The Shadow Under The Moon, Preface
#1 of The Shadow Under The Moon
The Shadow Under The Moon
By,
Absolom Nightwolf
"Rage-Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus' son Achilles, murderous, doomed, that cast the Achaeans countless losses, hurling down to the House of Death so many sturdy souls..."
Homer, The Iliad
Preface
Welcome to the world of Urr, birth place of the Canius people. We Guardens and Caernars and Foxlings have all expanded out to other worlds, and for some, other "times". But all of us can draw our origins from only one place. All of us started on this world. The true origins of the Canius are lost to time, even by those of us who lived through it, and only one now 'may' know the truth. Though he will not speak of it. This may be for the best, as the memory of it, for those of us who have glimpsed it is painful. Very, very painful. For the process not only strips the original physical body of its shape, but changes the personality as well, or so we are told. But I am getting ahead of myself. All shall be explained in time. Or not. Who now can answer such questions? Not I. Another? Who can say? But let us return to the world we came from.
Now, what of this world of Urr? Why would knowing about this world be so important to understanding the Canius people? To start off, it is old. Several galactic historians have said that The First Galactic Empire had a lost colony in the area that this world is located. If this is true, and Urr is indeed the lost colony, then nothing remains of the original civilization. Or it lays under so many other civilizations that it can no longer be separated from the ones that followed. Regardless, it no longer exists. By the time I was born, the ruins of the older civilizations could be found everywhere, with new nations built on their ashes. In other words, our world was dying.
Not dying in the traditional sense; it still exists and is lush with life, but any 'advanced' civilization was being crushed under the weight of its own stagnation. Let me explain. Once, the gods walked among our ancestors, preforming both miracles and atrocities. These gods wandered from place to place, never resting in one place for more than a forte-night. When the gods met, they talked instead of battling each other, even those who hated each other. They seemed to sense that if they did battle, something calamitous would occur. Then came The Nightwolf.
No one knows where she came from, or how she became so strong, but all knew that she would let nothing stop her from reaching her goals. She became the first of the True Necromancers. Her army of spirits and half-demons were nigh unstoppable, forcing more and more nations to turn to wizards and sorcerers for help. Now, it must be stated that wizards and sorcerers where not very favored at this time in history. Most were social outcast, either cast outs of noble courts or criminals, but the rise of The Nightwolf changed all of this. It did little to stop The Nightwolf's expansion, however. Finally, the gods had to step in, this being the first and last time they would work together. In the beginning, it did little other than make things worse. Where battles would only harm and damage small area of the landscape, now whole nations were being wiped from existence. Thing came to ahead when The Unbound, The God of War, was slain and The Nightwolf devoured The Forgotten, God of Madness and Hatred.
It was at this point that the remaining gods realized going at this new god piecemeal was doing nothing, and the death of the gods that had fought her had only made The Nightwolf stronger. In truth, as the gods would find out later, the power that The Nightwolf wielded was slowly driving her mad. The gods would have to come up with another way to defeat her, as any frontal assault had so far proven to be useless. Then The Tinkerer, The Pilgrim and Ravenblack (The Gods of Crafts, Protection and Magic) came up with an idea. If The Nightwolf could not be outright slain, then it might be possible to bind her. The Tinkerer began to forge chains of unbreakable adamant while the others fought the slow but steady march of The Nightwolf's undead armies. No one know what exactly happened, but The Nightwolf was finally captured and bound within the tunnels of an ancient fortress deep within Bald Mountain. The Beggarman, God of Survival, and Ghostwind, Goddess of Shadows, died in the first attempt to bind her. Ravenblack was permanently injured in the second attempt, but the gods were successful in the binding. The Nightwolf, however, proved to be too strong for them to outright destroy. Every injury dealt her was healed at such a rate that she was nearly immune to the pain. Her connection to the dead made matters worse. Spirits, shades and ghosts of every sort would flock to her in an attempt to protect her. Finally, the gods that remained were forced to admit defeat and contained her inside a specially made prison instead.
Bald Mountain had been a place of power long before the rise of the gods, and the origins of the fortress sitting on and inside of it is now lost to history. What remained were stories of evil powers that had congregated on the mountain summit or had performed dark rituals at its base. The arrival of The Nightwolf and her incarceration within the mountain made the mountain even more frightening in the eyes of the locals. The dead began to congregate around and in the mountain in greater and greater numbers, and even the conjurers and summoners who had previously visited the mountain began to go elsewhere. In an effort to contain the influence of The Nightwolf, the gods built a extensive fortress not far from the base of the mountain and filled it with guardians, both mortal and otherwise, loyal to the remaining gods. Now confident with their effort to stop this unusual monster, the gods went their separate ways.
Time passed.
Now, I know some of you are asking what this has to do with the death of the world and the Canius people. To start off with, the war, which came to be called The War of The Gods Fall, unleashed such untamed magical forces that the world began to become twisted, changing environments and creatures into other things. The world had in a sense become corrupted. Secondly, the old kingdoms that had existed before the war where now gone, most of the old bloodlines wiped from existence. Thirdly, the war had allowed several wizards and sorcerers to rise to very prominent positions, and with this rise, gave way to the creation of the Sorcerer-Kings. Some had been granted titles and land during the war, others took great swaths of the now lawless countries as rite of conquest. As before, kingdoms and countries rose and fell as the Sorcerer-Kings fought each other for prominence. Lastly, the gods slowly faded from showing themselves publicly, until they simply disappeared. No one knows exactly what happened to them, but in the end, the only thing left of them was the religion they had spawned. Then came the man simply known as The Raven.
The Raven was a male human with unparalleled power and a sorcerer with an uncanny understanding of magic. His origins are obscure, but he is believed to come out of the Kjolen Region to the north of the world. Regardless of his actual origins, he conquered The Sudete, Beskid and Pomerania Regions in under a decade. Concerned for their own safety, several of the surrounding kingdoms banded together to fight The Forbidden Kingdom, as The Raven's new country was being called. And it was at this time the world of Urr was to be introduced to the precursors of the Canius people; The Ulfhedinn. These "wolfmen" were not true Guardens, merely the prototypes, if such an ugly word could be used for them. Large, strong and made up of almost nothing but males, they swarmed the armies of the other Sorcerer-Kings in a one-sided battle with devastating results. The Ulfhedinn proved to be stronger, faster and were more coordinated than the other forces arrayed against them. And then there was the magic The Raven could unleash himself. Before such a force, the others could not compete, and soon The Carpathian, Black Forest and Alpine Regions were under the rulership of The Raven. His army was soon knocking on the front door of The Thames Kingdom on the Northern Ilse.
In an effort to save his kingdom, The Thames monarch signed a treaty with his new neighbor and gave him his daughter in marriage. With a queen secured, and the possibility of successors forth coming, The Raven turned his attention to solidifying his kingdom and perfecting his military might, for the one problem with the Ulfhedinn was that they could not procreate. For every loss that occurred to them, The Raven would have to make a new one. This would not allow him to have a sustainable military, and in order to maintain the illusion of this vast military before he could prefect his creations, he would need allies. This would include the family of a small Warlord located on the banks of the River Volga.
From the Introductory Lecture of Absolom Nightwolf on
"The Dangers of Magical Research"
Given at the Battle Mage College of the Sapphire