This sidestory has been retconned and replaced. It is now apocryphal.
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Tangled Fate
The Elsewhere Files
Rathess Chronicles: Part One
By: Grounders10
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The south eastern jungles of Creation were a wild place of monsters and lost civilizations from previous ages. A determined man with enough experience, power, and preparation could find treasures beyond imagining if he was willing to brave the jungles. The Jungles filled with tyrant lizards, supernatural diseases, carnivorous plants, and a thousand more dangers each more vicious and wild than the last.
And yet for all those dangers there was one thing, one place, in the long abandoned Jungles that drew men, Exalted and mortal alike, back to the place where their people first lived. The City of Rathess.
Rathess the First city, the Glittering jewel of the Eastern Jungles, Capital of the Dragon Kings ancient empire and former home of the Ochre Fountain.
Rathess the Fallen, home of Savages, Monsters, and forbidden gods. A place of the damned and a testament to decay and corruption.
Spoken of in the oldest texts as the birthplace of civilization and home to the first humans both savants and treasure hunters have launched many expeditions into the forbidding jungles of the south-east in hopes of recovering some shred of treasure or long lost knowledge. Of those few who succeed none have ever lived to tell of the horrors that have laid claim to the city.
Perhaps it is irony that it is those who never sought the city are those who might stand the greatest chance of surviving. Irony, or perhaps something more. Something like Fate.
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Five Wise Words opened his eyes for the first time in… Well he had no way of knowing. That was one of the 'flaws' of stasis. Still he had the
feeling that he had been asleep for a very, very long time. Far longer than he had hoped.
The first sight to meet his eyes was the stasis room. It was in shambles. Several of the large crystals for focusing the essence required for the smooth automatic operation of the stasis chamber were shattered beneath a pile of stone rubble that filled nearly half the room.
More important was the second sight, a pair of humans gathered around one corner of the rubble pile. Both were young, female and glowed with the silver light of the moon. They were speaking to each other in a language that sounded vaguely like Realm. Or more like a language descended from it. Yes, if he listened closely he could just barely understand. They were discussing a third one of them. A golden light could just barely be seen through the silver light of their twin animas. Solar then, and pinned beneath the rubbled.
Moving his limbs for the first time in centuries Five Wise Words stepped from the crystal stasis pod. His clawed feet crushed scattered crystal and stone with each step. Both of the Lunars whirled about. Seeing them full on he concurred with his original assessment. They were young, quite possibly newly exalted from whatever trials had led to their arrival in this place.
The younger of the two screamed and both of them scrambled away from him, taking cover behind the rubble. As far as cover went it would do little to protect them from him had he wished them harm, yet harm was quite far from his mind. What he was interested in was the golden glow coming from the rubble.
He ignored the two Lunars and walked over to the source of the golden light. The source was another woman, visibly older than the other two perhaps twice her age but Five Wise Words was not sure. Humans aged so quickly without exaltation it was had to tell. Everything below her chest was pinned by a large slab of stone. As it was he could see her face with the mark of the Twilight Caste upon her forehead and framed by long flowing red hair that blazed in the dark golden light of her anima. He recognized first the look of terror and pain and then the look of anger than followed.
He chuckled, the sound rumbling in the dead silent chamber. "Peace young Solar." He rumbled, his voice silencing the hushed and terrified discussion the two Lunars were having. He knelt down beside her, his claws tracing the stone slab as he searched for the best place to grip it. "I will not harm you."
Finding a good spot he gripped the slab and heaved. It was heavy, but he was a Sage of his people and a meager stone slab would not be enough to hinder him. The slab, all several tons of it, flipped with all the alacrity of a gold coin and flew across the room where it bounced off the still sealed entrance.
The Solar gasped and she tried to struggle to her feet as she took in great gulps of air. He pressed her back down with a shake of his head. She looked at him with visible confusion.
"Rest." He rumbled before looking to the two Lunars and waving them over. After a few moments of indecision the eldest of them carefully made her way over to the Solar, keeping as far as she could from him as was possible he noted. He could not blame her. Perhaps he was the first Dragon King she had seen who had mastery of their mind. There was no way of knowing what awaited him outside this chamber.
As she got closer he carefully stood and stepped back. As he did so the second girl slowly made her way out from behind the rubble. As the two Lunars started to examine the Solar Five Wise Words examined their animas. They had faded from their full strength but he could just make out the totems that lay within each.
The Solar had what appeared to be a strange garda bird soaring through the open sky. A sparrow fluttered about the eldest girl, while a snake he did not recognize coiled above the youngest. A strange collection indeed.
He turned away from them and examined the rest of the chamber. Other than his stasis pod there were supposed to be three others, all of which he was happy to see still intact and glowing the soft blue that indicated their inhabitants were well. Good, regardless of what he had to face in this new era at least he would not do so alone.
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Here it is the first of what I'm going to be calling the Elsewhere Files. Sidestories with a fancy name really. Each segment will be about this long, something I can write in a day or so, maybe a little longer. They'll cover the various groups that aren't shown in the main story such as the Thorns group, this Rathess group, and the 'Trials of Kuno'. I hope you enjoy this look into '
Elsewhere'.
