Angehlah and the First People

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A phrase and story as old as the sentience of the First People, life is yours for the taking, still echoes in the minds of the people of Rhyonis. Were it not for those few simple words, there would be no written history, no memory, nor would there be anything of the First People at all. Every humanoid lineage knows the story, the tale being an innate part of their consciousness from the moment of their first thought; Angehlah's sacrifice and Gift of Sentience. Even before their mother's first words to them, a child would know the phrase that Angehlah used to spread Her gift, as it is this magic that resonates within their minds, that fuels their sense of reason, their drive, and their very nature.

It is said that, like a wild blizzard, Angehlah, the Silver Wyrm, among the oldest of the dragons to walk the realm, moved from Her frozen roost on Ish-Gahn's southern tip, speaking to the minds of the elves, then soaring northward to follow in the wake of the remaining First People. Though it was an act of kindness, Angehlah knew all too well that this was also an act of war. But, during the period that would become known as the War of Draconic Divergence, towards the end of the Dawn of Creation, it was imperative to make bold decisions.

Her Gift would illustrate the First People as an even more appealing target for Her enemies; the chromatic Dragons. She took a defiant stance and awoken many enslaved minds under the ruling claws of the vile souled dragons that would see the First People in continued servitude. She would charge Her six children, Tylearious, Jachobin, Pagorah, O’Rius, Carriko, and Rosilver, with the defense of the First People as She continued Her path of enlightenment. Each one of these imposing argent dragons lead small armies of their own command that would fight back against the violence directed towards their mother's subjects. Like the snowflake that begins an avalanche, the momentum of these actions set off the renaissance of Rhyonis and life prospered under Angehlah's watchful, icy eyes, just as easily as it was brutally snuffed out.

As grateful for being awoken as the First People were, never had such terror been thrust upon anyone more than those the chromatic dragons sought out immediately after the Gift of Sentience. Her actions granted the newly conscious minds understanding of pain and fear just in time for their lives to be cut short by violence, if they were lucky, or tormented mercilessly if they were captured as slaves or weapons. The strike against the First People was not what Angehlah had intended at all, terrified this outcome would come to pass, and felt Her resolve wither as even many of the metallic dragons thought Her actions foolish, blaming Her for the full scale legendary war they now found themselves in that would become known as the War of Draconic Divergence.

For all those that scorned and blamed Her, the vast majority of metallic dragons rallied behind Angehlah and Her actions, realizing that whatever fall out were to come from them, the realm would be stronger for the First People having been granted Sentience. Nearly a millennia of war would rage on between the clashing dragons and humanoid forces that either side used to their advantage. It wasn't until much loss on both sides had weighed so heavily on Angehlah's heart, She almost gave up the fight and succumbed to the darkness surrounding Her. Only She knew how close She had come to the brink of madness Herself that She had once saved the world from.

Her cause had seen just as much death as the times before, and it seemed pointless to Her in those tired moments. However, Her six most trusted lieutenants, Her children who initially defended the small colonies of the First People when She began to spread Her Gift, rallied to bolster Her resolve. Together, a family greater united, they formulated a powerful spell that would need Her as the central point; a freezing spearhead that would coast over the most violent war zone in Ish-Gahn. This territory had become known as the Wyrm Wastes for the countless lives lost and wasted by the machinations of the dragons' most ancient ancestors.

Conflict had been rather centralized around the Wastes for the last hundred years, and the remainder of the ancient chromatic wyrms found themselves collecting here to make a final move on Angehlah's frozen fortress, the capital of Ish-Gahn, Crystallus. With Her six lieutenants on Her flanks, they unanimously flew and exhaled their tundral breath over the entirety of Ish Gahn as they soared, ensuring that no harm befall their allies with the magic of the spell cast called Silynvos. The family saved countless of the First People and dragon kind that fought for the side of knowledge and peace, while simultaneously destroying those that still fought to enslave, torture, and destroy. After grueling millennia, the realm would fall into an icy slumber, in spite of itself.

The land was devastated, but infused with much of the lingering draconic magic cast through Silynvos, and the corpses of the wyrms buried beneath the soil in a glacial blast. The Wyrm Wastes expanded and blossomed into a massive lavender field that the followers of Angehlah busily tend to to this day known as the Fields of Angehlah. In fact, the high elvan society of Crystallus have become almost entirely correlated with one another, earning them the nickname by the other elvan races, the Lavender Bees.

During the days that followed the casting of Silynvos, Tylearious, Angehalah's eldest and most tactful of Her lieutenants, discovered a tome that held many magical secrets within. This tome was found beneath the wreckage of a chromatic dragon outpost, and Tylerious could quite literally feel the raw power it pulsed with like deep, heavy sighs. Countless compiled spells and secrets, foreign to even his vast knowledge, held all in a single book. He found it extremely odd they were so successful in their attack against the wyrms if they held magic like this, so he immediately took it to his mother, knowing that something was amiss. This detail, however, is unknown by the common Rhyonian, for the moment that Tylearious entered his mother's chamber with the magic, She sensed its importance and had both of them locked away; sealed within a special chamber so that the magic could never bring about any more terror from the legacy of the chromatic dragons, and the deeper secrets She alone knew it held.

Much has changed in draconic society since the days before the War of Draconic Divergence, and even more so since they first emerged from Rhyonis' roots. Angehlah being the sole surviving dragon from a time before Sentience, only She recalls the horrors of the First People, what they were truly capable of, and why She made the sacrifices She did. That said, descendants of the ancient wyrms reside scattered and separate from one another across the realm. The War of Draconic Divergence saw much loss on either side of the ideology regarding the First People, and loss beyond measure would come during the Quelling of the Fire Worn Spires, but that's a story for another time.

As Angehlah locked away Her eldest child, protecting the secret knowledge of the fallen chromatic wyrms, She pondered the fate of Her kind and the now flourishing realm She helped to build. Knowing all too well that Her adversaries, and ally alike, likely preserved eggs of their own in hibernation, waiting for their time to emerge and either aide the First People, or destroy them and awaken the primal savagery only She could tell tales of remembrance. Now, even in Her godhood form, She trembles at the thought of the return to a time before Sentience, to when the great threat of utter madness reigned, and stands as the Frozen Vanguard, unwilling to allow darkness to thrive again.

As cold and dark as Theurgius' shore, so too were the hearts and minds of the First People to emerge from Rhyonis' roots. Like beasts of burden, they clambered from unturned soil of the Life Glade and fertilized it with slaughter. Like all beings to emerge directly from Rhyonis, the First People were brought into the realm in peek physical form of adult age for their species. Although, due to the limitations the Creation Gods placed on them, they lacked the cognitive awareness to do anything other than primal, instinctive survival. That would bring what might be called family units together, but not out of emotional intimacy or a concept such as love so foreign to them as thought itself; a lustful desire to procreate and produce Life Essence of their own. And with those desirous urges, came violent bouts of carnage.

The wyrms looked on these horrific displays, the metallic dragons with disgust and abhorrence for such a waste of life, but the chromatic dragons with a morbid curiosity for what these tools could be used for. None more so concerned than the legendary Angehlah, first of the Silver dragons, and those remaining, to come into Rhyonis. She had acted as mediator for many a debate between various draconic parties during her time, even before the First People emerged, and she saw that, with reason, even the dragons could occasionally see eye to eye.

However, as she was beginning to formulate her idea to spread sentience to the First People, to prevent the continued slaughter and tragic fading of Life Essence, war had already begun under her nose as both metallic and chromatic dragons had absconded with droves of the First People beneath their wings. It seemed wherever the dragons would find their lairs, the people they brought with them would be locked away within these secret quarters across the realm for protection, or servitude.

Those left to the savage ways of their people within the Life Glade of Ish-Gahn, a mere several hundred miles from Angahelah's tundral roost of Crystalllus, did not survive long. Some did manage, by no small Miracle, to make their way past the mountains surrounding the Life Glade, but those were few and far between. A land already rife with Life Essence became even more fertile as the hordes of every group of projects of the Creations Gods stumbled forth and clashed into each other in mindless confusion. She could see all of this from her mountain home and sat, utterly beside herself, pondering the insanity that was the creation of the Creation Gods themselves. She wracked her mind for an answer as to why this is the way it was and, to her great sorrow, she felt herself slipping into the forlorn admittance of defeat so many of her metallic scalekin have come to, allowing herself a moment to believe, “It is what it its.”

That was until her youngest child, Rosilver, entered her chamber, nothing more than a hatchling at this time, Rosilver was a cheery if withdrawn dragon girl of only a few decades, but still knowledgeable and capable of magics and wonders. Before she could draw breath to speak her mind, the inspiration hit Angehlah. She knew that the First People were to be treated as the children of herself and all the ancient wyrms. She felt so blind to not have seen it before, that as the wyrms fostered knowledge in their own children, they were to be the enlighteners of the First People. She knew what she had to say to stop the carnage, and despite the fall out that may come from it, she knew that Life would never progress if it simply stomped itself out ceaselessly.

With great haste, leaving Rosilver in the chamber alone, confused and with her question unasked and unanswered, Angehlah flew to the Life Glade to make her move against the chaotic genocide pouring from the central point of all the Life Essence in the world. In a matter of minutes, the great Argent Matron caught her as she made contact on a mountain peak overlooking the Life Glade. The terror was something to behold through her distant cavern's maw, but at this proximity, the wyrm could not contain the disgust roiling in her gut like plague.

Repugnant, all-consuming carnage lay waste to what would have been the sacred ground of the Life Glade. What Angehlah knew once to be rolling fields of luminous jade-like grass, speckled with wildflowers of every imaginable color, glowing with an awareness all their own, with streams of crystal blue water that flowed as gracefully as time, had become nothing more than a cesspool of blood and flesh and waste.

It was a wonder to her that anything could manage to escape the destruction here, but to her own witness, she had seen creatures, not unlike the beasts before her now, beyond the Dragon Spine Mountain that surrounded the Life Glade of Rhyonis. Those lucky few would not be saved from the same fate if something were not done. If the Creation Gods could create her and her kin with sentience, and even the flora overflowing with Life Essence, why couldn't she impart her wisdom with these creatures and stop this atrocity?

And then, she saw Her. Hidden within the cloud of death and misery, a monumental, grey-toned woman, looming within the shadows of the mountain like a haunting spectra. She would have flown away in horror were she not so transfixed by the demanding gaze that had her eyes and body locked in place.

“So, Frozen Vanguard,” She said in a voice, slow, cold, and gravelly as the echoing shouts of death dotting the soundscape beneath their confrontation. “You seek to end this madness before it's truly even begun.” Angehlah tried to struggle against the bind, all too aware of who was addressing Her; The Grey Lady, Alaxendaria, the Creation Goddess of Death.

She wished to speak and plead for mercy, merely being in Her presence was enough to chill the icy dragon to the bone. The Grey Lady continued to droll on in Her powerful voice that seemed to push Angehlah closer and closer to the grave.

“I too would like to see this end, but it is my job to collect, not too save. And there is so much more to come with into this world, well beyond this once transcendent Glade. You have a gift imparted to you by my family, as do all Dragons, but you are special in that you had the compassion to wish to impart your being, sacrificing a moment with your own child to save these many.

You are the Harbinger of Sentience, Angehlah, and it is you that will free the minds of the First People, but in doing so, will bring about your most fiercest foe, far darker than myself, these subjects, and anything else you've yet to see. Their identity is yet to be clear, but the madness and Remnants of Power here are but a taste of what will inevitably be brought upon the world. However, should you be successful in this, you will be granted immortality to stand as the Frozen Vanguard, Harbinger of Sentience, to ensure that whatever befalls the realm, this madness shall not happen again, so long as you are there to protect them. If you agree to save them, and wake them from this Ammora, I will put them to sleep, and you shall teach them to Daria.”

And with a sudden inhale, Angehlah was free of the gasp and could finally respond. Her body trembling against the weight of the lingering gaze and insurmountable pressure of the decision. Ammora and Daria. New words she had not heard before but knew to mean Nightmare and Dream respectively. Words infused with magic for the spell to be cast to awaken and fill the empty minds of the First People.

She knew what must be done, and spoke with all the strength She could muster, knowing the consequences for either decision would be catastrophic. She'd serve the rest of her eternal life defending the world from this darkness and devastation. “I will do this! Please stop this, Your Almightiness, and I will teach these people as you would see of me. I only wish to serve and protect the realm!”

But the goddess was no longer there. Nothing was there. Just silence, save for Angehlah's breathing against the night air. She looked around and beneath her, searching for any trace of the Creation Goddess, then, strewn across the ground, steadily breathing in rhythmic patterns, were the remainders of the First People still within the Life Glade. Ammora. Alaxendaria's voice rang in Her mind, breaking the stunned silence she found herself in. Daria.

Sleeping. It all seemed so easy when a creator of the realm did the work for you. Angehlah wasted no time and immediately flew closer to survey the slumbering people, seemingly peaceful and at ease for the first time since emerging from the roots of Rhyonis. She almost shed a tear for them in the moment, though the undeniably vile capabilities of their conscious forms stifled sadness and She whispered the words.

“Ammora, Life is yours for the taking, Daria," wishing to free the dark and mad minds of the First People and impart upon them her Gift of Sentience to all that would hear her words.

A massive trembling began to shake and with sparks of ethereal arcane energy, Angehlah witnessed the sound waves condense and explode outward in a tremendous, cracking reverberation. In an impossible way, they carried everywhere, worldwide, to all the denizens spread through Rhyonis. She stood, watching, the Frozen Vanguard, over the first of the First People, the elves, tall and slender folk with youthful but sharp and angular features, standing and rubbing their eyes against the light of a sunlit dawn reflecting off the magnificent silver sheen of Angehlah's scales. For the first time, the First People saw, understood, and revered, bowing and pledging their devotion to the Argent Matron, Angehlah, as the Harbinger of Sentience, and the First of the Ascended Gods.

Want to keep reading? Click here for Session Four: The Dark Isle!

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