removed from the influence of the others, and the strength in the blood of the Folk would be muted enough to serve as a harsh reprimand. Hyperion, taking the defiance of his creations more personally than did the other Titans, also demanded that one of every five Faeries be executed, to drive home their status as servants rather than free beings in control of their own destinies.
The Titans gathered the Faerie and informed them of their collective punishment. Dismay swept through the ranks of the Folk as well as an emotion new to them: Fear. On all the Earth, only the Titans exceeded them in power and only the Elemental Dragons rivaled them. The Faerie were servants, it is true, but they were first among the servants of the Titans and heretofore had never needed to be disciplined by their creator and masters. Those to be executed were taken and slain on the spot. The Faeries wailed in anguish and gnashed their teeth, but what could they do against the combined might of the Titans?
Despite losing one‐fifth of their race minutes before, the cruelest blow was still to come. Kronos himself took Agalarna, the Spirit Mother, and placed her on a comet that was passing by Earth. He sent the comet off in space, on a straight line, such that it would never return to Earth. Agalarna would recede further and further away from her people with every passing moment, for eternity. The Faerie Folk felt a blow to themselves as they had not believed possible. With time, as the comet the Spirit Mother was on sped away from them, they felt the potency in their blood diminish somewhat and become muted. Though still fearsome in their strength, the Faerie knew they were now less than they had been, and that they would never be what they were when the world was still young. Never again would they bask in the glory of Agalarna, the first of their kind, and forever would they languish in servitude to their cruel Titan masters.
The Titans celebrated their own wisdom and judgment, feeling they had done well. The Faerie Folk had been put in their place and the Spirit Mother would never serve as a rallying point for their servants again.
They were wrong. What Kronos and his fellows could not know is that they had erred, and erred greatly. It was not the plan of sending Agalarna into exile itself that would return to plague them; rather it was the execution. Despite their intention to send the comet on which Kronos had placed the Spirit Mother straight away from Earth, even Kronos, the Lord of the Titans, did not achieve perfection in this endeavor. He did not propel the comet in a straight line but in one that curved ever, ever so slightly, such that eventually the comet was destined to return in a loop and pass close by the Earth again. The Titans had sealed their fates, though it would be uncountable years before they would be haunted by the specter of their actions.
The Coming of Djall
Millennia beyond measure passed. Great wars between the unknown inhabitants of the Lost Ages raged. The Maar built their Orean Symmetry, imprisoning themselves in its time‐warped influence. Nations with names our greatest scholars may have encountered only once in a lifetime of study rose and fell. Who among us today knows anything of the Rik’tul Horde or the Celestial Empire of the Sumar? Above all these reigned the Titans and the Faerie who served them, and for all this long time the Faerie were diminished by the absence of their Spirit Mother and made sorrowful by the thought of her alone in the empty void that lay beyond the boundaries of the Earth.
They were right to fear for Agalarna, but not because she was alone. Out there in the blackness and emptiness she had acquired a companion. This companion was unsought for and surely unwelcome, for he represented such concentrated evil as the Earth had not yet seen. Yes, the Titans could be cruel and capricious, and the mortal denizens of the Earth could be as good or terrible to each other as they are now, but no being of the Earth had previously encountered anything that had the kind of hideous malevolence that what hitched itself to the huge ball of compressed silt and ice Agalarna sat on possessed. It was a mind with a will to terrorize, use up, and consume the essence of all that was beautiful, hopeful, or bright about what was around it, and the Spirit Mother shone like a flame to it, cast against the uniform, empty background of the deep void as she was.
It was Djall, the Dark Lord, and while he didn’t know where the comet was going, he knew that Agalarna was something powerful and beautiful, and that he must corrupt, torture, and twist her until she was a husk and he had sated himself upon her essence. He is a parasite and a predator, feeding off the essence of those he conquers with his power. For dozens of millennia she was unable to escape his torments and predations, and bit by bit, the Spirit Mother was broken and sapped of a good deal of her power.
Eventually, inevitably, the comet we now know as Djall’s Hammer returned to the vicinity of Earth, bearing with it the beaten and shattered Agalarna, who could not leave the comet, and Djall himself, who saw in the Earth a bounty of near‐endless proportion on which to turn his crushing malice. He could no more have resisted the Earth than a starving wolf could resist steaming, fresh meat placed in front of it, and so he crossed the gap between himself and the Earth, leaving the Spirit Mother to fly off away from the Earth once again. But while Agalarna was close to Earth, the Faeries felt as if the strength in their blood had been renewed. They were stronger than they had been since the days before their Spirit Mother had been cast off into the great void, though now it faded again as Djall’s Hammer flew once again away, away into the unknown.
Tarterus
Djall sensed immense power in some of the beings that called Earth home, and he fled to the interior of the planet, deep into its core, where even the Titans did not go for the presumption that there was nothing there. He watched. He learned. As he passed time within the depths, he discovered the entrance to Tartarus, a place lying outside of our reality. Peering in, he saw that this was an inhabited plane, but much poorer in life than the Earth he was hiding inside of. A race who called themselves Daemons lived within, still young and primitive as a people.
Though he could peer into Tartarus through this, the Tartarin Door, and see within, the door would not permit him through. It was as if this metaphysical door had a small viewing window built into it but the rest of the door was fully shut and locked. He struck the door, cast alien magics at it, and attempted to find a way to widen the ‘window’ that permitted him to see what was on the other side, but to no avail. Then he noticed that in the center of the great door lay a small ‘key’ of pure power given physical form. Its aura was somehow muted and Djall could barely detect it, but nonetheless there it was. Manipulating it with his own power, for touching it physically would surely be a poor idea, he turned this key and opened the door.
Djall entered Tartarus to discover what he could. Within, he found an endless ruined landscape of blasted rock and grey ash, and Daemons picking a meager survival from what little else lived or grew there. There was, to Djall, but one notable thing about Tartarus. Far from its portal to the core of the Earth was something massive that radiated power as a God might. The Starscythe, it was called, for legend among the Daemons held that it had come from the stars, falling through the sky like a flaming scythe cutting through cosmic wheat.
Djall traveled to the Starscythe, killing all in his path, and drew the great weapon from the ground. As he did so, he ripped a hole in reality with the planar‐splitting edge of the Scythe while his hands began to smolder from the sheer power unleashed. Djall screamed a rolling wave of pain that blasted across all of Tartarus, and beyond, through the tear in reality that the Starscythe had created and into the realm of Hell, where Ur, the King of Demons, reigned.
Ur was a mighty force, supreme on the plane of Hell, but had not encountered planar rifts previously. When Djall’s scream revealed to Ur that there were places the might of Ur had not yet been felt in, the infernal Demon King reached through the rift to see what he could see. He saw the masses of pitiful Daemons and noted with surprise that they bore a resemblance to many of the Demons. This raised the question of their origins, but it was a mystery to be pondered another day, for his attention was immediately drawn to Djall and the single most powerful object of power Ur had ever seen – the Starscythe – lying at Djall’s feet while Djall continued to writhe in pain.
The Lord of Hell rushed forward and grabbed the Starscythe, for he feared neither fire nor flame. Raising it in triumph, he struck at Djall, thinking to kill him. Though wracked with pain, Djall possessed enough awareness to dodge the blow and flee back towards the Tartarin Door. Leaping through, he slammed the door shut, turned the key, and locked it, bringing Ur up short. Djall had escaped, but with knowledge that he felt sure no being of Earth had. He would use this for his dark purposes.
For centuries, Djall nursed his wounds and continued to watch and wait. The Titans were mighty beings indeed, but Djall had power of his own and had a major advantage: He knew of the Titans, but they did not know of him. For a thousand years, Djall managed to play his familiar parasitic role and leeched potency bit by bit from the Titans, who did not notice, for they wasted their vast oceans of might as one does who feels that a resource is unlimited. He knew that it was but a matter of time until he was noticed, and laid his plans, to be hatched upon the eventuality of that time.
It was Gaia who discovered him, in the end, for among all the Titans she was most attuned to the subtle ebbs and flows of the natural world. Djall’s alien, corrupting presence eventually flowed, however weakly, from deep within the Earth where he hid to the surface world, and eventually Gaia felt the tapestry of life become warped ever so lightly. Enlisting Kronos and the other Titans, they discovered Djall as he knew they would. He was prepared.
He allowed himself to be captured, and wove an enthralling tale of the power to be gained in Tartarus as represented by the Demon King Ur, and of the Starscythe itself. He showed the Titans his still terribly wounded hand and they believed, for they were a greedy race and they wished to believe. They were much tempted by the tales of Djall, and he struck a deal with the Titans to show them how to enter Tartarus in return for a place among them, as an equal. Djall, of course, had no intention of merely being an equal to these ancestors of our Gods. He intended to reign supreme and suck the essence out of the Earth and everything in it or on it. He would be far more than a Titan if his plans were realized.
Djall led the Titans to Tartarus, but for Gaia who did not trust Djall and said as much to her brothers, sisters, and husband. Though powerful even amongst such a worthy assemblage, the other Titans viewed Gaia as somewhat weak for her strong ties to life on Earth that they viewed as below them. They ignored her advice as over‐cautious and followed Djall to the Tartarin Door.
Djall unlocked the Door, and first Kronos and then the other Titans rushed through, eager to gain advantage over the others by gathering power to himself or herself first. Djall merely waited until they had bulled past, shut the Door, and locked it. With a single stroke he had caused all but one of the greatest powers on Earth to be sequestered away into another reality. For all practical purposes, he had killed them. Nobody else on Earth knew the location of the Tartarin Door, and Djall was certainly not going to tell. It “locked” only from the Earth‐side, and Djall managed to rip the key out, permanently shutting the Door.
The Gods Awaken
He surveyed the Earth. He had leeched away enough power from the Titans to be at least the equal of Gaia, and he was ruthless. Dark of soul, and ruthless. He began to corrupt those of the Lost Ages, of whom no record survives, and his power increased. Within mere decades Djall, now the Dark Lord of the Earth, was worshipped by more than one nation and Gaia knew she had to move quickly. She mourned the loss of her husband Kronos, and her fellow Titans, but her first loyalty had grown to become the Earth itself and the beings of good will who inhabited it. She moved to counter Djall.
The Titans, especially Kronos, had many children, but Kronos, Hyperion, and the other eldest among the Titans were wise enough to know that the next generation might seek to supplant the previous one, and so they put their children in a place called the Nexus Void, where time does not exist. There, the nascent children of the Titans – beings we know as the Gods – rested there unconscious and unaging, held in stasis, for perhaps millions of years in the case of the first‐born among them, such as Odin, Zeus, Hera, and Ra. There were dozens and dozens of these children of the Titans there in the Nexus Void, and Gaia awoke them all. She was mother to many of them, and aunt to the rest. She awakened them with a purpose in mind: Drive back this new, alien force called Djall.
The Godwars
The newly‐born but nearly fully‐formed Gods swarmed out of the Nexus Void that had served as their cradle for so long, grateful to Gaia for their freedom but full of righteous anger at their interminable imprisonment. With the Titans locked away, there was only one target for their rage: Djall, who sought mastery of this world that they felt was now, by rights, theirs.
The Faerie Folk, who had been overjoyed by the disappearance of the Titans saw that one way or another, they were going to once again be relegated to the second tier, either as slaves to Djall or, at best, servants of these upstart Gods, provided they could even survive the budding war of the great powers of the Earth.
They fled to a place near to the Nexus Void, which was both of the Earth’s reality and yet set apart from it, and of which they became aware only when Gaia awoke the Gods. The Faerie settled on its outskirts where time was slow but yet flowed, and built a new realm for the Folk to dwell in and await the inevitable return of Djall’s Hammer and the return of their Spirit Mother, that Faerie might may wax once again.
Their new home was a wonderland of the odd, for the Faerie are a diverse folk and they had diverse desires. Forests in deserts, areas built to be inhabited by giants, bizarre colors and discordant music. They called it the Otherworld, and from within its center, from the massive Elysian Court, Oberon and Titania ruled the people of the Faerie. The years outside flew by while the Faerie endured and multiplied.
The war between the Gods and Djall lasted for time untold. Gods fell and died, and Djall was wounded again and again by the Gods. Much life on Earth was scoured clean from the sheer power released in the clashes between the Gods and Djall. The Faerie had been wise to flee. The Elemental Dragons were co‐opted by both the Gods and Djall, and nearly all perished in the endless conflict.
The Earth became quiet as the peoples of it fell, some as innocent bystanders, some while participating in the war, either fighting for the Dark Lord or against him.
Finally, after endless aeons of Earth‐scorching war, it was clear to Gaia that what life remained on the Earth was at risk, that she could lose everything she cared about. The Gods were weakened and even the mightiest of them had been worn down by battle after unending battle. Djall had accounted himself mightily, fighting against the Gods and Gaia both, but he himself was exhausted from the struggle.
None know, and perhaps none will ever know, how Djall and Gaia came to some accord, but at some point the war simply ended. The enmity between them did not diminish, but open warfare directly between them, or directly between Djall and the Gods, ceased. Henceforth it appeared that the war would be conducted largely indirectly, through agents of one side or the other.
It bears mentioning that the White Priests of Atan believe that the Great Mother and Lord Djall are but servants or manifestations of powers even greater than themselves, known as the Creator and the Demiurge. We have multiple pieces of evidence to indicate that this may be the case. Certainly, many scholars believe that there must be powers greater than Gaia or Djall to whom they are beholden, but in matters of the great Powers it is difficult to ascertain truth.