It is in this year, the two hundred and thirty seventh of the reign of his Imperial Majesty Emperor Si, Lord of the Heavenly Peaks, Son of the Divine Sage and Master of the Dragon Throne, that this humble scholar presents his completed work.
At times the language gap still makes me stop and stare and who the heck would name their future Emperor a word that rhymes with Dead and Loss if its not the very same word.
The first days of the world were harsh indeed. The bones of our Mother yet quaked endlessly, and the divine ichor of the multitude of enemies that our most honored progenitors had slain still boiled close to the surface, toxic to the children of the creators. Similarly, the Heavens were not yet fully formed, and offered little protection from the pitiless and unfiltered alien light of the stars. Fragments of a prayer of these early peoples were revealed to me, from a effaced carving in the lowest basements of the ancient capital of the Emerald Seas.
'O Father, whose radiant eye abhors all evil, your children entreat you, Rise high and tarry long, burn away pestilence[...]
'O Thousand faced daughter, eye of the lost Mother, weep for your frail siblings, that your cleansing tears might bring purity in tainted night[...]
It is to be noted that the translation of these words are a somewhat inexact. The human tongue of the first age was a crude and primitive thing, and it was with some difficulty that we were able to reconstruct the meaning in palatable form. Of the revealed words, these two lines, among others confirm the theories of many imperial scholars. It has long been posited that the sun and the moon were among the very earliest of the Great Spirits formed in the aftermath of the world's creation formed from the last remnants of our Divine creators, and their original role was a very simple one. These spirits were empowered by a desire to survive the remaining hostility heaped upon us from the enemies of our spiritual progenitors. It is known that stellar qi is, unfiltered by the heavens, a terrible poison to human and beast alike. In these ancient days, it seems that very poison shone upon the world each night, mollified only by days of rain, where clouds shrouded the sky from that baleful light.
Oh huh, interesting. The Sun and Moon makes sense as the first remnants of the Father and Mother, with the Sun being a more direct fragment, I think, while the Moon is a first generation descendant.
Now our glitter hair is also menacing omniously. Cool.
And it explains so much about the lack of space travel, if most of the skyseeker cultivators invariably go too high too soon and then get their wings clipped by the deadly environment.
The later portion of the First Age is more well known to us. In these days, the night sky was no longer poison, and ichor of dead gods no longer clung to the earth, yet the world had not become much less dangerous. Powerful Spirit Beasts who had survived and grown mighty in the chaos of the early world rose to dominate the land. Humanity survived on in a wretched state, offering service and worship in exchange for survival.
The Beast Gods, as they called themselves, valued humankind for a number of reasons. Some appreciated the crafts of our hands, while others found or thoughts or forms pleasing, in various ways. Regardless of their individual reasoning, it is known from remaining records that humans were much sought after as servants and playthings. The first semi-permanent settlements were created in this era, typically rising from monuments and temples raised to please the local god.
However, these primitive and fractious creatures did not hold dominion for very long as these things go. Arising from the Sea and the Sky, the beings known today as dragons soon spread their dominion over the land that would become the Empire. Subjugating the other Beast Gods with their unparalleled might and vast courts of dragon kin, the newly minted Dragon Gods came to become the rulers of the world, save for a few isolated hold outs.
For humankind, this change brought a great alteration of circumstance. Where previous rulers had a certain crude appreciation for humankind's utility. The new rulers of the world valued our crafts and our art greatly, and even came to enjoy taking our forms, in order to better interact with their servants and their creations.
Great cities and sprawling palace complexes rose, carved from the very earth and sky, and for the first time, humans began to cultivate, the Dragon Gods allowing their favorites some measure of power to extend their lives and service
So SOMETHING became the Sky/Heaven in this intermission. Sounds like a Dragon broke through and ascended.
Much like the time of the Beast Gods, this too passed. Dragons are warlike and violent creatures, though admirably, some rise above this nature. However, the Dragon Gods did not have this quality of character. As their realms grew more magnificent, they grew ever more resentful and jealous of their peers, and soon the world plunged again into bloodshed and war.
There are almost no surviving records from this period, and draconic historians, what few there are, refuse to speak of it, and the divine decrees of our most magnificent Sage Emperor demand that we respect their silence. It is known that the resulting war destroyed almost every trace of civilization which had thus far been built, and slew both the great majority of dragons, and the humans who had lived with them.
It is here, that my great fortune in being able to speak with the Zheng clan's Sublime Ancestor, allowed me further insight. He deigned speak only a few words, which I have dutifully transcribed below. These words are not mine, and so I ask that the diction be excused.
'Those idiot lizards broke earth and sky, made the moon bleed and the sun weep. Our Mother spat black blood in rage, their quarreling enough to disturb her dreaming death! Is it any wonder they were cursed? [Expletive] are just lucky I was half grown then, or I'd have bashed their heads myself!'
It was at this point that the esteemed ancestor insisted that I share a drink with him, and thus sadly, I was unable to press the questioning further. This statement corroborates some fragmentary accounts rising from survivors. It is known that in the aftermath, the dragons never rose again, their ability to reproduce with their own kind is crippled to this day, barely allowing the maintenance of their population.
Thank you Zheng Ancestor for being a hyperactive super god monkey that is too hard to kill and yet who flips the bird at rules and edicts.(also he's still fulfilling the Sun Wukong tropes of being stone charged by the essence of the primordial sun and moon)
Also the Bloody Moon (and Weeping Sun?) were formed at the offense of the dragons reaching above their station huh?
@yrsillar
Some wild speculation here but...were the Imperial Eight elements the ones redefined by ascending founding Imperial cultivator clans, considering how even the same element differs so hugely from their Traditional Five?
In the waning days of the First Age tribes and minor polities beyond numbering rose and fell, some ruled by man, and others beast and spirit, but among there number, three are credited with the ending of the First Age and the beginning of the Second. I speak of course, of Yao the Fisher, husband of the White Serpent of the Thousand Lakes, Zhi the Conqueror, who tamed the Great Stone Ape of the Ebon Rivers, and Tsu the Diviner, blood brother to the Horned Lord of the Emerald Seas.
So that'd be Bai, Zheng, Lu?(RIP).
Yeah I can see why the Zheng would reach out at this juncture. They aren't friends of the Bai, but they were the last of the founding three.
There is History.
I think humans came from another planet and are the cultivator equivalent of Shoggoths. Notice the phrase {the lost Mother}. The only thing that is ever referred to as Mother is the planet. I think that the quaking and Stellar Qi taint was the result of a hard landing by a primitive life-ship. If nothing else, it would explain why human cores are so different from any other cores.
Also, if Stellar Qi is poisonous and we have what looks like stars in our hair, do we look like walking poison to people?
Edit: Wait, the empire is a basin surrounded by mountains and swamps, right? I wonder if the Empire is literally the impact crater?
Sounds a bit more like a transdimensional vessel arriving in a 'raw' dimension and then defining it as Father met Mother in a Big Bang.
This is correct yes.
Also stellar qi is only poisonous if you go up and out of the atmosphere or 'above the heavens' as it were, Its usable and nontoxic by the time it gets down to the surface. Your hair isn't gamma rays
Man, we absorb Stellar Qi every time we cultivate with EPC. Yum.
At what threshold can it be tolerated 'raw'?
Actually, I had a thought about that. The story mentions dragons from the sea and sky, but none from the land. If humans did do a colony drop, how much do you want to bet that they were the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs-also known as "land dragons".
We know the Earth dragons.
They aren't spoken of much.
The Gnawing Ones
