Chapter 1: A Rhyonis World History

Listen along here!

Long before the time of adventure and exploration of Rhyonis, five beings of great personal power escaped the remnants of a dying realm to create one of their very own.

Malirica, a mage capable of bending and weaving realities with dominion over Time, created the blueprint for the budding realm. They took on the insurmountable task of laying out all the events that would ever befall its inhabitants on Their Fixed Moment Timeline.

Lady Siesmet, the kindest and wisest of the Creation Gods, saw over Rhyonis’ creation with motherly devotion. Her care for the land would see it bloom and prosper with foliage and life. Their new realm would be home to beings of all manner- all of which would bud and emerge from The First Son; a massive emerald oak tree named Rhyonis, created directly from Siesmet’s heart.

Kyah, a capable, roguish rider of wind and waves spread His arms and sweat fell from the heavens. This created all the lakes and rivers and oceans that ensured Siesmet’s children were given life-preserving water. This was merely happenstance as He simply soared and paid little mind to the happenings of the realm itself.

When His waters ran dry, or Siesmet’s children could no longer sustain themselves- or fell to some other means- the Grey Lady, Alaxendaria, would collect their souls in Her Soul Pouch. Once this Pouch contained more than it was capable of, She would shepherd them from Rhyonis to the Grey Lit Path. Along the Path, their lingering essence in the form of souls are left to wander, reliving their lives in the various shades of grey that painted them.

Lastly, watching over all beings and the realm as a whole, is St. Nihaan. The warmth of His love, a fierce devotion to His family and Their creation, shines as Balasar, the Blazing Beacon, locked in the sky above. Nihaan’s light casts out evil and reveals the truth that lies within all, but burns for those that would serve His domains of light and love.

As the Creation Gods laid out their plans and watched their world form, and evolve under their assistance, darkness and unrest were not far behind. The first creatures emerged from Rhyonis deep within The Life Glade; his roots parting to allow dragons- the first and most ancient of their ilk known as the Wyrms- to fly from their confines, magnificently gliding across the entire world, free and unabashed. The dragons- who inherited the Gift of Sentience from the Creation Gods as they took their first steps and boundless leaps of flight- feasted in vast quantities on the reserves of Life Essence and lingering deific power blanketing this new realm.

The First Beings were almost all-powerful- coming in all sorts of shapes, sizes, scale color, and abilities- rivaling the power of the Creation Gods themselves and warping the world around them in ways that even Malirica could not have foreseen. This was far from the intention of the small Pantheon of Rhyonis, so before they allowed more beings to call the land home, limitations were put on those that would be known as The First People. Most notable among these limitations was the erasure of the Gift of Sentience with which the dragons proved to be untrustworthy.

In the dragon's wake walked the elves, and then the gnomes and halflings, and dwarves and humans walked out lastly, being those of The First People to travel furthest from the Life Glade on the continent that would come to be known as Ish-Gahn. Each heritage to come from Rhyonis was a new lifeform with various traits and abilities; experiments by the gods to fill the land with beings of entertaining and diverse but manageable power.

For whatever physical or magical prowess The First People were granted, no matter how docile they proved to be under the scrutinous eyes of their creators, they were still not blessed with the Gift of Sentience as the dragons had been.

For decades, The First People just resided where they found land to call their own- no Sentience driving them to expansion or development- surviving on base instinct alone. The rapidly expanding minds of the dragons- with the guidance of the Wyrms and the Creation Gods- began to observe the humanoid lumps of clay that wandered the land beneath them. It was not long before there was a great divergence in the way of thought on how to mold and cast The First People.

Rhyonis did not play host to peace talks or debates for long, and these entities took to violent bloodshed that left nothing untouched by devastation. Some dragons, known as Altruistic Dragons, fought valiantly to teach and protect The First People, upholding the belief that the realm was all of theirs to share, explore, and experience together- where dragons were to be the guides for those who followed in their footsteps. Conversely, Nihilistic Dragons sought to enslave the beings that they viewed as lowly servants meant to worship and serve the means of their magnificence and might.

There are, however, conscientious objectors- the Impartial Dragons- who took neither side for or against The First People. In fact, these dragons strove to isolate themselves as much as possible from other dragons as well as the humanoid peoples who were the focal point of the carnage.

The War of Draconic Divergence lasted nearly a millennium after tension bubbled to burst and was finally ignited by a single spark of compassion. The Iciscale Wyrm, mother to countless of her own children already, saw the primitive First People squabbling mindlessly in the dirt- adult and child alike void of thought beyond instinctive survival- and felt it fell to her to guide these young beings and right the atrocities wrought upon them. Finally, tired of seeing the people she knew could flourish and make the world something great- if only they were afforded the opportunity- struggle to even communicate, Angehlah flew over those within the Life Glade as they slept and whispered, ‘Life is yours for the taking.’

Her words, infused with ancient magic, pierced their minds and permeated them with vivid dreams and thoughts of reason. Quickly thereafter, the elves awoke to explore and expand their influence in the realm, worshipping the Wyrm Angehlah, as a being equal to even her creators; the Creation Gods. This did not sit well with the Nihilistic Dragons who sought to enslave all of The First People, and horrific violence ensued.

It was with those few words, “Life is yours for the taking,” that the realm would suffer untold loss but inevitably bloom into a diverse society across several masses of land. The First People would then come to call their homes names of their own choosing. Ish-Gahn, the seat of creation and the Life Glade was home to the elves. Just north lie Qarte; the halflings taking the main continent and the gnomes settling on the archipelago to its north. Even further north still, the humans quickly claimed Theurgius in the harsh frozen pole of the realm, forcing the dwarves to retreat underground into the massive subterranean expanse known as the Gravel Way.

Now fighting two wars- one physical with the opposing dragons, one philosophical with the enlightening of the darkened minds of The First People- Angehlah grew tired of conflict. To end the devastation ravaging the world, she, alongside her children, unleashed a massive torrent of frozen energy to eradicate an entire war zone, scarring the face of Ish-Gahn permanently. In the process of ending the war, she ascended to godhood. Having the worship of The First People and truly displaying a mighty act of power, Angehlah proved she was, in fact, deified in her capabilities.

This would tether Her, now a bona fide goddess, and Her influence to the very fabric of reality, binding Her to the Fixed Moment Timeline as Angehlah, Goddess of Sentience, first of the Ascended Gods.

Following Her ascension, Angehlah’s Gift of Sentience allowed The First People to prosper and develop well beyond the original scope of the Creation Gods. For better or worse, more beings of great power would perform wondrous acts and rise to Angehlah’s rank. These ascensions expanded the Pantheon of Rhyonis and would see a great many amendments be written into the Fixed Moment Timeline; new chronological passages scrawled by hands of time unpossessed by Malirica.

As Rhyonis ushered in an age of enlightenment, dangers from other planes stalked closer. The humans, the most versatile and resilient of The First People, caught the attention of extraplanar entities; powerful beings from other realms. These beings would seek to use Rhyonis as a foothold to expand their influence from their home of the Trinity Realm. Innocuous enough at first, the celestials and fiends seeped into the budding minds dotting Rhyonis across Theurgius’ beautiful, if harsh landscape, twisting them to align with the whims of higher powers.

Violence and conflict sprung up like weeds as celestials flew to aid the Theurgians while fiends corrupted their minds. Though primarily contained to the humans and the land of Theurgius, the contagion of war from the Trinity Realm grew to rival even the horrors of the War of Draconic Divergence before long. Tensions grew the more blood flowed and another god emerged directly from the Life Glade; bloodlust and malice taking physical form as an entity known as Gierloh.

The God of War tore His way from Rhyonis’ roots, mutilating the Glade’s landscape permanently as He moved northward towards the encroaching genocide of humanity. In a matter of days, Gierloh traveled thousands of miles to bear witness to the battles growing near their climax, reveling in the turmoil. It was at this point that a series of natural disasters rocked the realm, and dread began to sweep over the remaining Wyrms that survived the War of Draconic Divergence to still watch over The First People.

Gierloh's Emergence had rocked the realm of Rhyonis, devastating it from within, nearly tearing it asunder. His mere presence caused the foundation of Rhyonis to fracture. This set off a catastrophic eruption beneath the waves of the Continental Sea as an oceanic volcano range- the Fire Worn Spires- viciously began spewing an endless flow of lava into it. These eruptions would continue, unchecked, beneath the surface for millennia.

Despite all these unforeseen tragedies, no one, not even the gods that created the realm, could predict that even darker times were looming just on its horizon. For as much light and goodness as Rhyonis contained, those factors proved to just be one side of a coin that was bound to flip and show the dark potential which lay just beneath the surface. It was only a matter of time before an encroaching atrocity would show its face of the coin.

During The War of Claiming, the humans of Theurgius came to face near extinction. Celestials seduced humans and bred children empowered by divine blood known as the Nephilier. These beings were enchantingly beautiful, able to weave light, and channel healing energy through their touch; the Nephilier were meant to act as a protective force for their human ancestry. The angelic parents that provided their blood for these children acted in defense of the realm and the entities that lived here, believing if they allowed their fiendish counterparts from the Trinity Realm- demons and devils- to gain a foothold within Rhyonis, it would give them all the leverage they needed to overtake the young realm, and their homeland.

Conversely, fiends brutalized and took their mates by force or mental manipulation. This resulted in the production of fiendish offspring known as the Corrusouls. The demons of the Trinity Realm had no ambition other than carnage. They tore through the fabric of reality, ecstatically celebrating in chaos as they slaughtered, pillaged, and violated whatever sense of lingering peace the Theurgians had.

Devils, on the other hand, wormed their way into the hearts and minds of the humans, promising power, protection, or other rewards for their unholy consummation. Their spawn, these Corrusouls, were an afterthought of the demons, usually wrought by some vile dark act, but unquestionably intentional on the part of the devils. Their conniving schemes, layered and complex as they were, were a bid for power and elevation in their twisted hierarchy. They sought to fight back against the celestials with their children and saw the War of Claiming as an amusing game of chess with the humans as their breakable pawns.

War raged on between the extraplanar beings and their children while the rest of the world sat by in stunned horror of the atrocities cast across Theurgius like tumbling dice. Despite this, opposing the oppressive ugliness plaguing the realm, a singular Nephilier woman, gifted with magic and beauty comparable to something truly divine, drew the eye of Gierloh.

As He was awash in a lustful frenzy, ecstatic in the devastation around Him, a force bent the god to heel before the maiden. He did not harm her though, in fact, with just a single look, this woman brought the bloodiest battle of The War of Claiming to an end. Just as Gierloh beheaded an angel commander and demon warlord with a single blow, the woman looked up from her hiding place, buried in rubble, sunlight glinting off of her golden eyes. With that singular, historic-shattering glance, she held the God of War, fast in His place.

He approached slowly. Dripping an iridescent ichor, locked in her fixed gaze. He lifted the tons of debris from her form, and bent to her whim. She took Him there, as the blood from the creatures painted their bodies and filled them both. God and mortal alike locked in a cosmic, coiling communion that would see this woman, Alluriel, The Mistress, rise to godhood Herself after being impregnated by the God of War’s seed. Unknown to all but Her before Her ascension as The Mistress, Alluriel Wolfsbane was far more than just a seductive face. Her power and innate magical ability were potent before Her ascension, nigh unparalleled afterward, and they concealed a strength She would use to great effect.

Shortly thereafter, as Her offspring grew inside Her womb, so too did the plots and schemes within Her mind. In a matter of weeks, The Mistress had bound Gierloh with chains imbued with countless runes and curses and sealed with Her divine blood. The chains would siphon His power as He was stored in a subterranean prison She created for Him, all the while He was powerless to resist.

With Her pregnancy drawing to a close, The Mistress sought refuge to give birth to the child that would end the world. All the while, Her followers- covens of wytches through the land that took their magical prowess from the chains sealing Gierloh to sap His power- ensured She would be able to foster Her own strength uncontested.

Far to the north of Theurgius, the labor was violent, devastating, and all-consuming. After it was over, all that remained of The Mistress was a hollow vessel holding on to the screaming pitch-skinned child squirming in Her arms like roiling tar.

“Tyrianous,” was all She could muster before a wave of carnal impulse overtook Her. Her eyes shuddered softly like wilting petals falling to the ground and, without Her volition, She pulled the infant to Her lips and bit into his neck, sucking all the blood from it until the screaming dulled to a faint, hollow whisper.

Surges of crippling corruption shook Her body as fangs grew from between Her lips and the pulsing energy began to feel like waves of ecstasy. She convulsed with a broken laugh and brought the child to Her breast where it too began to nibble, suckle, and draw blood with razor sharp teeth of his own.

Meanwhile, deep beneath the surface of Rhyonis, another force surged simultaneously to these transformations. His power so mighty, and rage unparalleled, Gierloh retained a modicum of His ability, bound and drained as He was. Most of this energy went towards a final curse over His new son through His blood that was congealing in the still heart of the baby Tyrianous. This curse hindered the infant, and his mother, in several ways. Most crippling among these, for all the raw power that the pair had, their flesh was seared by sunlight and running water, trapping them within the confines of that scarred land that was Theurgius.

Among their other minor limitations, they also could not enter an area- land or domicile- claimed by another entity without first being granted access. This proved to be of little consequence for the two most compelling creatures of the realm who stalked through Theurgius covertly under cover of night, waiting for their moments to strike.

Conflict throughout the world steadily faded as the animosity Gierloh induced waned without His presence. Violence melted away into a brief calm that lasted for several decades before erupting in an event that would make the conflicts that marred the face of Rhyonis' history look like mild debates.

As The Mistress recovered Her strength and fostered a bloodlust in Her child, the pairing began to form their own race of beings from the remaining humanoids on Theurgius. This created an entire army of undead leeches to feed on the remnants of The War of Claiming and serve their means to bloody ends. These beings were, of course, the vampires.

It wasn’t long before The Mistress grew bored of the games and kept Herself safe within the walls of an ominous castle, locked in the northwestern corner of Theurgius. Tyrianous had constructed this castle, Lust’s Landing, for Her around the skeletal cypress tree he was born under with the hands of countless compelled slaves. They, upon completion of the massive fortress, lined up and waited to be feasted on by their tyrannical rulers.

While Tyrianous drove out all those that would take up the land they saw as their own, Nephilier, Corrusoul, and human alike all faced yet another genocide. The vampires flew across the land and ravaged what remained by night, every night, only allowing the living a respite when Balasar shone over the land. The Blazing Beacon grew from a minor annoyance to a splinter in the mind of The Mistress that She tirelessly began plotting to extract, one way or another.

The disgusting display of power and disruptive acts of evil by The Mistress and Tyrianous enraged the Creation Gods, particularly Malirica, who had laid out the Fixed Moment Timeline specifically to keep order. Yet, The Mistress was completely altering the course the future was supposed to take with Her all-powerful compulsion and manipulation.

In an effort to quell the rise of the vampires and rebalance the world, Malirica began a powerful and costly ritual to stop the flow of time. Were it successful, The Ritual of Chronostasis would permanently bind the light of Balasar over Theurgius to eradicate the scourge and burn them from the face of Rhyonis. Unfortunately, The Mistress’ could see through the plans of the other gods and never allowed Herself to be less than three steps ahead of each and every one of them.

Without even a sound or fractal of light, The Mistress infiltrated Malirica’s chambers within Their pocket dimension and struck Them down, disrupting The Ritual of Chronostasis and destroying the Deity of Time, but not without a great cost to Herself.

The chamber in which the ritual was performed was a rift in time where no harm could escape to befall the physical realm. Inside, a dynamic and reality-warping clash of gods shook the core of existence. Malirica's magical prowess and drive to save Their creation would turn out to inevitably be Their downfall. A secret She held near to Her heart, The Mistress’ greatest power was the ability to manipulate emotion. So, the more Malirica fought with exuberance and vigor and passion, The Mistress, the Goddess of Lust, had all that much more control over Them.

They, being all of Malirica’s personas, across all time and realities, shed off emotion and memory, fragmenting Themselves into infinitesimal strands across the Timeline as fragments of Dusk and Dawn. This afforded Them a hope of fighting against The Mistress. But in the end, it was for naught and The Mistress struck a decisive blow that destroyed Malirica. The pocket dimension imploded, expelling the two remaining pieces of Their essence through to Rhyonis, but scattered across the Fixed Moment Timeline in times and realities that are unknown to this day.

Malirica’s death caused a massive power vacuum and the world was turned inside out.

Calamitous waves of magic battered the realm in ripples that would become known as Sentience Shockwaves. These phenomena, in addition to fracturing the Timeline in countless independent threads, tethered together by Malirica’s Fixed Moments, also created countless extradimensional spaces through Rhyonis where time functioned in unpredictable ways.

The full scope of the Shockwaves is still a mystery, but certain mages have begun to understand them in deeper detail. It has been uncovered that the Shockwaves also pull people from alternate timelines and can throw them into another one in the blink of an eye. They're even capable of pulling full consciousnesses and placing it in magical items or other vessels. These vessels, occasionally being other mortal bodies, do not always align with the same gender or race of a previous body, nor in the same space or time.

In the calamitous aftermath of the disruption of The Ritual of Chronostasis, Theurgius was locked into eternal night, giving the vampires free reign over the land, much to the joy of The Mistress and Her children. As a result of the destruction of the pocket dimension their battle took place in, The Mistress Herself was rocketed into Theurgius' shore and, as She bled into the waters, the sky darkened. She looked upon it, ensanguining Her pupilless irises as She pointed Her broken arms skyward, laughing while the waters battered and burned Her godly flesh. Upon feeling Her anguish, Tyrianous rushed to his mother’s aide, feeding Her his own blood.

To this day, he works tirelessly to restore Her to Her former glory within the walls of Lust’s Landing, siphoning the Life Essence of his subjects through himself into Her tattered remnants.

Truciluna, the moon that Malirica had intended to block with The Ritual of Chronostasis, was transformed into a blood-red scab of its former self. This casts a red-night glow over the darkened Theurgius and what remained of Malirica’s pocket dimension, Miracle, was shunted into Rhyonis. Today, it orbits the physical planet of Rhyonis as a comet that can be seen hovering in the sky from almost anywhere on the surface of the realm.

Nearly five centuries after this, a particular Inferheart dragon, Vyscruxia, collected a small clutch of humans who had not yet been turned by The War of Claiming, or the vampires. They escaped to a different plane altogether through a portal that appeared as a vortex in the middle of The Continental Sea which surrounds all the continents of Rhyonis. Exchanging places with Vyscruxia and their clutch, emerged a massive dragon turtle, Shoule, who Herself is the size of a small continent. She was home to tribes of lizard and turtle humanoids that worshipped Her as a goddess and, as such, Shoule became yet another addition to the Rhyonian Pantheon as the second Emerged God of Rhyonis behind Gierloh.

Vyscruxia's departure from Rhyonis was fostered by a need for survival. They knew The Mistress had already altered the course Rhyonis was meant to take. With a broken heart, they fled the land they called home, leaving behind countless to face the greatest threat the realm has ever known. It wasn’t long after this that many of the remaining dragons- Altruistic, Nihilistic, and even a fair few Impartial- sacrificed themselves in an event known as the Quelling of the Spires, that the Fire Worn Spires, which now threatened to consume the entire realm, would finally rest.

The land, now infused with massive amounts of draconic magic, expediently cooled and formed a sustainable landscape over an untold number of scattered islands referred to as The Lost Lands. This, inevitably, created the largest landmass in all of Rhyonis; Arhan-Zoul. This being Rhyonian Common for The Land of New Beginnings, became a terrestrial beacon of hope in a world smothered by darkness. Countless people would eventually seek to call this land home. Once Arhan-Zoul was finally settled, miraculously by a human- an unlikely dandelion puff blown across the sea to take root in this new land- it became a safe haven for all who needed a home and fresh start in a world that seemed determined to destroy just as easily as it created.

Eventually, dust settled in the wake of Malirica’s destruction and fall of The Mistress. The world fell relatively silent for the first time in thousands of years, and so it remained for another several thousand. Time continued to flow, though tenuously and occasionally disrupted by lingering Shockwaves, nevertheless, it flowed. The First People continued to flourish and expand and welcomed more into the realm of Rhyonis as The Life Glade produced new beings to inhabit the world. Despite this, an unwavering, thickening layer of tension still choked Rhyonis like ash.

Theurgius was scarred, hiding in the castle of night that The Ritual of Chronostasis inadvertently constructed around its border. It's within those walls of sunless skies that Tyrianous continues to grow in power. The Mistress, grievously wounded, was put into a slumber state after Her attack on Malirica and Tyrianous works tirelessly, albeit covertly, towards Her return.

Gathering the living from across the world, stealing them through the Gravel Way to within Theurgius’ shoreline, the vampires feast and grow in number, unchecked by their prey as they move implacably. The realm now faces total eradication as vampires have grown bolder in their attacks on the surface, taking whole families with reckless abandon. Leadership has quelled what they could, but as the entirety of the realm works to subdue an enemy as ephemeral as smoke, hope fades.

Continue reading with Chapter 2: The Creation Gods here on Vocal!

Thank you for reading this story from Rhyonis, written by Austin R. Rose!

Remember, as always, "In a cold and dark world, we are each other's Warmth and Light!"