Age of Myths (Age of Sigmar): Third Time the charm

Age of Myths (Age of Sigmar Quest)

The world was ending.

How it came to this? This story could and has fill volumes. Perhaps this fiery end had been written when the great gates to the Aether that stood at the two poles had been forced open in the mists of age past, unleashing a torrent of horrors. Perhaps that even when the Ever-ships of the First Race had sailed the sea of stars and that the Old Ones first glanced on the orb they decided to seed, destiny was already in motion. Perhaps it was not the case. Perhaps that a simple pebble, a single death or a single life could have paid for the world and left the Four Faces of the Devourer deprived of their great feast. Alas it was not the case. Mortals and gods had tried to oppose the shadow and had failed and died. Even the eight new gods had been vanquished and they lay as corpses in the streets or around the world's mortal wound, without being able to do it.

But even the bleakest end holds the seeds for a new beginning, for gods are born of catastrophe as much as they are born of paradises. In the darkness beyond the world, they were not Four to howl and scream and whisper with the voices of the mad, still reeling from the agony of their terrible birth, still covered in the bloody caul of its aftermath. No they were Ten but none knew that. There were Ten who howled in pain and burning as the world died around them. Some of them had been mortal but of different races, other had been gods and been worshipped as such. Three had been elves, haughty and immortal and possessed of the lore of magic. Two had been dwarves, children of stone and fire whose word held strong as the mountain side. Two had been of ancient but opposed race, cold blooded aloofness and thoughtless savagery, both of them as inhuman as the other. Three had been human or creatures that once were human shapes, two of them had struggled to avert this fate, the last one had done everything to set it into motion.

Their screams sounded the same thought.

It lasted centuries or perhaps millennia. You could be surprised at what can still crawl while the air become thick with fleshy nightmares and the night alive with screams and whispers. The Nine and the Tenth struggled and stalked the land, absorbing the souls and symbols best resonating with the eldritch magic they were infused. In their wake the world was unmade as, slowly or quickly, Fire, Heavens, Beasts, Death, Metal, Light, Life and Shadow devoured anything they deemed kin. It was not an evil act but a thoughtless birth scream, the gods seeking to preserve most of their old home in their own essence, until at last it remained only a spark of molten fire drifting in the maelstrom of the Warp.

Or perhaps it lasted only a moment. A horrible and wondrous moment where the air become scalding energy, where the seas boiled, where the heavens were rolled like one roll a parchment after finishing its reading. The air lacked lightness, the sea depths, the fire flame and all was unmade in the primordial slime, save the Ten and what they absorbed, flotsam and jetsam adrift in the waves.

For in the Realm of Chaos, time is not linear and effect can sometimes precede cause for the great delight of the gods that reigns there.

Mortals that envy the gods, do not envy the birth of the Ten! For it was frightening beyond all mortal fear.

Some of them saw their surroundings as inky blackness, others as a riot of deadly colors and riotous tints burning their eyes and bringing their minds to the brink of madness. Some believed they were cas adrift in a great sea and felt the weight of deep black waters, other saw fire and air and were pulled and pushed by the howling winds. One of them saw a great pit of quicksand biting at him from all directions. And they fell. There was no up and no down but they fell, away from the world of their birth, away from the world they failed.

The first of them to release his power had been the first of them to be born and the first of them to die the true death. Kroak of Lustria who had held the souls of the ancient Slann race, that were in the world at its beginning and whose end had heralded its end, grew to monstrous proportions before exploding outward in a shower of stars. And the Warp was repulsed from this explosion and the Sea of Stars mantled the world anew, as a cloak against the attention of chaos. And in the starry night, under the strange light of nebulaes and galaxies, the Slanns opened their eyes anew and they were alone.

Sigmar was the next. Sigmar whose name had long held the Great Ennemy at bay, he fell through the newly born heavens but was unwilling to forsake the world of his youth, so he screamed and the souls that filled him tore him asunder. The Hammerer died before being reborn, a storm arising from his remains and bridging the distant stars with roads of clouds and lightning. The stars, seeded by thunder were made fertile and new creatures were born to roam the worlds uncounted. Thus the ancient and the young created the Realm of Azyr where distance is a myth and lightning and comets rule before ancient hidden might.

He who seeded the wanton void next, none know exactly what his name is. For the first thing he did was to split himself in two, a young warrior in brilliant mail and wings of fire, and a bent mage made of pure moonlight. They were twins but not alike and elven blood ran in their veins. They screamed too and around them the light that surrounded them built grandiose landscapes to imitate what they had lost. And it was grander that the isle that went below the waves for it was whole and untainted, and neither mountain peak or watery abyss held anything but wonder for the elven souls that came to roam in them. Thus Tyrion and Teclis created the Realm of Hysh where rivers spell mystic patterns and the sun is in splendor.

Next to stop was a dwarven god, ancient beyond belief and young as the end of the world. Grimmir was his name and often was he invoked in oaths of vengeance and war. His red hair now burning without harm he screamed not under the strain and burned in silence. And around him grew seas of tar and great volcanos and calderas. He was wounded by his endless struggles and creatures of smokeless fire sprung with each drop of his blood touching the earth. Harsh and rough were these lands but he loved what he had wrought for fire, be it from the earth or the heart, must be splendid and dangerous, and taming it must be a challenge. Thus was created the Realm of Aqshy where passion rules the heart and source of the flames of the universe.

At the same time another dwarf who took the name of Grugni, without remembering if he was truly the old blacksmith, stopped his fall. His scream too created high iron mountains, and seas of quicksilver and plain of razored steel, and forest of viridian copper. However, as he regained his bearings and the control of his sense he was not satisfied with his savage and sterile domain. Creating the tools of the forge he set up to work and changed and shifted much of the new world, eroding mountain, taming the seas and erecting cities of gold for his people to live him. Great throngs of golems by him were wrought, to roam the land and put it to use, for metal must be forged to be beautiful. Thus was created the Realm of Chamon where metal shifts and change and gold and iron and silver are one and the same.

Next was Allarielle the Radiant, bearing the hope and the life of the world in her body. She saw the light of the Realms above and rejoiced for knew that life could endure. She alone of the Ten release her power willingly and her realm was thus the brightest and the greatest. For trees as great as temple pillars and fields of new red flowers and fertile earth and clear water were born as soon as she entered labor and what she birthed looked like the old world but covered in full by green hues and whispering woods. Then beasts and birds to come in the trees while they walked to bow before their queen. Thus was created the Realm of Ghyran where trees walk and forest is alive like in the day of yore.

Savage was he that stopped near her. Savage and unfocused and bearer of the rage of a whole race in addition to the multiples monsters of creation. So he howled for eons in the darkness and the tempest and at first his screams fashioned a rough land of great mountains and brackish swamps, of fetid heat and ghastly cold. Then when the jungle and the desert alike were set up, his screams became beasts and dragons and monsters and the entire race of the greenskins reborn from their creator's fertile loins rejoiced at the battle without end that was awaiting them. Thus Gork (or perhaps Mork) created the Realm of Ghur where great reptiles savage themselves under the red angry sun.

Long had the king of shadows held his power, for pain was an old friend to him and he bore his kiss better than the others. Still came a moment where he could only say: "No more!" and release the bounty he had taken. Inky darkness formed around him but to his eyes, secrets appeared like corpses in water, thirteen layers of shadow and intrigue he formed, thirteen layers of fear and spite and judgement waiting for the unconscious to come in. Amidst dark forest and endless night, he established a realm once more, found his mother consort to shadow beings of great power. He did not know if he had birthed her with the world but he didn't care. Thus Malekith created the Realm of Ulgu where shadows whisper of secrets yet to be uncovered.

Last was the Undying King who, more than anyone, had desired godhood. Were the choice his to make, he would never has released it. Yet the souls burned in him, howling to release and not a few of them had loathed it while they walked under the sun. Glutted he was, beyond belief and still at a moment, he was forced to release his grasp and let his power flow like water. Around him fields of graves were sowed, black seas of amethyst and their gardens of drowned ones flowed. Whole kingdoms of shades arose from the ground, courts of flesh-eaters, great city of vampires fleeing the coming of the light and like an abcess on one's skin, cities of living dead with golden armor and power over the other dead. Thus Nagash created the Realm of Shysh where all the dead come to find their rest

And the Tenth. He fell further than the rest. It was not greed that pushed him to burn in the abyss, falling like lightning through the tempest until he was out of sight even from the lowest of the Nine. It was hate for he had hated the world that was, and destroyed it. He did not will to birth a world of its own, wishing only to destroy all that have ever been, even his Dark Gods he loathed with as much passion as he loathed the rest of creation. Still the fire of creation burning in him would not be denied. The world that come to be created around him was rough and mutable and ill-defined yet it was livable. And the Tenth birthed anew the beastmen, the ratmen, the worshippers of destruction to live in these lands and suffer as he suffered. Thus at the nadir of creation, the furthest away from the light, Archaon created the innumerable Realms of Chaos.

Yet perhaps the Dark Lord still held a shard of light and life. For from the fertile ground of his new realm grew a great tree made of magic and dark wood. Roots in the madness of the universe it grew and its branches soon found their way in every Realm, a pillar to hold the worlds together, immune by accident or design to any weapons, sorcery or corruption, gate and key to the Realms.

Thus was ordained all that is.

And long did the Incarnates slumbered in the heart of their new domains, broken by the effort of creating universe and weakened by the loss of so many souls they had added to their own substance. Sleep was the only way for them to regain a little of what they have been, and more than that did they regain. Eons passed, kingdoms were born from the souls of the freed, great civilizations that sometimes resembled the kingdoms of the fallen world and sometimes did not. Dwarves, elves, men, orcs and ogres prospered in every realm and when they died, they journeyed to Shysh where every soul was drawn to be returned to the cycle. Yet all was not well in the Realms while the Incarnates slept the sleep of the ages, for great beasts born of magic and the Realms itself beset the peoples of these places, driving them to despair. That was true of every realm, from Azyr to Shysh, even fair Hysh and Ghyran. Lesser gods, sometimes coming from defeated realities where the Chaos Gods had won and devoured everything, sometimes called by the wellsprings of magic themselves bickered and fought.

Until the Incarnates woke from their enchanted sleep and fought against them to announce the beginning of Creation


Who are you among the New Gods?

[] The Sublime Communion of the Slaans, Incarnate of Stars
[] Sigmar the Hammerer, Incarnate of Storms
[] Tyrion-Teclis the Mourning Sage, Incarnate of Light
[] Grimmir the Savage Warrior, Incarnate of Fire
[] Grugni the Fertile Blacksmith, Incarnate of Metal
[] Allarielle the Radiant Mother, Incarnate of Life
[] Gorkamorka the Twin Monsters, Incarnate of Beasts
[] Malekith the Dark Phoenix, Incarnate of Shadows.
[] Nagash the Undying King, Incarnate of Death
[] Archaon Destroyer of Worlds, Incarnate of Chaos Undivided