 | It is said that history tends to come full circle, that it often even repeats itself. Looking at the last few months and comparing it to days long ago in Auberean’s past, one can’t help but agree with that sentiment. Eons before human, Tumerok, or Lugian walked the island of Dereth, a great dark empire covered the land; now here in the present, an empire of that lineage threatens to retake its ancient homeland. This is the story of the first and perhaps last great empire of Dereth. This is the story of the so-called “True Falatacot”. |
The Falatacot, it can be said, were the first Empyrean. In the several millennia of Auberean’s recorded history, they were the first to appear. Being such an ancient people, information about them is scarce, much of it lost in the march of time, but we do know that the Falatacot were a primarily matriarchal society ruled by mother-priestesses, that their women were often gifted with the art of precognition, and that they worshipped great beings whose scions we have called “slithis” and “spawn”: The Old Ones. Most troubling about them, though, is their legacy of “blood magic”. Falatacot magic was of the most powerful and terrible sort, fueled by shedding the blood of not only the one performing the spell, but of sacrificial victims as well. Countless Falatacot, including the priestesses’ own kin and consorts, were put to the knife to power these magicks, but their sacrifice was apparently not in vain, as their people lived unmolested here on Dereth, in the swampy bosom of their Old Ones, for centuries.
Then came the War of Hate. We know very little about this ancient struggle, but from what scholars have been able to piece together, it involved the Falatacot Old Ones joining in battle against a great force of “living darkness”, perhaps the same force that created the Shadows and Bael’Zharon himself. The Falatacot were also caught up in this war, being taken and transformed into shadow by their new unspeakable enemy, yet the Old Ones seemed unwilling or unable to stop it. Soon, many Falatacot took drastic steps to escape this hopeless struggle. Some used their dark arts to become Undead, falling into slumber deep beneath the surface of Dereth until such time that the War of Hate would end and they could revive and return; others looked outward, traveling to distant lands such as Dericost to barter their knowledge and power in exchange for asylum. One group, however, looked even farther without, using the greatest spell granted to them by their gods to escape Auberean altogether, hoping to find a new home on some distant world.
Centuries, and then millennia passed. The empires of Dericost, Haebrous, and the Yalain rose and fell, newcomers came to Auberean to build their own empires and created a Golden Age, darkness consumed the land for a great time, and along the way, the long lost tribe of Falatacot were forgotten. Then, just a few months ago, they returned. Having spent the long ages wandering the countless worlds beyond Portalspace, these “true Falatacot” as they called themselves had finally returned to their long-abandoned home. Seeing us younger races as a nuisance, if not a pestilence, they quickly established holdings on the distant island of Knorr and began a crusade to purge us from the land and reclaim the world that, to them, had become almost a legend.
That crusade still rages on. Even though our races have come a long way from the comparatively young and weak people who stumbled through Asheron’s portals so many centuries ago, and even with the aid of Empyrean finally awakened from hibernation, this struggle remains a difficult one. The eons wandering the wilds of portalspace have made these Falatacot formidable warriors, and their magic remains as potent as those described in history and legend. There are those that say that they have even stirred some ancient horror our ancestors sealed in the catacombs beneath Knorr and are even now preparing to unleash it and its nearly infinite brood upon us. I know not what fate the coming weeks holds for the humans, Tumerok, and Lugians who have called this island home since the days of my oldest ancestor, but I pray that the arc of the Falatacot’s history coming full circle does not bring the arc of our own history to an abrupt and final close.
3rd Verdantine, P.Y. 501
