Return to Earth Eternal Official Lore
38 | THE CLEANSING
Together, Jarnsaxa and the Maar marched to the edge of the Orean Symmetry’s radius of effect and Prometheus prepared to do what no Iron Child had done in two Ages of the Earth. There, Epimetheus and Prometheus had a last private, clearly near‐violent disagreement, and Prometheus stepped over the invisible line…then nothing, nothing but an ever‐so‐slight and unfamiliar tug as Prometheus began to age only slightly faster than he would have otherwise.
The Temporal Aegis created by Athena, Hephaestus, and Thoth had worked, and the other Maar, barring Epimetheus and some of his followers, stepped over the line that had kept them prisoner for so long. Jarnsaxa too had to stay behind for Athena had warned her that the Temporal Aegis was tuned specifically for the Maar. Jarnsaxa would remain effectively imprisoned.
The Maar did not worship the Gods but they now had even greater respect for them. The Iron Children’s future was forever changed and they knew where their debt lay. Prometheus proclaimed to his kin, “These beings who are called Gods have brought us salvation from our past and we are obligated, every one of us, to do for them what they ask. We will cleanse the surface of the legacy of Man that the Beasts may return by the will of those who have freed us.”
The Maar Journey Forth
Returning to their home caverns, the Maar gathered their most powerful artifacts for defense against the hostile beings roaming the poisoned surface, and set out to the diverse parts of the Earth, rising out of the UnderRealm through murky, hidden caverns and tunnels. As for Jarnsaxa, Epimetheus and those Maar who did not wish to leave the Orean Symmetry, they would stay and guard the great artifact that maintained their nigh‐ eternal lives while the rest of the Iron Children were doing the work asked of them.
The Maar roamed the Earth, seeking the places that suffered the strongest concentration of the terrible, ghostly poison that permeated the very air. Using the artifacts they’d formed over millennia, they drew the foul energy from the air, soil, and water, cleansing it and paving the way for new life to thrive. It was a monumental task, for the Maar were relatively few and Mankind’s ruins covered the Earth.
Within the great, dead cities of Man, where the most powerful and numerous weapons of the apocalypse had been unleashed, not even the Undead could tread, for they retained some basic affinity for the fundamental essence that makes what we know as life. The Maar, conversely, were completely unaffected by the poison, for they were formed before the Gods themselves, products, as they were, of the Lost Ages.
Dor’kana
And yet the Maar were not alone. On the fringes of perception they felt the presence of other beings in the hearts of the ruined cities of Man. There, the air was so thick with the toxic, all‐encompassing energy that it shimmered as if a great fire burned just below the ground. They used their farseeing artifacts to monitor their surroundings, but never were they able to detect any intruders.
Finally, a dozen years after they began to cleanse the Earth, one of the Iron Children caught a direct glimpse of what had lurked just beyond their sight. Dor’kana! Not seen for an Age, it was long theorized that these creatures were the personal emissaries of Lord Djall himself. They had been seen only a handful of times, often connected with the insane Mystarch, Zahhak. They had driven him mad, saved him from execution after the dominion of the Mystarchs had been overthrown, and set him to lead the Dog Soldiers to break the Covenant, the direct result of which was the birth of Mankind.
The Maar subsequently spotted the Dor’kana a handful of times over the course of five decades, always in the regions that had suffered most heavily during the Cataclysm that ended Man’s civilization. Each time, the Dor’kana that was seen quickly faded into the alleys and ruins, not to be seen again, but on its departure the concentration of poison in the air was drastically reduced. It was as if the Dor’kana were assisting in the cleanup, though none could know why.
The Iron Children did, of course, encounter the hostile beings roaming the Earth. The Maar were relatively few in number but they possessed defensive magics that were capable of destroying most who might attack them. Some Maar fell to the weight of numbers that the Undead, the People of the Skull, and the Vampires fielded, and for this the Iron Children wept while continuing their work. It was not in their nature to make war and so they did not. They defended themselves when attacked but did not pursue nor seek retribution.
Thirty years after the Maar left the Orean Symmetry to cleanse the Earth, Jarnsaxa, Epimetheus, and the other Iron Children who had remained behind continued their lives as they had for thousands of years previously, except for magical dispatches from the Maar working on the surface on what they had encountered of note – primarily, the Dor’kana.
Jarnsaxa’s Malaise
One day (or perhaps night, for that deep in the UnderRealm the light of the sun fails to penetrate), however, Jarnsaxa was out at the fringes of the Symmetry’s influence, for in truth she chafed a bit at being confined, though it had been her choice. Still, Jarnsaxa simply accepted her lot for it was as nothing when weighed against her past sins. As she reflected upon the strange turns her life had taken, the incredible discoveries she had once made, the power she had commanded, and the simple, restricted life she lived now she felt a pang of regret that it seemed her days of joyful discovery of the new and novel were past.
She had long since explored every inch the caverns that the Orean Symmetry held sway over, and had spent decades in deep reflection to come to peace with herself. She had learned much from the Maar, but had eventually hit a wall in her learning where it seemed that the fundamentally different nature of the Maar when compared to what she knew as life prevented her from achieving greater mastery.
Life for Jarnsaxa had become, in other words, monotonous. There was nothing new for her to learn, nothing to enjoy for the first time. She gazed into the dark for long minutes that stretched into hours, as melancholy faded into amusement at her own self‐pity.
But then…a chittering in the dark. Furtive footsteps, and a pair of eyes. Jarnsaxa immediately brought up her shielding magics and prepared to attack were this one of the chompers that roamed the UnderRealm.
Krostakin
It wasn’t a chomper. It was something…new. It walked upright, with two arms and two legs. At the end of one arm was a hand while the end of the other was a large pincer claw. It had a tail reminiscent of the lobsters fished from the sea, and its face was alien. It chittered at Jarnsaxa and held up its hands in a way that looked like it signaled peaceful intentions, at least. Jarnsaxa dropped the destruction magics she had been prepared to unleash and gestured similarly.
She motioned to herself and said, slowly, “Jarnsaxa.” The thing motioned at itself and chittered, slowly, “Krrroostakkkkinnn.”
With the formalities of introduction apparently taken care of, Jarnsaxa motioned to Krostakin that it should follow her. It did and she led it back to the home caverns of the Maar, whom she assumed knew of these creatures.
She was wrong. The Maar had no memory or record of these creatures and it became clear that their race was the Krostakin rather than this one’s name being Krostakin. It offered forth no name for itself, merely insisting that it was Krostakin.
Epimetheus and the other Maar were greatly interested in this Krostakin. Epimetheus used one of their artifacts to translate to and from their language but, as it worked mentally rather than audibly, it was a conversation between Epimetheus and the Krostakin, related afterwards by Epimetheus to the other Maar and Jarnsaxa.
Epimetheus and the Krostakin
For hours upon hours Epimetheus and the Krostakin conversed. When they were done, Epimetheus convened Jarnsaxa and the Maar who had remained behind to tell what he had learned. The Krostakin, he said, were a reclusive people living far below where even the Maar had tread. They built their settlements on the shores of hot underground springs and lived peaceful lives; but, lately the Undead had begun to penetrate down as well as across the surface of the Earth, and they had had many skirmishes that resulted in dead Krostakin. They had been aware of the Orean Symmetry for millennia but feared that if the Undead were to take it, as the Metalich Abidan wished, the Krostakin too would fall under the dominion of the Undead seat of power in their UnderRealm city of Sheol.
The Krostakin knew of the Maar’s work on the surface and that the Orean Symmetry was, as a result, thinly guarded. They came with an offering of assistance. The Krostakin would help guard the Symmetry and together they and the Maar would ensure it stayed out of the hands of Abidan. Epimetheus and the Maar gladly accepted this offer for they had the same fears that the Krostakin did. Only Jarnsaxa was suspicious, for the Krostakin and Epimetheus spent much time together and she suspected that Epimetheus was perhaps not telling them everything that the Krostakin communicated to him. Still, more Krostakin came and took up residence with the Maar. Nothing was overtly amiss and Jarnsaxa did not mention her concerns to any of the Iron Children, for those who remained behind were all close allies of Epimetheus.