A History of the Five Eagles (Setting Reference)

A History of the Five Eagles

The First Eagles: The Aquila: A large group of men from the lost legion. In an age when Arga had yet to be fully civilized and conquered, they claimed they were from another world, a world of men. Unlike other peoples of Arga, a few had the gift of the oracle. While monster scholars of the day argued whether these men were truly from another world or were perhaps just protecting their real home, these men were greatly treasured for their skills and the unique knowledge and language they brought with them. The most elite monstergirls hoped their gift of prophecy could be woven into their own powerful magical lineages. Only the Aurum were successful, and to a much smaller degree than pairing them with Argan humans.

Demon Lord Aralia famously married one of the legionnaires. She fell completely in love with his language and every facet of his mythical world. The great work of her life was restructuring Cor Durum around that culture. A home away from home for the person who meant everything to her. The changes rooted deeply in the capital but never took hold in the older more established provinces of Gypt and beyond. The First Lord also declared that none of these men could be contained or forcefully matched. Monsters were the masters of Arga, they had no dominion over those not from the first world.

It was a kindness that spelled their end. Within four generations, marriages to the exotic and beautiful monstergirls of Arga instead of the humans largely concentrated in the heavily defended city quarters meant the Aquila disappeared forever. Their language would be kept alive largely for sacred naming practices while the common tongue of the empire quickly reverted to Sharn in the years after Aralia’s death. The Ordo Lucis would become the keepers of their history until their annhilation during the Absolution War.

A sad effect of Aralia’s restructuring of the capital province was the destruction of a great number of buildings and artifacts that dated back to the founding of the First Realm including the original Grand Library of Zuerst.

The most famous of their prophecies was that there would be between four and six more groups of people like them from their world before the ancient gate would be reopened by the peoples of Arga.

The Second Eagles: The Lonely Eagles: a small group of monks from Mount Athos who appeared centuries after the Aquila. To the horror of the monsters of Arga, they were sworn to chastity and fearful of all monsters but the various birds divine of Arga’s own Holy Mountain of Light. In the end the Ordo Lucis oversaw their care, and legend says bore some of their children despite their ward’s vows. The First Lord of the time formalized the Order as the keepers of the history of all Eagles, from their languages and customs to their prophecies.

The Third Eagle: The Junker Eagle: A Brandenburg nobleman who decided he would see all he could of this strange new world. He went on a grand adventure, sailed beyond the ancient borders of the First Realm and married a dragon. It’s said his memoirs sparked the Coralian revolution when his great great granddaughter, Septima Forgeheart decided that no monster descended from any of the Eagles or any people they ruled should be beholden to their ancestors’ oaths to the Aurum.

Modern monster scholars have also argued that a lost copy of the memoirs fell into the hands of the Golden Harpies in the era of the Dragoon Empire, and that his descriptions of cannon and warships inspired the reinvention of gunpowder weapons. The tremendous speed with which the empire rolled out these weapons and incorporated them so similarly into their armies and navy after the defeat of the mountain birds implies they likewise acquired it. The ship designs especially seem taken from the Junker’s own Scanian War era now that we can compare to preserved firsthand accounts from true Terran sources.

The Iron Eagle: Often argued not to be a true farlander Eagle among ancient scholars, he was an old half-crazed man who spoke in the language of the 3rd Eagle. He told tales of great machines of war and atrocities too terrible for monsters to comprehend. Constructs of iron and steel given life by the very holy pitch of the Sharn Sea. It was only after Contact did we realize the truth in what he described. Among all the Eagles, he was the one most out of his time. Modern scholars categorize him as a Third Eagle for his shared homeland.

His only recorded prophecy was of the Sixth Eagle and the Contact War, more detailed and dire than those of the Aquila. Even he hoped monsterkind would find the first and thus avoid the second. Sadly, that was not the course history was to take.

The Fourth Eagle: The Lost Eagle: Delivered by fate to the steps of the great Chapel of Light, this man of Babylon became the most heroic paladin of the age. Initially thought not to be an Eagle at all and from a different world entirely, only by studying their archives on the First and Second Eagles were the Ordo Lucis able to determine he was from an age before all the others when the Kurus the Great ruled the biggest empire of the civilized world.

For over sixteen hundred years, it was believed he had no great prophecy or never shared it with anyone. The revelation of what he did see and confided to his wife would spell the doom of the sacred order he loved so much. His wife, descended from a child of Metatron herself, could not bear to destroy his final message to her revealing the secret visions he had kept to himself. There would be no salvation for monsterkind, no path to Arcadia, as long as angels made their home on Arga.

He had fervently prayed he was wrong as many of the Eagles had been before him.

He was.

But it did not save them.

The site of the preceptory where his family made their home for generations was excavated in a joint effort of the Ordo Lucis and the Aurum in the late 6000’s, a sign of their relations improving after centuries of animosity. The Demon Lords hoped eventually they would once again be able to command both of their great orders, to wield the fiery sword and the silver shield. Once they unearthed the crypt of heroes, all knew it was never meant to be.

The Fifth Eagle: The Sleeping Eagle: On a day of red lighting, a soldier of Imperial Mexico was dragged by forces unseen from the northern province of Tejas into a wheat field outside the free city of Rhoam. A monstergirl farmer found him there, asleep and cold, suffering from the ancient rift sickness only described in antiquity. Many visitors had fallen through the tears in old Cor Durum over the millennia in such a state, visitors that expired within minutes or hours of materializing on Arga.

The best clerics of Rhoam were able to stop the dissociation of his unstable body mere moments from his death. He rested in magical stasis, never to wake or speak or love as many wished.

It was his presence and the artifacts he brought with him, not his deeds, that left a lasting impression on the world. He was the first man to arrive in Arga from beyond the rift in almost two thousand years, an extraordinary occurrence thought to be relegated to the glories and legends of the past. He proved to modern monsters that the world of men was real and gave hope to a people that could no longer look to a bright future for their grandchildren and great grandchildren.