Gracious Mistress, Lady of the Dark, Eater of Souls, Queen of the Ancient Lands: It is this humble servant's honor to set down in the annals of the eldest of the aseku the knowledge to which he has become privy over long centuries of study and travel, and which has piqued the interest of the Ruler of the Endless Caverns. I pray that the honorable reader will bear my rude historian's hand with patience, for I am no renowned weaver of tales, nor am I a dragonspeaker; alas, I am but a poor dabbler in the mysteries, whose successes, such as they are, are undoubtedly more due to luck than to personal efficacy.With the honorable reader's permission, I feel it incumbent upon this lowly scribe to fill in the background which the reader of centuries to come may not be privy to, in the meek hope that such information might someday prove of use or interest to the scholar of ancient ways and customs. Thus, let the reader realize that I am Paranthas Sila, known to those of my time as Nightwolf, a magus of little skill whom has by dint of good fortune been graced by the Spider Queen's blessing and our Queen's attention. For three centuries of my four hundred and twenty-two years I have walked both the overworld and underworld of this ancient land, seeking the lost heritage of our race and the answer to the ancient riddle, "Who sings the song without words?" At our Lady of the Dark's request, within these annals I hope to share with the honorable reader those meagre insights I have had the fortune to experience.All stories must have a beginning, and with the honorable reader's indulgence, I can think of no better beginning to this record than the beginning of all:
First, all that was, was Imminent. Then, because all was Imminent, there came need for place, and time, and from Imminency came the Celestiarch, and the Chronarch, to provide context. And because there was context, there was need for boundary, and the Progenitor arose to begin, and the Increate rose to end.
But because there was boundary and no substance, beginning and end touched, and nearly destroyed context, so Power arose, to become all that is, and provide content.
And this is how it was.
This, then, is the beginning of my chronicle, and while my discoveries were scattered across time and place like the lanternlight striking and shattering upon the gemstone walls, I shall enforce upon this narrative a linearity that my life has not had, and attempt to clarify at all times those points which I myself often did not have clarified for decades or centuries. I have begun with the rise of the Elder Gods, as is proper, but the reader must now be informed that I cannot tell the tale from that glorious creation to the point at which my narrative must perforce begin, for there are answers lost to time, and though I have travelled far and long, I have not yet learned to travel the eddies of time, and such answers may be forever lost to us.
[...]
The honorable reader will undoubtedly recall those passages previous to that of the present, in which I have been privileged to describe the rise of the satamharanthu, who ruled the ancient world for long ages in alliance with the most ancient of powers, the Draic'cicoru-Imperatu, and in opposition to the most ancient of powers, the Empire of the Ebon Depths. Now, the lands in those most ancient of times were all one, as one can easily surmise from a brief perusal of any world-map, tracing the contours and shapes of the known lands. From sunrise to sunset the drylands stretched, and though the kevalinu had many means of travel, the fastest and most wondrous of all these means was the matrixgate, known as Rojdhimarujana. Now, over many centuries of travel, it has been my great privilege to discover carven deep in the depths of the Lost City, Azaer Jalil, a map of the matrixgate which covered that ancient continent. This map, in the way of all kevalinu maps, is kh'indaranya-scripted, and perilous for the undisciplined to copy; thus, I did not copy it then, but set it to memory, wherein it remains graven, I believe, until my dying day. Seven and twenty gates were bound within that network of symbols, that would span today the very oceans themselves, and perhaps lead the unwitting traveller to his death far beneath the sea, where the lands have fallen.As were many kevalinu workings, the matrixgate too was bound in stone, as though to survive the eons the kevalinu knew must pass before they awoke once more from the long sleep of forgetfulness that lies upon them now. Each gate was tied to a gem, but as does everything wrought in kh'indaranya, the resonances of each gate went further, to echo in the Twenty-Seven Forgotten Runes, the Twenty-Seven Universal Causes, the Thirteen Signs of Fate, the Thirteen Living Archetypes, and the Great Secret. Moreover, each gate resonated to the Twenty-Seven Lost Chords of the Dragon, Twenty-Seven Eldest Names, and the Unfading Hues of Eternity Thus the danger of the gates was relentless, and only the trained or the foolish would dare utilize them. No, this humble author must beg the honorable reader's forgiveness, for one other type would rashly use these perilous passages - the desperate, for when I came upon the carven network I was pursued by an abomination that had survived the Fall of Azaer Jalil, and recklessly I plunged into the tapestries of energy, fearing no death more than that I should die at that loathsome creature's maw.To pass through the matrixgate is to race upon the lines of energy that create that invisible framework which acts as vessel to the world around us, and to become, for a moment, one with the akasa. This experience is not to be taken lightly, and it is my understanding that I spent over ten years with the strange, childlike creatures that found me shivering and senseless beside the ruins of a great city; ten years in which they treated me with the respect and care their beliefs led them to tender the mad, before I regained my senses and was able to depart from that kindly land. The honorable reader, then, will forgive my inadequate attempt to describe the workings of the matrix itself, for in truth I have no idea how one controlled one's passage, or whether my own misfortune with the transit was due to my own mental fragility, or to a lack of training that could, perhaps, be circumvented by a wiser and less hurried scholar.Nevertheless, it was through this network of linked gems that the kevalinu ruled the ancient world, and it is my worthless opinion that, had this network not existed, many of those lands we know today would not have survived the Cataclysm, for the network holds each of those lands in a grip tighter than any other imaginable, and perhaps keeps the very foundation of the world as we know it from collapsing into the ocean's abyss.The honorable reader, at this point, is undoubtedly wondering if such a matrixgate can indeed be mastered, or whether it can be emulated, for to travel from continent to continent in the blink of an eye, especially now that great expanses of water separate our cities from each other, would be a blessing, indeed. I fear to advise the honorable reader to attempt the original matrixgate, for my own experience with it has left me apprehensive about its unharnessed power. Yet that we ourselves have the knowledge to create such gates is undeniable, though few seem willing to undergo such a time-consuming process. With the honorable reader's permission, I shall attempt to describe how I should construct such a matrixgate, and perhaps in the attempt I shall unwittingly provide some wiser head with the clue to how the kevalinu themselves might have undertaken such a task.The honorable reader is undoubtedly familiar with those stones we call kus'rojdhi, the colorless, multifaceted lengths of crystal used by some sorcerors to travel quickly from throne to chambers and back. Though the kevalinu used much different gemstones for their own gates, it is my humble belief that the means behind the use of such stones was similar; while we cannot shape the matrix of the kus'rojdhi ourselves, only key the existant shard's internal matrix to a specific area, the kevalinu were undoubtedly more puissant, keying otherwise magically opaque gems to their needs. Yet let it be; we shall use, for this thought experiment, kus'rojdhi. Now, the ritual to key the kus'rojdhi to an area is well known by the name Mazebinding. A similar and also well-known means of using stones to travel is the practice known by the name Gemjumping. The former ritual allows the bearer of a kus'rojdhi to travel to a place that has been keyed beforehand, and the latter practice allows a spellcaster to travel to a place wherein the kus'rodjhi lies. What difficulty, I speculate, to combine and make permanent these two operations, such that each portal on the matrixgate has before it a variety of such stones, keyed each to another area, so that the traveller may simply choose the area desired, select the proper stone, and make that journey in a second's time?Naturally, this would not emulate fully and precisely the kevalinu matrixgate, for there is to my certain knowledge only one stone present at each portal, and I would tentatively propose that the kevalinu ordered in their own minds, or perhaps in the matrix of the gem itself, the proper keying for the desired destination. Yet I find this exercise in theory to be of some amusement, and have whiled away many quiet years attempting to derive the necessary arcane formulae from the spells I already have at my command.....
