Return to Earth Eternal Official Lore

9 | THE MYSTARCH DOMINION

The years had not been kind to Zahhak. Imprisoned beneath the Mystarch fortress for over a decade, his mind had broken down further and further. Eventually, most of the other Mystarchs gave up attempting to help him and even stopped visiting him. Only Jezebel was willing to see him, out of pity and guilt. She felt responsible for his miserable condition. If only she and Al‐Idrisi had not gone searching for the Enigma Primal they would not have found the Shadow and therefore not needed the others to search for information. Perhaps Zahhak would not have been driven mad with someone to stay and help him resist the temptation of power.

And all was for naught, anyway. In all these years, the Darklords had done nothing. No threats had been made. No Shadow Fiends walked the Earth. The Mystarchs had only their own fear and failure to contend with, and Zahhak was the constant reminder of that. So each year Jezebel would descend into their dungeons, hoping to see some trace of sanity restored to his tortured eyes.

Zahhak’s Recovery

Fifteen years had passed while Zahhak rotted in his chains. At the start of the sixteenth year, Jezebel made her annual, mournful visit. But what she encountered was not at all what she had expected. Instead of his usual cowering, slavering, pitiful self, Zahhak was calmly sitting cross‐legged on the floor, watching her enter. His eyes were lucid.

He explained to Jezebel that he had been visited by an otherworldly being of great power. Calling itself a Dor’kana, it had healed his troubled psyche and taught him the secrets of a new kind of magic—that of the mind. The Dor’kana had come bearing this knowledge for one reason: The Shadow was coming to Earth, and soon. He charged Zahhak with preparing the Earth for the coming battle, and taught him to manipulate minds.

The sad reality was that Zahhak was only slightly less mad as a result of the Dor'kana's ministrations, and that Zahhak had employed this new mind magic, which was not taken into account by the warding spells the Mystarchs had placed on his cell, to convince Jezebel that he was sane again.

She freed him and they went to speak to the other Mystarchs. Only Tarchon and Macha were at the Mystarch stronghold at that time, but when the rest returned they found Tarchon, Macha, and Jezebel supporting Zahhak and agreeing to his demands without question. Zahhak claimed that they must first unite the known world against the Shadow, by force if necessary, and then finish what he had started 15 years before: decode the Enigma Primal.

The others were unconvinced at first. Al‐Idrisi spoke most vehemently against forcing the Beast nations to unite, arguing that to do so would not only be impractical but would make them illegitimate kings and queens. Jarnsaxa thought it foolish to delve back into the Enigma Primal, which had driven Zahhak mad. But in the end, the unwavering conviction of four of their peers won them over. What good would a free world be if it could not stand against a threat to its existence? What good was sanity if they lacked the power to defeat the Shadow and defend the lives of everyone they cared about?

With great reservations, the Mystarchs voted unanimously to prepare the known world for the coming battle. Then, Al‐Idrisi revealed his news: In his latest travels, he had found a civilization far to the east, in mountains much greater and older than the Alpines, called Kathmand. Their people spoke of an ancient prophecy, pulled from the caverns beneath their home, which was eerily similar to the parts of the Enigma Primal that were comprehensible.

The Kathmandi claimed that it had been written by no Beast, and dated to a Lost Age. It seemed that the key to the Enigma Primal might have been hidden on Earth after all. Al‐Idrisi left with Jarnsaxa and Nefritari, and journeyed east back to investigate it further while the others prepared to unite the Beasts. The Beasts of Europe were initially resistant to the message of the Mystarchs, but in time, most acquiesced. Some kingdoms agreed to unite out of fear of the Shadow, and some out of respect for the obvious power and wisdom of the Mystarchs.

Resistance

Some, however, were not willing to hand over their self‐determination so easily. Several kingdoms acknowledged the threat of the Shadow and pledged their assistance when the time for battle came, but were not as willing to submit to Mystarch control as the other nations. In particular, the Taurians of Taurania, the Bounders of the Emerald Kingdom, the Dog Soldiers of Amizeh, and the Broccan clans in the Scotian Highlands were resistant to external rule.

This resistance angered Zahhak and sent him into fits of rage but he was unable to sway his fellows. Having shared the secrets learned from their early studies of the Mysterium Primordial, the Mystarchs faced in the mages of Europe a combined force that could outmatch them, without even considering the armies of the nations of Beasts that would stand against these would‐be overlords.

Kathmand

Meanwhile, in the east, Al‐Idrisi and his companions had returned to Kathmand and discovered the ancient caverns which were said to contain the prophecy. They entered with great trepidation but found precisely what they were seeking. Finally, the key to the Enigma Primal, and thus the Mysterium Primordial, was theirs!

It appeared that it had been written by a long‐lost civilization as a kind of super‐weapon to be used at last resort against imminent defeat. Perhaps the enemy was the Shadow. Perhaps the long‐lost civilization would have been an enemy. The Mystarchs did not know, but in a few months time they had studied it and copied it, and then returned to the other Mystarchs in the Alpine Fortress.

We may never discover the true extent of the glorious powers the Mystarchs discovered when the full potential of the Mysterium Primordial was unlocked, for they did not share their secrets with the other Beasts this time. We know their power was immense, and no Beast before or after them has been capable of wielding such raw energy. Bound by their previous resolution to use force if necessary, the Mystarchs brought the last of the resisting Beast nations under their control. A few displays of their newfound power were enough to cow the stragglers and cement their dominion over their fellow Beasts.

The Mystarchs now had political power to match their mystical power, but all was not well, for Zahhak's madness festered, unseen by his fellow Mystarchs but all‐too‐apparent to the ambassadors from the subjugated Beast Nations, whom Zahhak saw as beneath him and thus saw no need to bedevil them with his mind magic. Why ensorcel the peasants when you control the Kings and Queens?

The Anura

One use that the Mystarchs put the unlocked Mysterium to bears mentioning. The Mystarch Tarchon felt that with his newfound power it would be fitting to have suitable servants to attend to him. Why not a new race of Beasts? Tarchon, now mighty his puissance, deemed himself fit to emulate the task of Gods and journeyed to the eastern end of the Mystarch empire, to the Polissya Swamp and gathered creatures of the murk.

Many were his failures with some of the more exotic of the swamp creatures, and finally he exerted his mystical will upon a breed of large frogs living in the Polissya. This time, the result was not a hideously deformed freak or simply a dead animal, but upright creatures that resembled a true Beast though were not quite that. Tarchon named them the Anura and set them to the most demeaning and most odious tasks of manual labor.

Tarchon, feeling that as the creator of the Anura he was their God, further demanded that the Anura worship him, and sacrifice one of their own every fortnight and burn the body on a pyre, in offering to him. Though they were brought into the world by Tarchon, the Anura were as any other thinking creature and resented their lowly status as well as their cruel master and creator. They had no allies though, for none cared for the Anura and few Beasts were even aware they existed. For now, the Anura had no choice but to permit themselves to be abused lest Tarchon decide to simply wipe out their budding people.

The Unbending Treekin

The last pocket of resistance to Mystarch rule in Europe were the Treekin, who were impervious to Zahhak's mental trickery. For the first time in history, Beast and Treekin battled and incredibly, even the Treekin fell back before the combined might of the Mystarchs. While once the Treekin lived in enclaves spread across Europe, now the Treekin retreated to the Great Forest along the Western end of Europe and gathered there, concentrating their ancient arboreal power to bar the forest to those they sadly looked upon as enemies now.

Zahhak was determined to penetrate the Great Forest, believing that none should stand against his will to save the world from the Shadow, and that those who would must be convinced of the error of their ways. Yet, though the Mystarchs threw their full might at the Great Forest, the defenses held. Attack after attack was repelled, and armies broke upon the walls of the forest, struck down by the trees themselves, it is said. The spells of the Mystarchs were for naught, for they were simply absorbed by the forest. Even Al‐Idrisi, the master of travel magics, was unable to use his magic to move within the Great Forest of the Treekin.

Finally, recognizing that while he could not prevail over the combined Treekin but that the Treekin were now confined to the Great Forest, Zahhak and the Mystarchs called off the attack. Meeting in their Alpine Stronghold, it was agreed that each Mystarch must rule a section of their empire and prepare it for the coming of the Shadow.