Post by The Authors on May 19, 2010 19:00:05 GMT -5
“The Queen of Darkness spoke thus of Light when it was first born: 'It is new, and what is new is innocent, and what is innocent is precious. Observe this child of wonder, and know respect.”
Orfantal scowed. “Thus did Light survive, and so was Darkness destroyed, the purity vanquished – and now you would have us flawed as our Queen was flawed. Light became corrupted and destroyed our world, Korlat, or have you forgotten?”
Korlat's smile was a sad one. “Cherish such flaws, dear brother, for our Queen's was hope, and so is mine.”
The Tiste Andii hold that in the beginning, all was in Darkness. Mother Dark and her children, the Andii, lived within pure Kurald Galain, untainted by external influences. Others say that even in the time before Light, elemental forces moved unseen in what would become the Warren of Darkness.
All agree that with the coming of Light, the world was changed irrevocably. Mother Dark decreed that Light was as a child, and to be cherished. The Tiste Andii, outraged at this desecration of the purity of Darkness, broke with the Goddess who had spawned their people. Thus began war with the Tiste Liosan, the Children of Light, and Mother Dark's withdrawal from the world.
With the birth of Light came a maelstrom of raw, unfocused power. Elemental forces, feeding on that raging torrent, began to coalesce and become coherent entities – the birth of the Elder Gods. Some chose to join in the battle between Light and Dark, while others did their best to stay on the sidelines.
This, the first of wars, paroxysmed for time unmeasured. Ever Light thrust yet dissipated, and ever Night retreated yet smothered. Thus the two combatants locked in an ever-widening pyre of eternal creation and destruction. Countless champions of both Houses arose, scoured the face of creation in their potency, only to fall in turn, their names now lost to memory.
Then, in what some named the ten thousandth turn of the spreading whorl of the two hosts, there came to the shimmering curtain edge of battle one unknown to either House, and he did castigate the combatants.
“Who are you to speak thusly?” demanded he who would come to be known as Draconus.
“One who has moved upon the Void long enough to know that this will never end.”
“It is ordained,” answered a champion of Light, Liossercal. “Ever must one rise, the other fall.”
Disdainful, the newcomer thrust the opponents apart. “Then agree that this be so and name it done!”
And so both Houses fell upon the stranger tearing him into countless fragments.
Thus was Shadow born and the first great sundering ended.
As the ever-widening war between Light and Darkness raged on, it became clear that some resolution must be found. The cascade of power that had been unleashed with the birth of Light raged on, despite the birth of the Elder Gods. Both sides of the first of all wars drew deeper and deeper on that flood, unleashing appalling destruction on the realms of Kurald Thyrllan and Kurald Galain.
Only the Elder God K'rul himself will ever know what the final impetus was. Perhaps it was the appearance of the Houses of the Azath. Perhaps it was the birth of Kurald Emurlahn, the realm of Shadow, from the ashes of the eternal conflict between Light and Dark. Whatever the reason, K'rul took upon himself as much as that power as he dared and forced order on that chaotic torrent. No longer free to rage unabated, the power found itself bound to veins and arteries pumped steadily by a heart formed of the two most powerful realms: Kurald Galain, now the Warren of Darkness, and Starvald Demelain, the Warren of Dragons. These veins and arteries became the Warrens: the source of all magic.
In the distance behind the creature, Kurald Emurlahn, the Realm of Shadows, the first realm born of the conjoining of Dark and Light, convulsed in its death-throes. Far away, the civil wars still raged on, whilst in other areas the fragmenting had already begun, vast sections of this world's fabric torn away, disconnected and lost and abandoned – to either heal round themselves, or die. Yet interlopers still arrived here, like scavengers gathered round a fallen leviathan, eagerly tearing free their own private pieces of the realm. Destroying each other in fierce battles over the scraps.
It had not been imagined – by anyone – that an entire realm could die in such a manner. That the vicious acts of its inhabitants could destroy … everything. Worlds live on, had been the belief – the assumption – regardless of the activities of those who dwelt upon them. Torn flesh heals, the sky clears, and something new crawls from the briny muck.
But not this time.
Too many powers, too many betrayals, too vast and all-consuming the crimes.
The war between Light and Darkness cooled after K'rul's savage imposition of order. Tensions decreased further when Mother Dark expelled the remaining Tiste Andii from Kurald Galain, denying her children one and all. The Andii, left without a home and bereft of purpose, searched the realms for a suitable land to settle.
Among the Tiste Edur, the Children of Shadow, strife turned inwards. Scabandari, who would later acquire the name Bloodeye, murdered the Edur royal family at the heart of the Warren of Shadow. His gambit for leadership of the Edur succeeded, but at a terrible price. His treachery opened the first fatal wound upon Kurald Emurlahn, setting in motion the cascade of events that caused civil war among the Edur, and the Shattering of the Warren of Shadow.
With their home warren dying, Scabandari and his Edur followers also found themselves in search of a home. Scabandari forged an alliance with Silchas Ruin, leader of a group of Tiste Andii. Their goal was to conquer a continent and plant the seeds for a pair of Tiste empires. But betrayal ever begets betrayal, and so Scabandari Bloodeye and his Tiste Edur turned on the Andii as soon as the final battle had concluded. To a man, the Tiste Andii were slaughtered and Silchas Ruin himself was imprisoned in a House of the Azath.
This final betrayal sealed Scabandari's fate. Mael, Elder God of the Seas, and Kilmandaros, the Elder God who spawned the Tiste Edur, joined forces and killed him. Bloodeye's soul was captured and he spent the rest of eternity as a prisoner. The Tiste Edur, robbed of their last great champion, settled on the continent that they had conquered but began a long, slow decline into a isolated, tribal people.
“But time we shall have.”
“What do you mean?”
“The Gathering has been called. The Ritual of Tellann awaits us, Bonecaster.”
She spat. “You are all insane. To choose immortality for the sake of a war – madness. I shall defy the call, Bonecaster.”
He nodded. “Yet the Ritual shall be done. I have spirit-walked into the future, Kilava. I have seen my withered face of two hundred thousand and more years hence. We shall have our eternal war.”
The world that was invaded by the Tiste was home to four founding races. The Forkrul Assail, uninterested in conquest, were already declining in number when the Tiste began their invasion. The K'Chain Che'Malle, beset by civil war, bore the brunt of the Tiste invasion and were nearly annihilated. The Jaghut were a solitary people, most of them disdaining the company of even their own kind. No Jaghut cities, let alone civilizations, ever arose. However, some Jaghut proved very different from their kin. Discovering a talent for magically enslaving the peoples around them, these Jaghut Tyrants began to form small empires the world over.
To other Jaghut, the Tyrants were an abhorrent desecration of all that it meant to be a Jaghut. But their solitary nature meant that they could not band together to meet the threat. To the final of the founding races, the Imass, the Jaghut Tyrants presented themselves as gods. In time, the deception was discovered, and the Imass reacted with a ferocity none that none could have predicted. After dispatching the Tyrants who ruled over them, the Imass vowed to never again allow themselves to be so ruled. Thus began the Jaghut Wars.
Over the course of 33 pogroms, the Imass ruthlessly slaughtered every Jaghut they could find. Although a single Imass was no match for a Jaghut, their armies crushed them one by one, shrugging off appalling casualties in their fervor to rid the world of the Jaghut.
At the end of the 33rd Jaghut War, a group of Jaghut bowed to the inevitable and joined in common cause. Drawing upon the Elder Jaghut Warren of Omtose Phellack, the Warren of Ice, massive glaciers were risen on every major mountain chain. Sea levels dropped, and the Imass faced starvation in many areas. Attempting to cross those great barriers of ice inevitably was a suicide mission, but still the Imass would not be thwarted in their genocide.
The Bonecasters, the shamans and arch-mages of the Imass, called a Gathering of all the clans. A new Warren, Tellann, was fashioned. Derived from Kurald Thyrllan, Tellann was a Warren of Fire – fire of enough potency to defeat Omtose Phellack. At the Gathering, the Bonecasters performed the Ritual of Tellann, altering the Imass forever. No longer living creatures, the Imass had transformed themselves into the T'lan Imass, an army of undead. No longer needing food or water, and impervious to cold, the T'lan Imass crossed the great glaciers of Omtose Phellack and slaughtered the Jaghut sheltering behind them.
But not all of the Imass underwent the Ritual of Tellann. Some defied the call. Others, trapped in faraway lands, could not answer the call in time to attend the Gathering. Those last mortal Imass were the forerunners to many of the peoples found in the world today, including the race of humanity.
The foreign god had been torn apart in his descent to earth. He had come down in pieces, in streaks of flame. His pain was fire, screams and thunder, a voice that had been heard by half the world. Pain, and outrage. And, K'rul reflected, grief. It would be a long time before the foreign god could begin to reclaim the remaining fragments of its life, and so begin to unveil its nature. K'rul feared that day's arrival. From such a shattering could only come madness.
The summoners were dead. Destroyed by what they had called down upon them. There was no point in hating them, no need to conjure up images of what they in truth deserved by way of punishment. They had, after all, been desperate. Desperate enough to part the fabric of chaos, to open a way into an alien, remote realm; to then lure a curious god of that realm closer, ever closer to the trap they had prepared. The summoners sought power.
All to destroy one man.
With three of the four founding races nearly extinct and the last an undead host dedicated to genocide, humans began to dominate the world. Great civilizations rose and fell the world over. On the continent of Jacuruku, a warrior of singular skill named Kallor Eiderann Tes'thesula fashioned one of the most powerful empires the world had ever seen. It also proved to be one of the cruelest. Tens of millions enslaved to the merest whim of their king. Revolution rose up and were crushed without mercy, as Kallor appeared to be invulnerable in combat.
In answer to Kallor's brutality, the preeminent mages of the time banded together to forge a ritual to destroy his empire forever. Opening a portal to an alien world, they trapped one of that world's gods and brought him down onto the continent. The god struck with the force of a meteorite, devastating both Jacuruku and the nearby subcontinent of Korelri. The mages themselves were consumed in the firestorm. But despite the horrific destruction, the gambit failed. Kallor and his empire endured.
The Gods had seen enough. The devastation caused by the Fall could never be allowed to repeat. The Elder Gods K'rul, Draconus and the Sister of Cold Nights joined forces for the first time in millennia to put an end to the Kallorian Empire, but they were too late. Kallor, forewarned of their intentions, destroyed his empire himself. The twelve million survivors of the Fall were scourged, and all of Jacuruku was put to the flame. By the time the Elder Gods arrived, only Kallor remained, the lone survivor on the entire continent. Kallor had put his empire beyond even the reach of the gods.
In answer to this crime, Kallor was cursed by each of those gods. K'rul cursed him to mortal life unending. Kallor would suffer the ravages of age and the pain of wounds, but never the release of death. Draconus cursed him to never Ascend and so escape his punishment. The Sister of Cold Nights doomed him to fail in all that he tried, to see the destruction he had wrought turned back on all he tried to create.
Three voices spoke three curses. Thus it was done.
Kneading his brow, Kruppe sat reading in Mammot's study.
“...and in the Calling Down to earth the God was Crippled, and so Chained in its place. In the Calling Down many lands were sundered by the God's Firsts, and things were born and things were released. Chained and Crippled was this God”
Kruppe glanced up from the ancient tome and rolled his eyes. “Brevity, Kruppe prays for brevity!” He returned to the faded handwritten script.
“and it bred caution in the unveiling of its powers. The Crippled God bred caution but not well enough, for the powers of the earth came to it in the end. Chained was the Crippled God, and so Chained was it destroyed. And upon this barren plain that imprisoned the Crippled God many gathered to the deed. Hood, grey wanderer of Death, was among the gathering, as was Dessembrae, then Hood's Warrior – though it was here and in this time that Dessembrae shattered the bonds Hood held upon him. Also among the gathering were”
Kruppe groaned and flipped pages. The list seemed, interminable, absurdly long. From this account he half expected to see his grandmother's name along those listed.
As many feared, the alien god that would become known as the Crippled God was driven mad by all that he had endured. Crippled as it was, the Fallen One began regaining its powers at an alarming rate. So great was the threat that the greatest host of Ascendants the world had ever seen banded together in a common cause. Unwilling or unable to kill the Crippled God, it was decided to instead Chain the Crippled God where he stood, and imprison his power in a score of minuscule, nearly lifeless warrens.
The Crippled God swore revenge, both on the world that had called him down and crippled him, and the Ascendants who had Chained him. Over the successive millennia, the Cripple God occasionally came perilously close to breaking free of his bonds, but each time Chaining was done anew before the Crippled God could escape and attempt his revenge.
In time, the Crippled God discovered that he did not need to escape his chains to have his revenge. Enough of his power seeped from its prison to allow him to assault the Warrens, poisoning the paths of magic for all. That gambit failed, but it served to give the Crippled God time to do something no one had expected. Something unprecedented in the history of the world.
"Behold," the Crippled God whispered, "the House of Chains."
The Jaghut's lone functioning eye narrowed. "What -- what have you done?"
"No longer an outsider, Gethol. I would ... join the game. And look more carefully. The role of Herald is ... vacant."
Gethol grunted. "More than just the Herald..."
"Indeed, these are early days. Who, I wonder, will earn the right of King in my House? Unlike Hood, you see, I welcome personal ambition. Welcome independent thought. Even acts of vengeance.
"The Deck of Dragons will resist you, Chained One. Your house will be .. assailed."
"It was ever thus. You speak of the Deck as an entity, but its maker is dust, as we both know. There is no-one who can control it. Witness the resurrection of the House of Shadows. A worthy precedent. Gethol, I have need of you. I embrace your ... flaws. None in my House of Chains shall be whole, in flesh or in spirit. Look upon me, look upon this broken, battered figure -- my House reflects what you see before you. Now cast your gaze upon the world beyond, the nightmare of pain and failure that is the mortal realm. Very soon, my followers shall be legion. Do you doubt that? Do you?"
Never before had a new House been created in the Deck of Dragons. The existing Houses, those that predated the Deck of Dragons itself, went in and out of favour in accordance with the power of the Ascendants that ruled them, but a new House had never been created from nothing. A ruling was needed. An arbiter had to be found.
The Crippled God had believed that his play would lead the Ascendants to fight for the right to fill that gap. Instead, he forged his greatest enemy. No gods were given the chance to claim the role. Indeed, the Ascendants did not even know what the Crippled God had done before the vacuum was filled. Instead, the power to adjudicate the matter was unceremoniously bestowed on an unheralded captain in the Malazan Army, a mortal with no magical ability and no knowledge whatsoever of the Deck of Dragons.
He tried to resist it, to deny the power growing within him. Scant days before that captain had found himself at the centre of a convergence of Ascendant powers. He was killed by one god, only to be plucked from Hood's Gates by another. After being used as a tool by a god intent on disrupting its fellow Ascendants' games, was it any wonder that he vowed to never again have anything to do with the arcane?
But this was not a power that could be refused. A decision was required. And as the captain wrestled with the responsibility that had been laid on him, he discovered that his newfound powers spanned far more than blessing or denying the House of Chains. With the power to adjudicate over the dispute came power over the Deck of Dragons itself, and by extension power over every Ascendant in the world. The new Master of the Deck found himself at the centre of the forces in opposition to the Crippled God.
”Captain Paran, you speak too freely for your own good – not that I'm a liability, mind you. But you've an openness and an honesty that might earn you the gallows one day.”
“Here's some more, Mortal Sword. A new House has appeared, seeking membership in the Deck of Dragons. It belongs to the Crippled God. I can feel the pressure – the voices of countless gods, all demanding that I deny my sanction, since it seems that I am the one cursed with that responsibility. Do I bless the House of Chains, or not? The arguments against such a blessing are overwhelming, and I don't need any god whispering in my head to apprise me of that.”
“So where is the problem, Captain?”
“It's simple. There's a lone voice crying out deep within me, so buried as to be almost inaudible. A lone voice, Gruntle, demanding the very opposite. Demanding that I must sanction the House of Chains. I must bless the Cripple God's right to a place within the Deck of Dragons.”
“And whose voice cries out such madness?”
“I think it's mine.”
Against the protest of a host of Ascendants, the Master of the Deck blessed the House of Chains and admitted it to the Deck of Dragons. Doing so would grant the Crippled God power, true. But any power the Crippled God gained through his House – through the Deck of Dragons – was within the purview of the Master of the Deck. The Crippled God was now bound as was any other Ascendant.
The Master of the Deck tried to press his advantage, tried to mobilize the pantheon to stand as one against the Crippled God. But the Chained One was well-practiced at spreading discord, enmity and distrust, at poisoning the minds of others. Wars broke out the world over. The situation might have been salvageable, had the gods not tried to press their own advantages. Betrayal and open battle gripped the pantheon. The conflict spilled over into the mortal world, fanning the flames of war until there was no stopping the firestorm. Those Ascendants who had stayed true and united against the Crippled God were forced to flee for their own safety. Around the world, civilizations crumbled, Ascendants were toppled and even gods were brought low.
It was years before the flames burned themselves low. But despite the death and destruction, in some places the embers blazed on. On the continent of Assail, a group of surviving Ascendants assembled to continue the battle. One final convergence of Ascendant powers to settle old scores, answer new betrayals and apportion control of the smoking ruins of the mortal realm.
Oh, how the Crippled God must laugh!
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Day One starts now.
It will end in exactly one week, on Wednesday May 26th 2010 at 8PM Eastern time by the board time stamp.
Please remember that, unless told otherwise, all Day actions are due 24 hours before the end of the Day.
Orfantal scowed. “Thus did Light survive, and so was Darkness destroyed, the purity vanquished – and now you would have us flawed as our Queen was flawed. Light became corrupted and destroyed our world, Korlat, or have you forgotten?”
Korlat's smile was a sad one. “Cherish such flaws, dear brother, for our Queen's was hope, and so is mine.”
The Tiste Andii hold that in the beginning, all was in Darkness. Mother Dark and her children, the Andii, lived within pure Kurald Galain, untainted by external influences. Others say that even in the time before Light, elemental forces moved unseen in what would become the Warren of Darkness.
All agree that with the coming of Light, the world was changed irrevocably. Mother Dark decreed that Light was as a child, and to be cherished. The Tiste Andii, outraged at this desecration of the purity of Darkness, broke with the Goddess who had spawned their people. Thus began war with the Tiste Liosan, the Children of Light, and Mother Dark's withdrawal from the world.
With the birth of Light came a maelstrom of raw, unfocused power. Elemental forces, feeding on that raging torrent, began to coalesce and become coherent entities – the birth of the Elder Gods. Some chose to join in the battle between Light and Dark, while others did their best to stay on the sidelines.
This, the first of wars, paroxysmed for time unmeasured. Ever Light thrust yet dissipated, and ever Night retreated yet smothered. Thus the two combatants locked in an ever-widening pyre of eternal creation and destruction. Countless champions of both Houses arose, scoured the face of creation in their potency, only to fall in turn, their names now lost to memory.
Then, in what some named the ten thousandth turn of the spreading whorl of the two hosts, there came to the shimmering curtain edge of battle one unknown to either House, and he did castigate the combatants.
“Who are you to speak thusly?” demanded he who would come to be known as Draconus.
“One who has moved upon the Void long enough to know that this will never end.”
“It is ordained,” answered a champion of Light, Liossercal. “Ever must one rise, the other fall.”
Disdainful, the newcomer thrust the opponents apart. “Then agree that this be so and name it done!”
And so both Houses fell upon the stranger tearing him into countless fragments.
Thus was Shadow born and the first great sundering ended.
As the ever-widening war between Light and Darkness raged on, it became clear that some resolution must be found. The cascade of power that had been unleashed with the birth of Light raged on, despite the birth of the Elder Gods. Both sides of the first of all wars drew deeper and deeper on that flood, unleashing appalling destruction on the realms of Kurald Thyrllan and Kurald Galain.
Only the Elder God K'rul himself will ever know what the final impetus was. Perhaps it was the appearance of the Houses of the Azath. Perhaps it was the birth of Kurald Emurlahn, the realm of Shadow, from the ashes of the eternal conflict between Light and Dark. Whatever the reason, K'rul took upon himself as much as that power as he dared and forced order on that chaotic torrent. No longer free to rage unabated, the power found itself bound to veins and arteries pumped steadily by a heart formed of the two most powerful realms: Kurald Galain, now the Warren of Darkness, and Starvald Demelain, the Warren of Dragons. These veins and arteries became the Warrens: the source of all magic.
In the distance behind the creature, Kurald Emurlahn, the Realm of Shadows, the first realm born of the conjoining of Dark and Light, convulsed in its death-throes. Far away, the civil wars still raged on, whilst in other areas the fragmenting had already begun, vast sections of this world's fabric torn away, disconnected and lost and abandoned – to either heal round themselves, or die. Yet interlopers still arrived here, like scavengers gathered round a fallen leviathan, eagerly tearing free their own private pieces of the realm. Destroying each other in fierce battles over the scraps.
It had not been imagined – by anyone – that an entire realm could die in such a manner. That the vicious acts of its inhabitants could destroy … everything. Worlds live on, had been the belief – the assumption – regardless of the activities of those who dwelt upon them. Torn flesh heals, the sky clears, and something new crawls from the briny muck.
But not this time.
Too many powers, too many betrayals, too vast and all-consuming the crimes.
The war between Light and Darkness cooled after K'rul's savage imposition of order. Tensions decreased further when Mother Dark expelled the remaining Tiste Andii from Kurald Galain, denying her children one and all. The Andii, left without a home and bereft of purpose, searched the realms for a suitable land to settle.
Among the Tiste Edur, the Children of Shadow, strife turned inwards. Scabandari, who would later acquire the name Bloodeye, murdered the Edur royal family at the heart of the Warren of Shadow. His gambit for leadership of the Edur succeeded, but at a terrible price. His treachery opened the first fatal wound upon Kurald Emurlahn, setting in motion the cascade of events that caused civil war among the Edur, and the Shattering of the Warren of Shadow.
With their home warren dying, Scabandari and his Edur followers also found themselves in search of a home. Scabandari forged an alliance with Silchas Ruin, leader of a group of Tiste Andii. Their goal was to conquer a continent and plant the seeds for a pair of Tiste empires. But betrayal ever begets betrayal, and so Scabandari Bloodeye and his Tiste Edur turned on the Andii as soon as the final battle had concluded. To a man, the Tiste Andii were slaughtered and Silchas Ruin himself was imprisoned in a House of the Azath.
This final betrayal sealed Scabandari's fate. Mael, Elder God of the Seas, and Kilmandaros, the Elder God who spawned the Tiste Edur, joined forces and killed him. Bloodeye's soul was captured and he spent the rest of eternity as a prisoner. The Tiste Edur, robbed of their last great champion, settled on the continent that they had conquered but began a long, slow decline into a isolated, tribal people.
“But time we shall have.”
“What do you mean?”
“The Gathering has been called. The Ritual of Tellann awaits us, Bonecaster.”
She spat. “You are all insane. To choose immortality for the sake of a war – madness. I shall defy the call, Bonecaster.”
He nodded. “Yet the Ritual shall be done. I have spirit-walked into the future, Kilava. I have seen my withered face of two hundred thousand and more years hence. We shall have our eternal war.”
The world that was invaded by the Tiste was home to four founding races. The Forkrul Assail, uninterested in conquest, were already declining in number when the Tiste began their invasion. The K'Chain Che'Malle, beset by civil war, bore the brunt of the Tiste invasion and were nearly annihilated. The Jaghut were a solitary people, most of them disdaining the company of even their own kind. No Jaghut cities, let alone civilizations, ever arose. However, some Jaghut proved very different from their kin. Discovering a talent for magically enslaving the peoples around them, these Jaghut Tyrants began to form small empires the world over.
To other Jaghut, the Tyrants were an abhorrent desecration of all that it meant to be a Jaghut. But their solitary nature meant that they could not band together to meet the threat. To the final of the founding races, the Imass, the Jaghut Tyrants presented themselves as gods. In time, the deception was discovered, and the Imass reacted with a ferocity none that none could have predicted. After dispatching the Tyrants who ruled over them, the Imass vowed to never again allow themselves to be so ruled. Thus began the Jaghut Wars.
Over the course of 33 pogroms, the Imass ruthlessly slaughtered every Jaghut they could find. Although a single Imass was no match for a Jaghut, their armies crushed them one by one, shrugging off appalling casualties in their fervor to rid the world of the Jaghut.
At the end of the 33rd Jaghut War, a group of Jaghut bowed to the inevitable and joined in common cause. Drawing upon the Elder Jaghut Warren of Omtose Phellack, the Warren of Ice, massive glaciers were risen on every major mountain chain. Sea levels dropped, and the Imass faced starvation in many areas. Attempting to cross those great barriers of ice inevitably was a suicide mission, but still the Imass would not be thwarted in their genocide.
The Bonecasters, the shamans and arch-mages of the Imass, called a Gathering of all the clans. A new Warren, Tellann, was fashioned. Derived from Kurald Thyrllan, Tellann was a Warren of Fire – fire of enough potency to defeat Omtose Phellack. At the Gathering, the Bonecasters performed the Ritual of Tellann, altering the Imass forever. No longer living creatures, the Imass had transformed themselves into the T'lan Imass, an army of undead. No longer needing food or water, and impervious to cold, the T'lan Imass crossed the great glaciers of Omtose Phellack and slaughtered the Jaghut sheltering behind them.
But not all of the Imass underwent the Ritual of Tellann. Some defied the call. Others, trapped in faraway lands, could not answer the call in time to attend the Gathering. Those last mortal Imass were the forerunners to many of the peoples found in the world today, including the race of humanity.
The foreign god had been torn apart in his descent to earth. He had come down in pieces, in streaks of flame. His pain was fire, screams and thunder, a voice that had been heard by half the world. Pain, and outrage. And, K'rul reflected, grief. It would be a long time before the foreign god could begin to reclaim the remaining fragments of its life, and so begin to unveil its nature. K'rul feared that day's arrival. From such a shattering could only come madness.
The summoners were dead. Destroyed by what they had called down upon them. There was no point in hating them, no need to conjure up images of what they in truth deserved by way of punishment. They had, after all, been desperate. Desperate enough to part the fabric of chaos, to open a way into an alien, remote realm; to then lure a curious god of that realm closer, ever closer to the trap they had prepared. The summoners sought power.
All to destroy one man.
With three of the four founding races nearly extinct and the last an undead host dedicated to genocide, humans began to dominate the world. Great civilizations rose and fell the world over. On the continent of Jacuruku, a warrior of singular skill named Kallor Eiderann Tes'thesula fashioned one of the most powerful empires the world had ever seen. It also proved to be one of the cruelest. Tens of millions enslaved to the merest whim of their king. Revolution rose up and were crushed without mercy, as Kallor appeared to be invulnerable in combat.
In answer to Kallor's brutality, the preeminent mages of the time banded together to forge a ritual to destroy his empire forever. Opening a portal to an alien world, they trapped one of that world's gods and brought him down onto the continent. The god struck with the force of a meteorite, devastating both Jacuruku and the nearby subcontinent of Korelri. The mages themselves were consumed in the firestorm. But despite the horrific destruction, the gambit failed. Kallor and his empire endured.
The Gods had seen enough. The devastation caused by the Fall could never be allowed to repeat. The Elder Gods K'rul, Draconus and the Sister of Cold Nights joined forces for the first time in millennia to put an end to the Kallorian Empire, but they were too late. Kallor, forewarned of their intentions, destroyed his empire himself. The twelve million survivors of the Fall were scourged, and all of Jacuruku was put to the flame. By the time the Elder Gods arrived, only Kallor remained, the lone survivor on the entire continent. Kallor had put his empire beyond even the reach of the gods.
In answer to this crime, Kallor was cursed by each of those gods. K'rul cursed him to mortal life unending. Kallor would suffer the ravages of age and the pain of wounds, but never the release of death. Draconus cursed him to never Ascend and so escape his punishment. The Sister of Cold Nights doomed him to fail in all that he tried, to see the destruction he had wrought turned back on all he tried to create.
Three voices spoke three curses. Thus it was done.
Kneading his brow, Kruppe sat reading in Mammot's study.
“...and in the Calling Down to earth the God was Crippled, and so Chained in its place. In the Calling Down many lands were sundered by the God's Firsts, and things were born and things were released. Chained and Crippled was this God”
Kruppe glanced up from the ancient tome and rolled his eyes. “Brevity, Kruppe prays for brevity!” He returned to the faded handwritten script.
“and it bred caution in the unveiling of its powers. The Crippled God bred caution but not well enough, for the powers of the earth came to it in the end. Chained was the Crippled God, and so Chained was it destroyed. And upon this barren plain that imprisoned the Crippled God many gathered to the deed. Hood, grey wanderer of Death, was among the gathering, as was Dessembrae, then Hood's Warrior – though it was here and in this time that Dessembrae shattered the bonds Hood held upon him. Also among the gathering were”
Kruppe groaned and flipped pages. The list seemed, interminable, absurdly long. From this account he half expected to see his grandmother's name along those listed.
As many feared, the alien god that would become known as the Crippled God was driven mad by all that he had endured. Crippled as it was, the Fallen One began regaining its powers at an alarming rate. So great was the threat that the greatest host of Ascendants the world had ever seen banded together in a common cause. Unwilling or unable to kill the Crippled God, it was decided to instead Chain the Crippled God where he stood, and imprison his power in a score of minuscule, nearly lifeless warrens.
The Crippled God swore revenge, both on the world that had called him down and crippled him, and the Ascendants who had Chained him. Over the successive millennia, the Cripple God occasionally came perilously close to breaking free of his bonds, but each time Chaining was done anew before the Crippled God could escape and attempt his revenge.
In time, the Crippled God discovered that he did not need to escape his chains to have his revenge. Enough of his power seeped from its prison to allow him to assault the Warrens, poisoning the paths of magic for all. That gambit failed, but it served to give the Crippled God time to do something no one had expected. Something unprecedented in the history of the world.
"Behold," the Crippled God whispered, "the House of Chains."
The Jaghut's lone functioning eye narrowed. "What -- what have you done?"
"No longer an outsider, Gethol. I would ... join the game. And look more carefully. The role of Herald is ... vacant."
Gethol grunted. "More than just the Herald..."
"Indeed, these are early days. Who, I wonder, will earn the right of King in my House? Unlike Hood, you see, I welcome personal ambition. Welcome independent thought. Even acts of vengeance.
"The Deck of Dragons will resist you, Chained One. Your house will be .. assailed."
"It was ever thus. You speak of the Deck as an entity, but its maker is dust, as we both know. There is no-one who can control it. Witness the resurrection of the House of Shadows. A worthy precedent. Gethol, I have need of you. I embrace your ... flaws. None in my House of Chains shall be whole, in flesh or in spirit. Look upon me, look upon this broken, battered figure -- my House reflects what you see before you. Now cast your gaze upon the world beyond, the nightmare of pain and failure that is the mortal realm. Very soon, my followers shall be legion. Do you doubt that? Do you?"
Never before had a new House been created in the Deck of Dragons. The existing Houses, those that predated the Deck of Dragons itself, went in and out of favour in accordance with the power of the Ascendants that ruled them, but a new House had never been created from nothing. A ruling was needed. An arbiter had to be found.
The Crippled God had believed that his play would lead the Ascendants to fight for the right to fill that gap. Instead, he forged his greatest enemy. No gods were given the chance to claim the role. Indeed, the Ascendants did not even know what the Crippled God had done before the vacuum was filled. Instead, the power to adjudicate the matter was unceremoniously bestowed on an unheralded captain in the Malazan Army, a mortal with no magical ability and no knowledge whatsoever of the Deck of Dragons.
He tried to resist it, to deny the power growing within him. Scant days before that captain had found himself at the centre of a convergence of Ascendant powers. He was killed by one god, only to be plucked from Hood's Gates by another. After being used as a tool by a god intent on disrupting its fellow Ascendants' games, was it any wonder that he vowed to never again have anything to do with the arcane?
But this was not a power that could be refused. A decision was required. And as the captain wrestled with the responsibility that had been laid on him, he discovered that his newfound powers spanned far more than blessing or denying the House of Chains. With the power to adjudicate over the dispute came power over the Deck of Dragons itself, and by extension power over every Ascendant in the world. The new Master of the Deck found himself at the centre of the forces in opposition to the Crippled God.
”Captain Paran, you speak too freely for your own good – not that I'm a liability, mind you. But you've an openness and an honesty that might earn you the gallows one day.”
“Here's some more, Mortal Sword. A new House has appeared, seeking membership in the Deck of Dragons. It belongs to the Crippled God. I can feel the pressure – the voices of countless gods, all demanding that I deny my sanction, since it seems that I am the one cursed with that responsibility. Do I bless the House of Chains, or not? The arguments against such a blessing are overwhelming, and I don't need any god whispering in my head to apprise me of that.”
“So where is the problem, Captain?”
“It's simple. There's a lone voice crying out deep within me, so buried as to be almost inaudible. A lone voice, Gruntle, demanding the very opposite. Demanding that I must sanction the House of Chains. I must bless the Cripple God's right to a place within the Deck of Dragons.”
“And whose voice cries out such madness?”
“I think it's mine.”
Against the protest of a host of Ascendants, the Master of the Deck blessed the House of Chains and admitted it to the Deck of Dragons. Doing so would grant the Crippled God power, true. But any power the Crippled God gained through his House – through the Deck of Dragons – was within the purview of the Master of the Deck. The Crippled God was now bound as was any other Ascendant.
The Master of the Deck tried to press his advantage, tried to mobilize the pantheon to stand as one against the Crippled God. But the Chained One was well-practiced at spreading discord, enmity and distrust, at poisoning the minds of others. Wars broke out the world over. The situation might have been salvageable, had the gods not tried to press their own advantages. Betrayal and open battle gripped the pantheon. The conflict spilled over into the mortal world, fanning the flames of war until there was no stopping the firestorm. Those Ascendants who had stayed true and united against the Crippled God were forced to flee for their own safety. Around the world, civilizations crumbled, Ascendants were toppled and even gods were brought low.
It was years before the flames burned themselves low. But despite the death and destruction, in some places the embers blazed on. On the continent of Assail, a group of surviving Ascendants assembled to continue the battle. One final convergence of Ascendant powers to settle old scores, answer new betrayals and apportion control of the smoking ruins of the mortal realm.
Oh, how the Crippled God must laugh!
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Day One starts now.
It will end in exactly one week, on Wednesday May 26th 2010 at 8PM Eastern time by the board time stamp.
Please remember that, unless told otherwise, all Day actions are due 24 hours before the end of the Day.