nechroma

Aye, slow down there lad! Do you have a moment to spare to listen to an old storyteller like me prattle on for a few minutes? You don’t look like you’re in a hurry, so I thought I might offer.

Have you ever thought about why the leylines of the land are the way they are, my boy? Where they come from, what they do? Well, lad, I believe I might be able to answer that question. At the very center of the world, where the leylines all meet, there is a ring of sheer cliffs and gorges, scarred and shaped by raw mana, harsh enough that many don’t venture out into it. The deserts of Darastrith whip themselves into great sandstorms, and the bogs of Kuroiki grow hungry. Elpis’ jungles will swallow you whole and the mists of Livenslurji will guide you right into the maw of some horrible undead beast.

Somewhere in the middle of all that, there is an eye to the storm of mana. A calmness in the center of chaos. A nexus of mountain ranges, meadows, converging rivers, ancient forests and murky swamps. Here, they say, among the mountains, is where a great being sleeps.

The peoples of Chrontomus have all kinds of names for her in their age-old stories. The merfolk of Curu’nen call her the Manalith, and swear her a being made of stone and crystal. The Loup of Glasbryn call her the Weaver, and claim her responsible for the order of the land. In Kaldraixen, they disbelieve the tales of an ancient mana being, but I have reason to believe that’s the work of havin’ their heads up their own asses so far their eyes should be brown. Here in Darastrith, they call her the World-Waker, and there’s a tale passed down by the most ancient of dragons that from her came the mana founts that form the basis of our ten kingdoms.

In ancient times, the stories say, she would crawl the world, watching over the land with her eyes far above us mere mortals. Befits a being said to have existed since the beginning of time, I suppose, aye? She maintained the leylines, visiting the founts as close she could for a being the size of a mountain. She blessed the folk of the early, ancient countries with the gifts of magic, and the tales of the very beginning of the world, the elemental chaos from which our world was born.

One day, though, after returning to that nexus at the center of the world, she stopped emerging.

The merfolk claim she became a part of the land itself, having poured so much of herself into her creation that she merged with it. The Loup say she went mad with time, and tangled herself deep in the mana storm, which they believe to be a web of leylines. The dragons say that she simply vanished, but no one knows for sure.

Many a brave soul has set out to find her, find proof that she exists, but few have returned, and fewer still came away with anything more than the scars of the wilderness. Small crystals, tiny even, radiating  a distinct power. They called them the Moxen, and they were treasured prizes from beyond the mana storm. They’ve long since been drained of their power, but they were proof enough that such a being exists, at least to most.

Me, I like to believe she’s still out there, in the center of the world. Sleepin’, waitin’ for the day she can finally wake.

Thank you for hearin’ out my story, lad. I’ll let you be on your way now.