The Forseeing

In the year of Betrayal the tainted seed of hate lay sown within the People’s minds; its corruption spreading in an ongoing crimson tide throughout Llayentia. Death became a prime commodity as the first Assassin’s Guild was formed from dust of a business which had once provided goods to all the lands, The Red Pelican Trading Post.

Though the Seven had forseen the day of betrayal they could not stop it. Heartache for this dying world and it's wounded Peoples filled them as their once peaceful lands were driven by revenge. War ravaged their lands, overflowing till Kyron’s worlde, Llayentia, lay corrupt. Spoiled. A seeping cancerous wound.

Time spread out before them almost interminable, a relentless ongoing wave of anguished sorrow. They watched their Peoples, their beautiful diverse Peoples, reject peace filled unity by segregating into warring factions. Race fought with race, each striving for an advantage, turning their natural skills and abilities to unwholesome use in order to gain the upper hand. People were mutilated, slaughtered, en masse as well as individually, for no better reason than the shape of their ear or color of their bodies. The Seven grieved anew when the perverse lives of their peoples mutated their very genes; changing the races into tainted gray-shadows of their former life-filled glory.

The M'hakru, once altruistic, peaceful, nature lovers, turned their natural ability of speed to the art of war. Deliberate inbreeding as mercenaries had the unexpected liability of instilling cruelty into the bloodlines of their people. Eventually, without the ability to do even the most menial of labor, they turned to capturing their opponents as slaves; tying the very people they sought to eliminate to their survival.

The Sharpra, natural hunters, became barbarically tribalistic, warring amongst themselves as well as with anyone who dared approach villages. After incessant in-fighting dangerously reduced their numbers, laws were enacted to help stop this spiraling downward decline. They learned to use their shape-shifting abilities to infiltrate the rest of the lands, using stealth and deception to expose valuable information. Loyalty to their own people became the single most driving force in their behavior causing supernatural ties with their mates.

The Freni-Kyn, fun loving entertainers with an Achilles heel in the very hair that made them unique, were nearly wiped out till they turned to the one form of entertainment that could help them survive. Prostitution. Restructuring of their whole society—so that only those who excelled in this form of entertainment were allowed to mate or given political influence—caused their bodies to change, mutate, over the passage of time. They became the living physical standard of the People’s preferred beauty. Lacking emotional closeness, even with each other, a driving need to fill this emptiness with unending sexual partners became prevalent. With birthrates climbing at an alarming rate, they sought means to control when and who gave birth, leading to the curse of the preral cycle and preral sickness.

The Watrelk, a reclusive water people with a willingness to help the other races through oversea trade, shut down the water lanes, refusing passage to outsiders, and closed themselves off even further from the other races. Their land-bound cities, abandoned for the safety of the ocean, became islands of interconnecting watercraft; a motley mass of boats, ships, and rafts. Eventually the other races built their own vessels, causing splintering within Watrelk society. Out of this disagreement the Watrelk Pirates were birthed; a vicious group of killers, who, determined to jealously protect the seas from invasion, turned to trafficking in slavery and drugs with the M'hakru and others of low honor.

The Glidarth, free-spirited traders and metal smiths, refused to give metals to the other races after mutilation of their wings became prevalent among the warring factions. Withdrawing to their mountaintop fortified megatropolis, they became isolated, turning in upon themselves. Sorrow at this restriction of their freedom turned them to the fixated comfort of food. Gluttony restricted the use of flight even further, leading in turn to overwhelming urges towards self-mutilation and suicide.

The Frevell, without muscular stature to ensure their survival during the wars, withdrew to distant secluded cities. They became negotiators, using their superior age and knowledge to help others govern the lands. Their laws multiplied, becoming so redundant as to be useless, a dagger to their own throats. Eventually it became impossible for them to accomplish anything of significance. Society stagnated, technology drew to a crawl, and a people once known for its ingenious conceptual inventions left off creating. With one exception. Their knowledge of genetics played a heavy hand in the inbreeding techniques taken on by the M'hakru and Freni-Kyn.

And H’euman-kind? Well the H’eumans simply multiplied and warred and imbibed in the perversions infecting all the races, accepting every sordid atrocity, till their towns became as varied as the individual races. Some few, outraged at the barbarism, left for isolated areas; creating pockets of strange ingrown societies based around the principles of science, religion, technology, or magic. Each pursuing these interests with disregard for the consequences.

The scene shifted forward again. Finally, after foreseeing the horrifying debasement of their Peoples throughout time, a collective sigh of relief escaped their lips. Another child was born; the face, the race, the very sex, vague, smudged, oddly shadowed; as though open to change, to chance, to some shifting unforeseeable facts. This one, this tiny hazy infant, destined to bring unity; to heal the ragged wounds of their Peoples. Unity spread in a silken wave through the land once again as a result of one birthing.

All this, all the calamity, all the hope, depended upon one thing; a single birthing. One birthing would begin the Rage Wars. One birthing would restore unity.

The Result

A multitude of years came and went. The calling of Seven took on a mysterious dark aspect. Knowing what storm lay brewing, the choosing of a predecessor became a laborious process. Each year the Peoples of the Tri-Land area were given the same exact foretelling along with a blessing. It came to be expected, though the Seven refused to explain themselves. The Seven who had witnessed the alarming vision moved on with their much altered lives, but not before leaving an accounting of the events they had seen and precise instructions with the next Seven, who in turn sent it on to the seers who followed them.

Initiation into the calling of Seven required a reliving of the vision through the memory of their predecessors and written accounts. Sickened at the vision, almost from the moment of accepting the calling, the seers who followed continued repeating the foretelling in grim determination. The races could not be allowed the luxury of forgetting this prophecy. It must be told. It must be made indelible in the minds of Kyron’s peoples.

When the long expected Day of Betrayal arrived, two hundred fifty-three years later, the Seven of that time were executed for not warning the rulers. Having foreseen their own deaths at the previous year’s celebration, they had set in place what was needed to care for their families, as well as passed on their mantle of sight. The foretelling became a distant memory to most of the races of Kyron as the Seven were forced into hiding.