Prepare for the #LodanRespawn2024 Existing characters may choose to be displace from/have memories of different timelines, thereby allowing returning members the option to retcon their whole character. These changes are the result of the "Unnatural Fog" plot device that is running between now and the Respawn. The plot is simple: no matter where your character is, that place is shrouded in a thick fog that suspends time, but not thoughts or memories, so even if they're repeating the same day over and over again, they continue to remember, so each time feels like a new day. For those retconning OCs; this is where new versions of themselves have the opportunity to replace the old versions. Official lore and tree updates will be announced asap
Dec. 1869 Once a long time ago, the Andersweltlers relationship among ourselves was much the same as the relationship we hold with the humans to date. We were at war with ourselves, the winged Anders, feline Anders, and generals constantly vying with one another for supremacy. Each nation believed they were the superlative race. In simpler times, believing in our own authority was harmless, as the races were cleanly divided into the Trinations: Shreid was a tribal nation, Alarain resembled the human's Norse culture with regional elected governors who reported to an elected leader, and Plaphyclen was ruled by a dual-monarchy. Shried was home to the feline Andersweltlers, Alarain to the winged Andersweltlers, and Plaphyclen was where the general Andersweltlers lived, even though they were divided into the North and South governing factions.
The simpler times quickly succumbed to shadows, after one unfortunate misunderstanding. It didn’t take much to bring us down. Our vanity gave rise to the cause of our own demise. I'm writing this now because my life is coming to an end, and I fear after me, there will be none left who remember the truth of our origins. Perhaps one day, these pages will fall into the hands of our decedents, and bring about a time of true understanding, acceptance and equality. I only wish this world was ready for that day to become reality. That is all I have for now. I will write more tomorrow. There is so much to tell that it cannot be done in one night.
Dec. 1869 Its been 32 years since they closed off the portal. They sealed it after 50 years of refugees traveled from the 3 trination's to the polar plains of Alarain, where the portal was created by the greatest mages of all time atop mountains of ice. It existed in the seams of this old weathered map I kept of a world lost to me. I came with the second or third to last wave of immigrants. I saw with my own eyes the disaster that dogged our heels, the darkness clawing at our backs, and i know that despite the overwhelming number of Andersweltlers that poured onto the streets of Lodan; there were more than thrice as many left behind when the mages shut us off for good. I was there the day they acquiesced to the Kings Treaty of Peace, many of my kind were to say their final farewells. It wasn't what we had expected. None of us were prepared when the ritual started for the last sight that our eyes would see.
Over the bleak white sheets of ice, cresting the mountain top in those final moments, must have been over a hundred more pilgrims completing the trek to the portal of promise, their hope for sanctuary obliterated in the blink of an eye as the final rites were concluded and the window between worlds blinked out a few yards in front of their feet. They had been running... we could see the terror on their faces as surely as they could see the forlorn regret in ours. We stood in pained silence as they tried in vain to reach us before the mages were finished. Not a one from those hundred made it through... not even the child I watch a mother toss in front of herself in hopes we might have reached out and pulled him through to our side. I have so much regret. That child's face still haunts me these 32 years later.
I live and die in the slums, my only accomplishment lay in raising my daughter, and I know had our roles been reversed and I had pressed my child within reach of the woman only for her to hold back her hand, I never would have forgiven her. If either of them survived, I doubt they have forgiven me. And so I have not forgiven myself. Gina plays on the sidewalk with a daughter of her own, they make tiny toys out of snow, toys we could never afford to buy otherwise. I smile shakily as I scribble in my crumbling journal. I would join them, but my health would not allow it. I am riddled with coughing and my bones ache from the cold. It is in the winter months I think, that I am plagued the most with memories of the polar plains, and the portal of false hope.
Dec. 1869 Adelei was a survivor like me. She had beautiful wings, like an angel. Mine were all pewter grey and dingy coal whereas hers were egg-shell white blended down to robins-egg blue. My own mother had fine golden wings bright as a summer sun on a cloudless day, but my fathers wings had been black as the nights sky, leaving me with a pair that looked washed out and plain. I used to complain as a boy that no girl would ever notice me because I was unremarkable. My father liked to tell me that wasn't true, and he would say "The flashier the feathers, the slower the flier, so cheer up my son, and fly faster." so I did. I flew faster than all the other children my age, and he was right, the girls noticed.
However, it had nothing to do with flying when I met Adelei in Lodan 3 years after the Treaty of Peace. I was born in 1788 and already in my 50's, she was just turning 40. We were married on Christmas day 1841 and were blessed with a child in April of 1842. No one expected her to survive the delivery that late in life, but she held on for another 13 years after Gina was born. It was a common cold that took her in the end. Being a wash-woman in winter was a risk she took to keep us dressed and fed. I did my part as well but no amount of honest living was going to pay the doctors bill or purchase the medicines we would need to restore her to wellness after the flu set in. It was difficult to lose her on account of something so small... so meager. If only we'd had warm blankets and a roof without holes... if only there were no puddles on the floor of our room in the hovel keeping her feet wet and icy cold... if only I could buy her broth and fill her belly every night with a proper helping of food... if only the Ander healers weren't so afraid to get caught practicing their arts... then maybe she would have overcome her ailment and lived.
I've lived a might longer, but my days are numbered now till they dig my grave and put me to rest beside her. I'm not afraid to die, I'm only afraid for the ones I leave behind. Gina took after her mother in every way. She is beautiful like an angel, though she never spreads her wings. She has taken a job as a dairy maid in the rural side of Lodan. We are fortunate she managed to secure a job since my coughing fits have lost me mine. Working was much different in the old world. Jobs were never this scarce to come by, and you wouldn't be thanking your lucky stars for performing such cheap labor. I look at the young ones and mourn for them. They'll never know the creature comforts we once did. I can only hope and pray a day will come when Lodan opens the doors of comfortable society to the likes of me and mine.
Jan. 1870 I don't live anywhere near those confounded clock towers that tell the time with unnerving precision, but I would venture a guess that it's sometime after midnight. Even the street rabble have turned in for a rough nights sleep, the only things left out crying in the night are a couple of stray cats, and a lonely old woman arguing with herself at the top of her lungs. My heart is racing. I've just waken from a dream, but it was no figment of my imagination. It was a memory jarred from my muddled brain. I thought I was a grown citizen, deserving of a conscious choice, and I took it upon myself to sneak out of my fathers place and fight with the rest of the men and women against the rumor of these growing shadows. I had been so nieve to what I was running toward. At the time, I had been so ignorant of the facts, and it was a miracle I survived that first night.
I turned to Adelei for compassion, only to realize she is no longer with me. Gina sleeps in the corner with her toddler in her arms. I do not wake them, though I cannot put myself back down to rest. Edric should be laying there with them, his arms wrapped protectively around my daughter and his own. It was a shame what they did to him, but we can't change the past. That goes double for me. You wouldn't know it looking at me now; an old man seeking moonlight from a hole in the wall, huddled around his crumpled and torn journal with it's pages warped and stained from dampness. But here is the truth. I never wanted to leave the other world. I had wanted to fight it out to the bitter end. The journey that finally brought me across the portal's threshold into Lodan had not been my first to the polar plains. I traveled there many times over the last few decades, aiding all three Andersweltler races as they sought the portal of promise, fears keeping them just baby steps ahead of deadly threats.
I was even there when the portal first opened in 1787. So were my sisters, my mother, my brother who was too young to decide for himself whether to flee or fight. He wouldn't be given a choice in the matter, and neither would I, since I hadn't yet been born. Then it happened. Amidst a cold so bitter and lifeless that even the skies were too frozen to churn, there was a thunderclap so loud everyone feared the mountain of ice beneath their feet would shatter into a million fractured shards and sink into the ocean. I can't say I remember the specifics because I don't, not even in my subconscious but I know the story well. The mages ripped open the air with a monstrous light that rumbled with a great roar, and on the other side they saw a city... they saw a sanctuary. To my mothers own shame, she got cold feet and backed out of the very first pilgrimage. In fact, she backed out of every pilgrimage and never left our home world. I never met the rest of my family. I was told my oldest sister vowed to care for the rest and they crossed to the other side. Her name was Gina Belh, and she took everyone except for me. As for my father, he never even ventured to the polar plains. Not even once. He couldn't afford the luxury of escape, though he wished it for the rest of us.
My mother returned to the capital of Alarain, gave birth and raised me in a society that didn't know it was dying from the inside out. Or perhaps they knew, and it was just me who was blind to reality. It wasn't till the night I snuck out that I shed my naivety. Up until then I was living the old Andersweltler life, sheltered behind palace walls. I recall in my dream how I lost my innocents, how I shook off the illusion of safety and prosperity and finally understood why everyone but my father talked of leaving. I thought they were all cowards and he was the only brave man among our once proud nation. Then I realized there were no cowards, just survivors, and the only reason my father wouldn't be one of them was merely because it was his fate to be their appointed leader to the end. I could laugh at our delusional sense of superiority betwixt our neighbors, if it didn't make me want to weep so much. If we hadn't lusted for dominance within our own species, we wouldn't have spent half a century fighting our own shadows... and losing. We created our own greatest evil and were too stupid to realize till it was already too late. For 30 years I did what I could to delay the inevitable, I saw first hand the best and the worst in us. Some moments pale in comparison to others, but one that will never fade away is my first encounter with the truth... How to explain it?
Jan. 1870 Our homes were nothing like human homes. To point out the obvious, they didn't have all these fanciful widgets that tinkered away and made the simplest of life's chores into the flick of a switch. To get more to the point however, I say they were not the same because they looked and were built to be utterly different. We had trees as big as the sky-tower of Lodan, all of our trees were such a height! Granted our woodland in Alarian was nothing compared to the densely packed forestry of Shreid, which was all well and good for the felines who could dig in their claws and climb like no other, but we wouldn't have had the room to spread our wings and fly. Alarain was well spaced, and our homes were built in platforms that touched both the ground and the sky, via leveraging off bendy trees. There were ropes to tether levels together, especially during heavy storms when the wind might tug away at a higher platform and threaten to separate it from the rest of the house, but getting from one room to the other was a simple matter of flight, and one we didn't give a second thought.
No one builds houses like that here in the human world. Here they look mostly like the ones we had in Plaphyclen, only here in Lodan there are far less sun-rooms, sun-roofs, skylights, and windows. In our world the Plaphyclen's were the masters of time and distance, measuring everything around the daylight and moonshine, the stars and perpetual comets in the cloudy heavens. They were thinkers, not tinkers, but they were clever in their own way and typically the strongest with their magic - though no winged or feline Ander would ever say so back then. We all had our prodigies, two in particular that I was named after myself, though that is a discussion for another time perhaps. I remember my journey across Shreid as a young man, helping refugees ban together and make the great trek to the polar plains. They lived much differently than we or the generals. Some feline tribes building tree houses in the tippy tops of these sky-tower high trees, some tribes burrowing in the ground under ancient roots and concealing themselves in the dirt. Traveling across Shreid was the most curious adventure of all... not only because every village we came to was uniquely different from the rest of the continent, but also because all that dense forestation made for the most wicked of shadow beasts and if there was a living hell in the end of our days, it lived on Shreid.
Jan. 1870 Learning to speak English had been difficult for the older Andersweltlers among us. The clever ones that learned quickly were responsible for the negotiations made with the humans during the increase of shadow beasts in the borderland forest. Thanks to them, we were able to ally against the creatures, and strike the Treaty of Peace with the human king. I've been in Lodan as many years now as I ever lived in Alarian. I think, speak, and write in English... but my nightmares are stuck in the past, and the voices that haunt my subconscious speak only in Anderswelt.
It would be nonsense to Gina's ears. She was born in 1842, after the portal closed. Gina was raised speaking the language of humans and today, she came to me with the most bizarre words of all. Today she said to me, she is expecting again and this time she would have a human baby. Her first child clung to her skirt with her tiny feline claws and Gina shook her off angrily. I ask the kid to fetch my journal and while she was away I reminded Gina it had been her choice to lay with a feline in the first place. I fear my daughter is more prejudice than I ever was, even as a once proud citizen of Alarian. Maybe by writing down the great strengths and weaknesses of our ancestors she will learn to value our differences. Without it, I fear my family will descend into self-loathing, adopting a hatred from the humans for our own kind.
Jan. 1870 When we first arrived in Lodan, rumor had it the humans couldn't decide if we were dressed like historical Greeks or medieval Druids. The one thing they all agreed on, according to what was translated to me in those early years, is that the 'abominations' were barbaric, out of date, and out of style. I think back to the masses I led to the portal, remembering the sophisticated robes of the General Andersweltlers from Plaphyclen, the feral blend of animal skins that the Feline Andersweltlers wore from Shreid, and the lighter weight garments of the Winged Andersweltlers from Alarian. Although there were some visible differences among our common people and the elites of society, there wasn't the same measurable gap between social tiers as is in the human realm. In my opinion that makes us the less barbaric of the two species despite personal preferences in clothing. The stuffy jackets and smothering neck ties may seem so revolutionary and coveted among men, but I would trade them all away in exchange for one more glance at a world shrouded in fantasy, dressed in traditional Andersweltler garb, and alive with cultural diversity. We were not perfect, but we were dynamic!
Sometimes I wonder if I am too hard on the humans... they have their own history, traditions, discovery and mastery of their own technological arts. Even their naming convention is a tradition passed down from father, to child, to bride, etc. It is something new that Gina applied to her own firstborn. Instead of the typical Andersweltler naming convention of choosing two respected figures in our society and combining their first names to make up the first and last name her newborn; she had decided to pass down her mates sir name to the child. She and Edric Blodeuwedd were never married, even though they most likely would have had his disparaging habit of performing spells in the open not cost him his life. Had our roles been reversed and a few thousand of them had emptied into our world instead of us into theirs, I wonder if they would have the same second thoughts that I do? Would they miss out on the beauty of our own epic plights while wallowing away in mourning for what they had left behind? Or would they adapt to our conventions like Gina has adapted to theirs?
Tomorrow will be the first day of February. Another month come and gone and my hands grow shaky with lost strength. There is still so much left to tell... so much left to record and I have squandered my time foolishly on wistfulness. The next entry I write will serve a purpose. The next entry I write will include at least one of my decaying skills, unused in decades, but not forgotten.
Feb. 1870 Before we get into hidden powers, lost spells, and levels of might there is something you need to understand about magic. It is important that once you know, you never forget, because forgetting is what got us into this mess. The Andersweltlers of our home world were practitioners of a͡itĭcēä, similar to the human’s Shindo beliefs. It was understood as far back as our first memories that there is a metaphysical essence that touches everything within the world. It transcends physical matter and the laws of nature, and encompasses all things living and not living. That essence was the greatest source of magic that we could engage and there were specific customs that had to be followed in order to tap into that power and not abuse it.
You see, the essence could manifest in multiple forms: rocks, trees, rivers, creatures, places, and even within one another. The thing is, this great power united all things and avoided dividing them into two, so when someone deviated from the proper customs and abused that power they were taking away from the physical world and not the metaphysical spirit. There was prodigious damage done whenever someone broke away from the practice and it effected everyone in its wake. For instance, frostmancy magic drawn from the ground used water and spiritual essence, but when it was used too much its physical properties would deplete and run the ground dry instead of using up its magical properties. Since the metaphysical was connected to all things, it cannot be used up, but It can become extremely dangerous to our world and our lives, most especially when power was drawn illegally from another living person. However, when things were done correctly, you could manifest greater power with fewer risks. It is a shame that more and more Andersweltler's abandoned this knowledge in their eagerness to strike out at their own paranoia.
As a child I was raised with the saying, "There are many tapered future world histories in conflict with each other, but there is only one past world history, and there can only be one exact future history." My second namesake comes from the man who originally spoke those wise words into a͡itĭcēä doctrine. My full name is Paten Eath. My father chose to name me Paten after his predecessor as the elected leader of the Alarian governors. My mother chose to name me Eath after a man who was a Shreid not an Alarain, but who impacted our way of life unlike any other. It was a standard naming convention in our world to combine the first names of two admired figures (one chosen by the mother, one chosen by the father) combined to create a new name for the child. It was strange learning from the Humans that their entire families have the same second namesake as all of their relatives past present and future.
There could only be one exact future...and the future we got is the consequence of our actions. I see it clearly now, in the minuscule and the mighty details of my life. Had I not been so focused on offensive spells in my prime, I might have learned healing, and could have saved Adelei in 1855 when she got the flu and no one could be found to restore her to health. On the grander scheme of things, had we been following the doctrine, there wouldn't be any shadow beasts to drive us out of our own plane and across rifts to this one. Which makes me wonder... of all the many tapered future world histories for this life in Lodan, which one will be the only exact future for the next of us?
It is getting late, and my body is too tired to sit at this window much longer. I promised a spell in my last journal and so, quickly now, here it is. There is a way to harness light in the darkness. Light is your most valuable asset against the shadow beasts. Each one is different and they will possess a variety of strengths and weaknesses, but their greatest advantage will always be the darkness, where they can slip into ethereal existence between hollow shadows. It is a deviation of Frostmancy V (perhaps one would call it an augment) where it is possible to create a dispersion of Light by conjuring miniature airborne prisms, like a Frostmancy hail storm, and have an abundance of spotlights falling around you, passing light down to one another from the heavens till they finally surround you, like a surplus of blessings in the midst your darkest nightmare. It wasn't an easy skill to master because it involves invoking more than just the storm, it takes a great understanding of physics and geometry, and the ability to telekinetically arrange it in three dimensions during battle. Lastly, its too much to cast along with any other spell, so it helps to have someone else around to use their magic while yours is consumed with transferring light. I was fortunate enough to learn it from a very talented Plaphyclen during one of our most hazardous escapes. Had I a son, I would have given him that man's name.
Feb. 1870 An episode with Gina yesterday has brought it to my attention that the current generation of Andersweltlers have no idea how the mechanics of spell casting work. If left to their own devices, they will inadvertently destroy their homes and their lives with a handful of level I spells. I think maybe its time I went back to the very basics and wrote about the fundamentals of magic. I've always taken for granted the primary lessons of a͡itĭcēä that I was taught around Gina's daughter Mae's age. Its the little things you assume are common knowledge or common sense that aren't so common after all, if they've never been addressed in the daily lives of our society. So, let's start with a few of the General Statutes.
1. The Essence is inexhaustible. It can neither be created nor destroyed.
2. Essence is synonymous with Magic. Magic is utilized like Energy.
3a. Spells are formulas for manipulating magic for an end result.
3b. Spells require matter or physical properties to exists.
4. Spells can rearrange, transfer or transform essence and matter but cannot change their masses.
5. Essence is metaphysical and cannot be used up, but physical properties can be.
It appears to me that our youth do not understand that by performing spells, they are transforming materials around them. The smaller scale that a spell is, the less noticeable the material use is, making it easier to go unnoticed. For larger spells, the deficit of material or physical properties is much more noticeable and can have outstanding consequences, some that you cannot take back! Sometimes when we perform spells, matter is just transferred from the source to the recipient in its same state, so it is not transformed. But when we perform other spells, depending on what they're formulated for, the material is transformed into another state of being. In a way, the basic principles of magic are a lot like the technological laws of physics. The difference occurs when the physical properties are conjoined with the metaphysical essence. That's where the outcome varies. I don't pretend to be an expert on human advancements, I wouldn't even joke about that, but I understand the rudimentary phase changes of corporeal materials. At least that pattern translates the same across worlds. In the past, some of the greatest Andersweltler minds argued that we could perform elemental magic as an internal application similar to our internal spells like projection, deceit, and telekinesis. There was debate that if we could isolate the necessary element used in the spell on such a small scale that it was invisible, then we could work from the inside out. The notion of an invisible element sounded a lot like no element at all, an idea with a mass of zero, which would prove non-existent or useless in spell casting. That theory fell to ashes and was never proven. The humans likewise do not have any such principles in their universities. There was a man in 1867 named Joseph Lister who believed there were invisible creatures in the body he called micro-organisms, but people were afraid of this and shunned his study as a shadow beast scare tactic to take advantage of the human population. He was run out of town and everyone who had any interest in his theories promptly forgot all about them and left it alone.
I bring that up because the more advanced Statutes of a͡itĭcēä have a great deal to do with application and type formulas. There are elementals, internals, and externals. The elementals are Terramancy, Pyromancy, and Frostmancy. The internals are Projection, Deceit, and Telekinesis. The externals are everything else; Health, Poison, Speed, and Necromancy. The classification has to do with the type of physical properties the essence is conjoined with in the spell. When I was a boy, my tutor would ask me to classify a spell based on its physical property. For instance he would ask me "A burning phosphorus stone is launched at a tree. What is the physical property, and what classification is the spell?" At first I would get these questions wrong, too concerned with who's casting spells to know the difference between the material and the magic user, and often I would say the physical property was the Ander and the spell was external or something like that. It wasn't until later that I learned the material does not come from the man (assuming the scenario was a law abiding one) and that the material comes from the world around him. The correct answer is that the phosphorus is the material, and the spell is elemental. Beyond that, there are the extremely rare spells like the augment I mentioned in my last entry, which use two physical properties simultaneously. In that spell I use a combination of an elemental formula and an internal formula. The physical properties do not transcend their respective type applications, but they do work in-tandem. Now that I think of it, I should be teaching Mae this stuff myself.
-P.E. Lister's study included to make the point that no one in Lodan should be utilizing molecular biology to OP their characters skills. On another note, once we reach 1991, 4 human blood types will be discovered: A, B, O, and AB by Karl Landsteiner. Six months after his discovery, the same science will be applied to Ander blood by military doctors, and they will discover there are also 4 bloodtypes for Anders: Z, X, Y and XY. (Z bloodtypes favor but are not limited to winged, X favor Generals, and Y favor Felines. XY are most prominent in mixed breeds)
Mar. 1870 I was a boy once. Feels like a myth now since its so hard to remember. But I was, once. Its hard to imagine when I bring it up in my mind, but the hints are there. I still have the memory of the forests of Shreid, with trees white as birch or pines in snow, and they were huge! The trees of the Shreid region grew so wide they were thicker than train cars, and taller than locomotives were long. I remember the wonder of the first time I landed on their shores and climbed the bank to the forests edge, all that mystical glowing bark, compared to the violet and magenta wood we had in Alarain.
I remember too my first journey to Plaphyclen, though only vaguely. I was traveling with my father who was there on business. It was the rise of the dark days then, but I was left ignorant and sheltered from it. All I knew at the time was the wonder of the General Ander's great domed roofs and the magnificence of their observatories. They ran their fountains in the palace gardens with water dyed black to represent their life's blood. It was still drinkable, though I was warned not to drink it because it would make me look stupid. I spied a small boy drinking from it, no one told him he was stupid. I don't think anyone really cared but my father wouldn't allow me to try it. The Generals believed their blood like velvet was an elite trait that made their race superior to the other two, but then again we all believed our traits were the superiors ones. The Shreid believed their night eyes made them elite, and of course we believed our wings vastly overturned the benefits of the other kinds. In Plaphyclen there was an attack on the city we stayed in the third night we were there. I didn't see it happen, but I remember the crying in the streets as our party left, our business concluded. I remember my mother was with me, she held my hand as we flew from the shoreline. My wings were not great enough to make the journey alone.
Other memories surface from time to time, but mostly from my life at a later age. I recall most vividly my days in the fight against the shadows. I remember the faces of the people I lost. I remember the litany of names I used to sing in mourning, and I remember how the list of names grew, sometimes again and again in the same day. I remember the icy mountains of the polar planes. We were safest on the peaks, and out of the valleys. The valleys held too many shadows, but on the peaks.. the peaks had nothing rising from them to cast any shadows. It was too cold to live there, but when you reached the mountains of ice you knew you had made it, you were safe from the threat and the portal of promise was almost in reach. I remember ice forming on my eyelashes and cracking my lips with bitter cold air, but I remember them in relief, not distress, because it was a blessed thing.
If we could go back... what would we find now? would there be bodies in the snow? Mislead by hope to a dead zone where the portal once existed? Would we find a world consumed by shadows? Or would we find that the Trinations rose in the end and defeated their enemies? Such formidable foes... dreadful and terrifying creatures that evolved too rapidly and multiplied just as quickly. I think perhaps, for my next post, I should tell you about those.
May 1870 Gina is due to give birth in August, and she has taken her leave of us here in the hovel. Not just her leave of me, but her leave of her eldest child as well. "There is no place for a tot with paws in the middle class" she said to me, so bold in her assertions that her employer will take her in as family and help elevate her position to the middle class. I spit on the middle class. Doesn't she remember where she comes from? Doesn't she know that our family was once royalty among the masses? She has no love for our lineage, and no care in this world for that one of the past. I try to make myself understand, I tell myself she has never before seen our world so how could she love it?
I cannot reason why she would leave Mae. She has seen this child next to my leg even now, writing on the floorboards with whittled down chalk. She can't spell, but she tries. She makes up shapes and tells me "look pa, its my name!" She asks me at night when mama is coming back, but I cannot say for sure if she ever will. It has occurred to me that perhaps this journal would be wasted on my daughter. Perhaps instead I shall entrust it one day to the hands of my grandchildren. When her human beau realizes that his child (assuming it takes after the mother) has dominant Andersweltler genes and cannot fly or hide its wings till adolescences, I believe she and it will be forced to return home here.
(sketches by Uzlo: fav.me/d2zfz5r) To Mae and the unborn child I will leave all that I have written, and i hope through them, the future generations of Lodan will find the answers they're all so desperately in need of. My only concern is how. How will I leave them this priceless gift? I dread my time is coming to an end, and they will be too young to receive it, and sadly I trust not my own child to hold it for them. I must be cunning in my delivery.
For now though, I have some universal information to share. I promised to write about the shadow beasts, and this is perhaps the most important of all my lessons. The shadow beasts weren't always something to be feared. There was a time in our history when they were no more threatening than the essence that touches all things. In fact, they were considered the most in-tuned living-creatures with our great source of power and much like the will-o-the-wisps of human lore, they were both rare and beautiful. Our world flourished for centuries because of the balance of a͡itĭcēä. Even when our prejudices against each other forced us apart and we erected borders dividing up the continents, so long as we followed the doctrine - nature found a way.
The generation before mine, perhaps even the one before it, destroyed that balance. The tri-nations in their quests for superiority would increasingly set aside, overwrite or ignore the laws of nature and of a͡itĭcēä for the benefit of their glory. In doing so the power of the essence was abused and overused. The world around us, the living people, creatures and plants, even the unliving soils and seas were spoiled, decaying and receding. But we were relentless, and the more that withered around us, the more we justified using our power to build up in place of the decayed. Gradually it came to our attention that the shadow beasts were easier and easier to find. They were no longer hiding, they were no longer rare and they were no long beautiful creatures. They had transformed into something as ugly on the outside as our excuses on the inside were for what we had done, and that which we did to the world, the shadow beasts began doing back to us.
They came in varying shapes, sizes, speeds, and skills. The shadow beasts gave rise to any plane that could cast a shadow. Born from the absence of light, they were multifaceted and they were multiplying. It seemed that the harder we fought them, the more they evolved to fight us back. I see it now, in retrospect, that they were the mirror images of ourselves, once... the creatures in the forest of Lodan and in the dark places along the cliffs and cities skirt edges are not so. These creatures are static. In coming here they have established their own species, a genetic identity encoded in the fabric of space or time or rifts between worlds. Whatever the science is behind things we do not fully comprehend, therein is the truth. I would argue, however, that one thing remains the same. The shadow beasts of both worlds are still and may always be, the most in-tuned living-creatures with the essence.