Shedekal

After the Silence

The Lequian sigil for
death and darkness,
showing the distinctive
triatic eyes of the
Shedekal. The Lequian
culture was destroyed
in the God War.

Eyes of flame, skin of night, hearts of shadow, minds of mystery, once we were the scourge of the Earth. We served The Lady of Forgetting and the hoarded secrets of the universe. We walked amongst the other races like demons, reaving their dead and their forgotten and adding their strength to our own. We were as gods among them, and our ebon skin, tangled limbs or the shape of our three lambent eyes became synonymous with fear and loss.

When the War came, our Lady celebrated and feasted upon the losses of all sides. We walked among the races claiming unmade, the unforged, the unwritten. Such treasures of art and horror and war we took and offered up to our Lady, and she grew powerful as the other Gods grew weak.

But such power could not grow without envy growing with it, and Halst was the most jealous of them all. When he attacked our Lady she unleashed her fury upon him and upon the world. She armed us with dark secrets and terrible mysteries that the other races had never imagined. We swept across the world in a wave of destruction. The secrets our Lady gave us allowed us to rob the others of knowledge, of hope, of fear, even of the will to live. Whole armies fell upon their swords at will, and in time they fell upon their swords willingly, fearing the even greater tortures we could give. And most of all we hunted The Joined, the progeny and servants of hated Halst. And we feasted upon their sweet flesh and learned what it was to be a god.

But our strength excited more envy and the other gods joined Halst. And despite her great power and frightening knowledges, Our Lady could not withstand the united force of so many. And in the great battle, she tore herself asunder, hiding herself and her mysteries where none could ever reach them. Eonna went mad, and we, her favored children, went mad with her. Our greatest warriors, reavers and priests lost themselves to the madness of Our Lady and spent themselves in the war and in their rage. We were called "The Scourge" and "Three-Eyed Death" and though we had a reputation for awesome power, those few who were left behind were like children to the ones spent in the war. We were a people broken: wracked by madness and haunted by the absence of Our Great Lady. We were nearly lost.

But there was one who still held onto the spark of greatness that once burned brightly in our people, Tuan. Tuan gathered us and the few secrets we still held and led us into the ice and snow of The Abandon. There she directed us to bury the wonders of the God War beneath the ice and snow and allow time to steal them from us ourselves. And so we became the nomads we are today. We travel through this frozen land without knowing if the last treasures of Our Lady lie beneath our feet. And so we defend all this land from outsiders, that none should chance to find a lost tome or reliquary exposed by the howling winds. And the few of us that still have the whisper of the bygone powers breathe the fumes of the Tilketh seed, searching for Our Lady in the swirling chaos that has become her home.

But I am one of the last who knew the beauty and horror of Our Lady's face. And our next generation of priests, and the next, and the next, will have never known the peace and madness of the war. To you I say this: Once we were the Scourge of all nations, now we are the guardians of ice and darkness. But as long as mystery and madness and death exist, Our Lady lives. We are her favored children. When she returns, and she will return as sure as each the light must end, she will look first to us, her most faithful servants. What would you have her find when she returns?

-- "Plea for the Future" by Astath the Elder, written in the 7th year of the Silence