A Short History of Samru
In the Beginning
Into the darkflux of Attrahent the avatarchs reached forth from Attrament, and that motion caused the darkflux to swirl and take shape into the first of the caitanya matrices.
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.
Power dominated Attrahent, but as Power was the newest of all the patterns, it was guided by the Imminent, and impeded by the Celestiarch and the Chronarch, and bounded by the Progenitor and the Increate. Yet despite these limitations, Power spread, and the darkflux became home to life, and mind, and sorcery. And to understand, Power itself took form, and mind, and thus was the first of all to feel pain. In its pain it created refuge, and hid its form therein, and locked it away to forget the weaknesses of mortality and the confusions of sense.
And this refuge was the crystal sphere, the quanrusu, called Samru.
Genesis
Life arose on Samru, as it must wherever Power exists, but it was life filled with pain, twisted life, evil life. It filled the dark crevices of the earth and the dark depths of the water, and waited, and learned. And these elder races, the maruk avaranu, were as follows: the aboleth; the aeyr-'klk'-iahlhaa(ahn) - dolphins and whales; the kraken; and the wyrm - ankheg, bloodwyrm, dunewyrm, purplewyrm, thunderherders, tunnelwyrm, and remorhaz, who dwell in the chasms of the earth.
The maruk avaranu created slaves upon which to feed, and their torment much satisfied their masters. And these slaves were the sahuagin, who served the aboleth; the ixitixachitl, who served the kraken; and the satamharanthu, who served the wyrm. And of these all the wyrm were the most careless. Because the wyrm enjoyed causing pain, and gave their slaves intelligence that they might know such, they brought about their own undoing. For the satamharanthu slaves waited, and learned, and mastered the secret arts of their masters. For thousands of years they plotted their escape, and finally suceeded, hiding in a refuge of islands sorcerously protected by the hidden labors of slave-generations past.
The maruk avaranu raged, and attacked the slaves' hiding places, but failed to penetrate the barriers they themselves had first developed. Centuries passed with maruk avaranu and satamharanthu locked away from each other, each one working to destroy the other.
The Dawn Masters
During these centuries the satamharanthu created their own slaves, and became masters themselves. Their slaves were fair of form and were allowed to share what knowledge they could understand, for the first slaves had learned from the mistakes of their masters, and denied their own creations the full range of powers they themselves possessed, but allowed them to learn openly what they could. And the satamharanthu called themselves the Dawn Masters, for they were the new dawn from the night-rule of the maruk avaranu. And their slaves the jhare avaranu, the young races, took their own names, in emulation of their masters, and they were called the aseku, the yuanu-ti, the lamia, and the minotaur.
But as time passed, the Dawn Masters began to feel secure, and forgot the dangers of their old masters, and slowly their studies turned to degeneracy and decadence. They dabbled in magic, and created new matrices which they called gods, and every time the satamharanthu touched the darkflux they fell deeper under the sway of the avatarchs of Attrament, who seduced them and twisted them to evil. The satamharanthu began to create new slaves, debased in mind and form, and experimented in bending time and place to their own whim. And the jhare avaranu began to fear the direction that their Dawn Masters were headed, and slowly began to slip through the barriers around the lands of the Dawn Masters, weakening the magical wards with each passage.
The Cataclysm
When the barriers were weakened the maruk avaranu took note, and mounted their attack. The satamharanthu were caught by surprise, and were nearly destroyed, but the most powerful saved themselves and rallied to counterattack. Their most fearsome weapons of war were brought to bear, and their most terrible slave-creations loosed. Thus the Cataclysm, also called the Demon Wars, began, and nearly split the world asunder.
But Power had returned to its form, for once having known sense, Power could never again shake off its memory. And when Power awoke in its refuge, it felt Samru shaking, and looked, and cried a halt to the combat.
And across the world, the war stopped, for even under the limits of form, Power is not to be easily denied.
The Concordat
Then Power created the Concordat, and divided all that lived. The maruk avaranu were confined to the depths of earth and ocean. The Dawn Masters were bound to the surface, and commanded to rebuild what had been destroyed. The jhare avaranu and the races that came after were freed and given command of Samru, and forbidden to bring such danger to Samru again. The weapons were hidden or destroyed, and the most fearsome of the slave-creations the same.
Then Power walked the surface in form, and ensured all complied, before leaving its body again in a place of safety and abandoning sense once more.
The satamharanthu then split themselves apart into two halves. One half, the satamharanthu who dwelled within the Shadowed Lands, turned to the stars and extended their power throughout the Aksaramaya Spheres. They rebuilt what was destroyed - their own empire - and extended it far beyond their own quanrusu.
The other half, the satamharanthu who dwelled within the Yijan Jalil, remained with the land and locked themselves apart from the Shadowed Lands with technarcane wards of truemagic. They called themselves the kevalinu, the Ones Alone. They rebuilt what was destroyed - the land itself - and then retired into secrecy and isolation to study how their creations evolved.
The jhare avaranu flourished and spread over the lands the satamharanthu had recreated for them, and forgot the Cataclysm that had torn the world asunder, and forgot many of the arts that had been taught them by their former masters, and many even forgot the danger of the maruk avaranu, and that the kevalinu were supposed to protect them from that danger.
New deities arose from the minds of the young races, powers of Samru and of the concerns of mortals. And as many centuries passed, the old wisdom was forgotten by all but a few guardians, who deemed it better that the young races build their world in freedom from the fears of the past.
Yijan Jalil (the Cradle, the Cognoterre) was protected by the kevalinu for over a thousand years and shielded from the worst of the avatarchs of Attrahent. The wards that separated Yijan Jalil from the Shadowed Seas filtered the power of the avatarchs over those matrix patterns which underlay the Cradlehold lands. However, over the centuries, with the kevalinu's decline the wards weakened and the avatarchs gained strength.
The Epiphanein - those kevalinu who survived the centuries - and the deities of Yijan Jalil eventually noticed the weakening of the wards. However, they could do little to stop the magical decay, as much of the technarcane knowledge that had originally created the barriers had died as the kevalinu died. Instead, they began to take countermeasures, sending out visions of impending danger and gathering armies to repel the inevitable invasion.
The avatarchs encouraged the Empire of the Ebon Depths to penetrate the weakly protected Eavon Ocean. That dark empire swiftly made inroads into Yijan Jalil, further weakening the wards with the aid of their traitor inside, the evil archmagus Eidolon. The incursion of the Empire of the Ebon Depths was intently watched by the satamharanthu dragon-ascendates of the Shadowed Lands, who were interested in seeing what might lie behind the barriers that had so long withstood them. In preparation of the wards' fall, they readied their airships to invade the lands for new slaves and to protect their world from alien sojourners who might have the same idea.
The Domination War
When the technarcane wards finally collapsed in DR 850, under the combined pressure of the Empire of the Ebon Depths and the dragon emperors of the Iron Autocracy, the invasion begain. The ornately beweaponed airships of the Dawn Masters swarmed over the continents of the Cognoterre, while the Empire of the Ebon Depths ruthlessly conquered the ocean-dwelling races. Thus began the Domination War, the second greatest conflict to rip the earth and heavens since the Demon Wars' Cataclysm, that had separated the Cradlehold from the rest of Samru in the first place.
The Domination War ravaged the Cradlehold for thirty days, and each night the sky was filled with chromatic flares as the Dragon Stars moved in cosmic emulation of the conflict below. Airships, winged steeds and awakened dragons battled in the sky, the armies both living and dead slaughtered each other across the land. Eventually, however, the inevitable occurred, and the young races of Yijan Jalil fell to the satamharanthu, the Dawn Masters of Samru and the Dragon-Emperors of the Iron Autocracy.
The Theophany
The hold of the Dawn Masters over the Cognoterre was shattered in DR 901, when a vampiric civil war within the city of Cislunar released the archmage Persifal, a reverate of Bel. Persifal "the Herald" channeled the power of the deities who had been exiled from the Cognoterre into a firestorm that became remembered as the Night Sun, because it lit the night skies over the Cognoterre as though it were broad daylight. This arcane flame seared the akasic matrices of Samru, surging through all magical channels and destroying them. Everywhere, airships crashed, magically supported buildings collapsed, magically created golems and undead fell into inanimate matter, and extradimensional portals and gates closed. Thousands died in the cataclysm, and more in the days and weeks after.
But the deities had returned in a miracle called variously the Theophany or the Manifest Revelation, and the world was in turmoil. The magical surge had affected the Dawn Masters even in their own lands, and while they struggled to quell the subsequent chaos and uprisings, they could spare little time for their newly conquered territories. In the Cognoterre, colonized races rioted, slaughtering the Aspects and even the two Ascendates that had been set over them. Clerics and paladins were the first to regain their powers, and mages some time thereafter. But very, very few of the old magics returned; most had been obliterated by the divine surge of power. A power vacuum had been created, and many were eager to fill it.
