Pantheons+Biz+Physical Era
Before these years of ruin, still in the royal chambers, I found myself wondering what we would become
without the regiment of war. It had defined so many of us, and without it, I felt us
in a grand time, but in many ways lost.
I consulted an oracle, who carved my question into the bones and tossed them into their fire.
The oracle told me of the cracks. Of the fate of the gods and their fall.
We exchanged glances, both dismissing the truth.
The next night I traveled out of the city of Louqing. There is a village
where they serve a sacred drink, and in that place is an oracle who is my friend.
No regalia, just wonderously artful in their divining. And good humor.
We sat and drank. They talked of my age. This was not the woman I remembered, but their
granddaughter. Just as well. Throw the bones. Let's see.
She did not know the ruins, so I described them. She carved with a kitchen knife.
Then tossed them into the kitchen stove. She slid them out with a long stove iron, and then plopped them into the dog's water bowl.
She had not the training to read them. But it did not matter.
We looked at the first set of the bones and then these.
The cracks were the same. The gods would fall.
The woman asked me what this meant, and I told her. She made me leave.
I myself could not believe the message, but learned then to keep it to myself.
It is only now that I wish I had alerted the emperor.
But it would not matter. What would we do better than the dragons have done?
We saw the stars in the sky blink out, one by one. The oceans receded.
The dead rised. But all this did not matter, for when the heavens began to crack, the great dragons placed their wings around us
shielding us from the end of the world.
A century passed this way, and we prayed all the harder to Ba for the world to survive.
We constructed temples to the great four dragons, cared for their knees, premanently kneeling on the centered earth, bearing the storm of
the dead heaven's wreckage.
When eggs came, we gathered them and kept them warm. The alchemists tried to understand. To speak to them. To thank them.
They died for us, the ten pieces of their souls gifted to us, their bodies still arched, but decomposing and skeletal.
Their wings retracted one day, and all beyond our borders is a wild ruin of magic and chaos.
If all the gods are dead, we are most certain they killed one another for reasons that Zoareaos cannot know.
The eggs hatched, and from them were born the draqin. They were exalted as
holy members of our society, and soon took high positions in
our courts. They seemed to think themselves gods, and people soon
began to take sides. We had survived this all, only to be divided by this seeking for leadership.
As we turn inward, we look away from the world in need of help. But not I.
OUTRO
The emporer stepped down before he was attacked.
The draqin may be holy, but the centered earth is changing. And I would much like a rest before I see the age of mortals, knowing how cunning they really are.
NOTES:
- THE CATACLYSM/end of the domination of the gods
- beginning of the rule of mortal
- decisive end to the war between gods/religion/godsgame
- The last war destroys the world
- Revealed in the war are the three divine aspects of godhood
- ***Mainly what I need to do is explain how the biz panthoen end up surviving through all of this!
- Dragons should have some relevance at this point/emergance/prominence of the draqin empire
- dragons awaken - this obfuscates the pantheon and the middle nation, mostly isolating it from the great cataclysm