Book One: The Witchling of Alsira
From the Journals of the Dread Lord
I - Ink to the Page
I - Ink to the Page
The Journals of the Dread Lord of Iron - Volume 418
Fyrranday, 21st Day of Jhulonn, Blood Year
2,218 Year of the Iron Crown
The Sixth and Final Age of Humanity
It has been over two centuries since my most prized seneschal, Jakobai hest-Volluran, created this foolish contraption that I sit in front of right now. In all that time since he first showed me how to activate these rune keys to turn my thoughts into words, I still have need to call upon his descendants to help me use it.
Good Jakobai, once offered — a little more than a decade before his mortality caught up to him — to enhance this damned thing so that it might translate my voice straight to the written word. I laughed heartily into his face and gave him a jovial slap on his back; he felt somewhat dejected at my reaction. It only took him a few moments to realize the folly of his enthusiasm.
You see, I didn't want to have to voice my thoughts out loud like some senile old skaldt telling a story from ages long ago. I didn't want those many souls who scheme against me hearing my idle fancies and distant recollections. No doubt, should any of those words on the wind flow into the ears of my enemies, they would use such knowledge against me at a later time. No, I told him then and I keep telling his grandchildren to this day, as difficult as it is to use these bloody rune keys, I much rather have my journals remain private, silent, encoded, and my own.
Two of his grandchildren are buzzing around me like flies drawn to the sweet stench of carrion, at this very moment. I remember the name of the young woman who is sorting the thousands upon thousands of parchments I have penned since becoming the being I am now. Her name is Aestorl; a strange name, elegant in a way that a finely crafted silver spoon may be elegant, but it's a name her parents are proud of. I admit, at my advanced age, and my archaic sensibilities, new trends in names and cultures often allude me.
The older man, I believe her cousin, who keeps trying to glance over my shoulder to see the runes I'm activating... Well, I don't remember his name at all. I'm sure he has a worthwhile reason to loom over me, perhaps to make sure this now dusty and antiquated device continues to function properly. Yet, if he doesn't soon realize the disrespect he is showing his immortal lord, I will have to make him realize that simply because he comes from a respected blood-line in my city, I won't hesitate to wipe him and his family from the face of the world-plane. Much like the many others I have slain over the millennia of my tortured existence.
Oh, I think he was able to see that last bit, he's scurrying for the door at this very moment. I hadn't even thought of the best way to torture him, or whether or not Aestorl should pay for his crimes, as well. At least he's observant and dutiful, I'll give him that. Now if only I could remember his damned name...
I must focus, my apologies to whoever may one day read these pages. My mind often digresses from mundane concerns to distant recollections. I believe that the advanced age of my being is catching up to me. I find that mortal years pass by me like grains of sand on the wind, especially when I get caught up in moments of contemplation. I'm not here to waste ink, paper, time or the precious essential energies this device uses on recollecting mundane minutiae like my subject's names. Or, for that matter, idly complaining about the progress — or lack thereof — that goes on around me.
No, I am here to put my history to the page, in the vain hopes that one day in the future, someone or some-thing, may learn from the stories I have accumulated over my many cursed years in this dying world. With each erratic and diminishing day, the world around my great city slips further and further into the doom brought on by hidden hands. More and more of the great world-plane slips into eternal darkness, or caves in upon itself in great, heaving chunks towards the gaping maw of Gehemol below. I doubt that the eyes that scroll over these last memories that I write will be human, but maybe someone might come across them in the ages to come. Those strange ages that might exist long after the last remnants of the world have crumbled away. Maybe, in an age where I no longer exist and can finally attain the mortality that I have so sought for many centuries. That I may yet fall at last, like all those around me or that have gone before, into the darkened oblivion where my long-forgotten love resides.
What was her name again? Her beautiful face haunts my every slumbering moment with nightmarish guilt, yet I always have a hard time remembering her name. Perhaps as I continue my feverish ramblings, my mind will dredge it up, once again.
Tholtashday, 22nd Day of Jhulonn, Blood Year
2,218 Year of the Iron Crown
The Sixth and Final Age of Humanity
Ah, it is good that I have Aestorl here to assist me. It only took a day of mortal time to find the name I so sought. I relished the few hours I could spend away from this contraption and its incessant humming. Aestorl scoured old and crumbling tomes from the very first of my journals. It took time and effort, but she was finally able to seize the name from one of the tomes before it crumbled to dust in her very hands.
That young woman has proven her worth to me even in these mere moments. I should catch myself, hours, I believe. I will have to keep her close, both because she is dutiful, but also because she knows my secrets well. A strength and a liability, all rolled into one person.
My love has a name again; my beautiful Zynna. The woman that my immortal heart still longs for, long past the time such an organ has ceased its function and atrophied to dust. Now, slowly, the memories are returning to me. I can feel them bubbling up through the abyssal depths that is the guilt-ridden ocean of my mind. They make their way like great wyrms, flying and clawing through the labyrinth of my corrupted existence so that I may draw upon them once more.
I will set these memories down to the page, once and for all; lest I forget them again, and with that, the last specks of ash that was my former humanity.
I'm sure it all seems quite purple and morose to a mortal reader, yet the words I use to describe my condition do not come easily to me. Were you to live as long as I have, and seen the horrible sights that I have seen, or done the terrible deeds that I have had to do, you would find yourself waxing poetic as well. I will have to try and remember some of what I have learned from skaldts and sages of the past, to trim my words for mortal sensibilities as I continue.
Almsday, 8th Day of Kollast, Blood Year
2,218 Year of the Iron Crown
The Sixth and Final Age of Humanity
Hah! I find myself returning to this manuscript almost seven months since I began the misbegotten thing. It would seem that my subjects cannot leave well enough alone to allow their dreaded ruler some time to recollect his many thoughts. If I get pulled away from this project once more, I may have to put a puppet regent upon my bone and iron throne for a generation or two so that I may finish this project in peace. Perhaps, if I were to do so, the people may eventually forget who I am. Oh my, what a wonderful thought that would be!
It does pain the last bits of my mortal conscience to have to make example of my own subjects in such a way. I believe, if I were to avoid the use of euphemism, the correct term would be slaughter. In a world as savage as this one has become, there is no more room for error or disobedience. Civil unrest must be resolved quickly, even if it comes at the cost of entire groups of my subjects. Whole civilizations have been wiped away by my hand as of late. I wax hyperbolic I must admit, but when you are referring to the last descendants of proud people, all it takes is the murder of a scant few to end an entire civilization in these last days. To think that these people I must care for, that I must allow to live or to die, are all that is left of this world. That I can reduce to carrion the discarded memories, hopes, and dreams of entire peoples simply because the could not live in peace with the rest. Whole lineages have been erased by my blood-stained hands, all due to petty squabbling or idle scheming.
There are no more resources left in this world. There is no more space to escape or be exiled to. The maws of oblivion creep along the horizon and threaten to penetrate the very walls of my city. All in this world — what is left of it — must obey and heed my will in life, or they shall pay for their treachery in death. I was once a creature that was fond of mercy, now I find myself an inhuman monster borne from severity. Perhaps death is it's own reward for these people. Each new day only seems to be filled with suffering.
If I still believed in the gods of my mortal age, I would say that I have become the very personification of twisted, old Olthenna, herself. I've given up on such fancies like faith a long time ago, however. I have learned just how alone we humans are in the great celestial starsea. Just how bereft we all are of hope or some sort of divine intervention. Most of all, just how meaningless our pathetic existence is, immortal or not.
This world has only one god who exists within its fading and corrupted confines and that is me.
If the gods of my mortal existence ever did exist — and perhaps they did, who is to know — they haven't remained on this world since the Great Northern Abyss began gnawing at the world-mother. Maybe it was in that time, not more than a millennium or three before my forsaken birth, that the gods old and new fled to greener or more livelier orbs in the great celestial starsea above. Perhaps, it was those who left the ancient Vhorrish ruins and weapons that drove the gods away. Perhaps, it was the people of the world who turned their back on those who created or nurtured them in the past. For our accumulated hubris as a species, we are punished to remain here, fading away with each passing day and damned to the anti-climatic death swallowed up by obscuring shadows.
I needed to take a moment to wash the blood from my hands and change my armors from their gore-encrusted state. When my immortal rage is quelled by murder, I find myself growing full with echoes of mortal passion. I believe I filled the parchments above with most of it. I shall endeavor to calm myself and return to the focus of these words.
It is hard for me to return to the times before; to the times when I was young and filled with hope. Those early years when I could recall my life experiences within the span of a single life-time, rather than with ages stuck in a torpor of emotional torture. I find myself ever-more hesitant to go through with what I must do, yet this must be done, so I shall.
I have wasted enough time, whatever meaning that concept might have anymore to a being such as I. The world's final end draws nigh, so these words must be put down with as much clarity as haste. The pain may be more than I can bare, but this is my lot. This is what I must do as the last to chronicle the ages and the peoples of this dying world. This is but one of my many curses.
So here, I begin in earnest, the stories of how this world fell to what it now is and my most unholy part in its demise. Here lie the full and complete stories of the Dread Lord of Fel-Shelev, from the time of his youngest beginnings to the time of his doom and damnation. Here are the collected stories that changed who I am, and led me to the follies I would bring to the world. Here is the last story of this world, and the many other stories I have collected from the disparate cultures I saw in my travels.
Here begins, what I shall now call...
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