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The World of Thews &
Thaumaturgy
Part One of Three Parts
Uncountable aeons ago the Elder Gods, ante human entities of horrific aspect and inconceivable powers, dwelt with their servants in primeval chaos. During their reign Antikhton was a bleak world, hostile to life as we know it. Rank, poisonous mist filled the atmosphere, obscuring the sun, moon, and stars. The earth was little more than a swampy morass studded with sentient fungoid growths. The sea, a shallow, torpid brine, boiled with shapeless protoplasmic creatures that splashed and floundered in the benthic ooze. The names and epithets of the prehuman deities are largely forgotten, though some live on as the names of the demons and the monsters of legend: Yluggua, Subverter of the Established Order; Krekhox, Corrodor of Virtuous Aspiration; Ofkorzag, Defiler of Innocence; and Dushab the Licentious, an obscenely polymorphic fertility deity who appears to his worhippers in a multitude of bizarre ithyphallic aspects.
For age upon age the Elder Gods held sway over the planet. But visitors from another world, plunging into the changeless world of the Elder Gods, abruptly began in a new epoch in the history of Antikhton. These, invaders -- exiles from a distant star, forced from their homes by the destruction of their world in a disastrous cosmic war -- were fewer in number than the Elder Gods, but they brought with them god like powers of mind and body. The names of these beings, now worshiped as the gods of men, differ from tongue to tongue. In the Tuzan speech they are known as Umyr, Lord of Light and the Sun, Sustainer of the Beneficent Harmony, and Regulator of the Cosmos; his consort, chaste Fagonda, Guardian of Chastity and Benefactress of Widows and Orphans; their parthogenic offspring Avaspas, Patron of Arts and Sciences; Ninnemar, Craftsman of the Gods; Stet, General of the Gods, Companion of Soldiers and Mercenaries; and his consort Orpna, Collector of Souls and Gatherer of the Virtuous Dead. Many more names, lesser gods and deified mortals, fill the pantheon of Antikhton.
In spite of their immense powers of mind and body, the Young Gods, as they came to be called, could not adapt to life on the new planet. In order to survive in this new world the Young Gods began to remake portions of Antikhton in the fashion of their faraway home. But the Elder Gods, furious at this interference, sent their servants to stop them. Monstrous protean beings, capable of assuming a multitude of hideous tentacled forms, attacked the newcomers as they labored to sculpt new continents and seas. Hordes of smaller creatures, fanged amphibians that flopped and slithered or flew on batlike wings, harrassed the Young Gods as they took their leisure. In retaliation, the Young Gods began to fashion their own creatures, gargantuan precursors of the predatory animals of an later world: great wolves, lions, and eagles that slew and devoured the creatures of the Elder Gods. But these armies of beast and tentacled horrors proved ineffectual. The gods then created new beings, more subtle and refined than before. In the end, the Young Gods created man. The Elder Gods, in mockery of their handiwork, created a race of froglike bipeds who had much of the cunning of the men, and even spoke after a fashion, gibbering and mewing like mad infants. As a last travesty, they bred these creatures with humans, creating the loathsome, half human Quaquash -- the scourge of man: a race of trogdolytic, light fearing halfmen lurking in caves and tunnels hewn from the living rock during the aeons of the War of the Gods. Man and his noisome opponents battled with unparalleled savagery. But their efforts only delayed the inevitable: for it was fated the gods must themselves one day do battle face to face. The gods avoided this Ragnorak, fearing that the titanic powers they unleashed would destroy the cosmos. But at last, as they must, the gods met in war. Cataclysmic battles, in which each side unleashed the powers of the elements against the other, followed. The earth, sea, and the heavens themselves were scarred in these struggles, but in the end, after aeons of cosmic war, the Young Gods prevailed. They subdued their rivals and banished them to prisons deep in the earth and sea. Khrekhox, supreme among the Elder Gods, was exiled to a faraway star. The remaining Elder Gods, indestructible save by measures that would threaten the survival of the universe, were made dormant by powerful magics.
After they had secured their dominion of Antikhton, the Young Gods set about refashioning the entire globe. They established the lands and seas, and regulated the seasons and stations so that Antikhton became a temperate place, fit for the habitation of man and the beasts the gods made for man's use. But in that time, as in today, in desert places far from man, as well as in secret corners in the very midst of his dominion, the sleeping power of the Elder Gods sometimes stirred, and their servants walked, seeking vengeance against man and all his works. Vile formless creatures lurked in wastes and mountains, remnants of the race of beings the Elder Gods created to worship and serve them. Other prodigies, created by during the War of the Gods, haunted forests and marshes preying on lost travelers. But most dreadful of all the subhuman Quaquash remained hidden in their noisome warrens. Fearing the light of the sun and able to see keenly even in the blackest night, the Quaquash erupted from their underground lairs to lay waste the fields and cities of man, returning to their burrows under cover of night, laden with captives bound for unconjecturable fates.
As a refuge and reward for their most faithful human servants the Young Gods established a great island realm in the Orient Sea, many leagues east of Uthina. This island, Nargalia, was a paradisaical beauty and salubrity. The earth yielded its fruits without labor. Clear springs of water abounded in every quarter of the land. The climate was uniformly mild and equitable. The Nargalians -- a tall, slender saffron hued race of great beauty -- grew in strength and power. They were wisely governed by a hereditary leadership, the Deriades; a dynastic family who ruled beneficently and piously for two thousand years. Under their reign the worship of the Young Gods spread across Antikhton. The Deriades reared great buildings and sailed the seas of Antikhton, bringing knowledge and enlightenment to men. The world was purged of the loathsome creatures of the Old Gods and their worshippers were hounded out of the lands of men. Under the guidance of the legendary sage Butakarash, born of the union of mortal woman and a god, the people of Nargalia mastered the forces of nature and created great works and prodigies of magic unequaled by any people since. Meanwhile the sleeping evil of Elder Gods gnawed at the heart of the Nargalians. Many secretly turned to the worship of the Elder Gods, spurred on by promises of yet greater power and immortal life. This faction grew so strong that one of their party, Bemenoi the Subtle, usurped the throne of Nargalia and banished or murdered all those who remained faithful to the Deriades. The sorcerer Butakarash, his body worn out after centuries of exertion, enclosed his soul in a vessel of silver and crystal and in it fled to the stars, taking with him much of the power and knowledge of the Nargalians. Nargalia became a realm of evil where the Elder Gods were worshiped openly. Men coupled with men and ate outlandish foods prepared with rich sauces. Youths from good families roamed the streets at night, frequenting low places where they danced to pulsating orgiastic music and afterwards repaired to luxurious rooms to indulge in unspeakable depravities. Women dressed and acted the part of men, or took powerful intoxicants and gave themselves to passing strangers. Evil fell also upon the other lands of Antikhton. In the eastern continent of Uthina the wicked kingdom of Khedjee grew in power and iniquity, visiting desolation upon its neighbors. The masked priests of the demon Ofkorzag, worshiped as a god by the Khedjites, demanded the sacrifice of infants and virgins, fostering a corrosive disrespect for organized religion among the unfortunate victims. After centuries of forbearance, the Young Gods at last smote these realms of evil. Great earthquakes first destroyed their cities of Nargalia and Khedjee. A huge tidal wave then crashed over Nargalia, killing all but a few, and submerging the island completely. Nothing now exists of the vanished paradise except a few scattered rocks that scarcely rise above the sea. The kingdom of Khedjee, once a vast green jungle, was destroyed by a drouth, and their lands made forever into desert. Dead, broken cities scattered throughout the arid lands of Ispochar, the haunts of jackals and ghouls, are the only memorial to this evil people, though their descendants, hiding their misshaped bodies under layers of rags, still roam the Ispochar mounted atop their noisome black camels. A few refugees, spared by the Young Gods for their piety, escaped to cities that had grown up along the coasts of Uthina where the Nargalians had been wont to visit, trading with the natives and imparting to them a measure of their civilization. But they were too few and too scattered to build a new Nargalia. They mingled with the lesser men of Uthina and much of their art and knowledge was lost.Vigorous new realms now sprung up among the barbarian peoples of Uthina. In the dry South, the cities of Mraz and Phoulgad vied for control of the fertile lands along the River Basht. In the East, Pianggar and its rival Dorozand dominated Vedex and Rhastikoor. The cities of the East and South waxed rich and their barbaric customs were refined somewhat by the memory of vanished Nargalia. Trade between the cities grew apace, but with it grew war as the young cities vied for wealth and power.From the vast grasslands of Oundaghir, hordes of mounted barbarian archers swarmed out to raid and plunder the newly rich cities. Using the nomads as proxies, rival cities bought off entire hordes and encouraged them attack their opponents. At last open war broke out between the cities of the South and their rivals in the East, Pianggar and Dorozand. For generations the conflict wore on. Spurred on by promises of plunder and rewarded with Mrazian gold, the nomads of Oundaghir ravaged the rich green lands of Vedex and Rhastikoor; in turn the scarlet sailed Mrazian fleets sacked the cities of the East. In retaliation, the bronze clad legions of Pianngar marched down the valley of the River Basht, destroying the network of irrigation canals that made these dry lands flourish. Led by their commander, Yuhmasp, the Easterners surrounded the great city of Mraz and after a prortacted seige took the capital. Yuhmasp ordered the destruction of the city and massacred its inhabitants. The survivors fled to the plains of Oundaghir, where the nomads, who spoke a kindred tongue, sheltered them from the fury of the Pianggarian legions.
For a generation the people of Mraz wandered the dry plains of southwestern Oundaghir, eating insects and drinking from muddy pools. East of them lay the lands of the Oundaghir tribes -- their barbaric kindred, but too poor to provide sustenance to this vast diaspora. To their west stretched the great desert of Ispochar, inhabited by the muffled Haddee nomads, descendants of the evil Khedjites, who raided the Mrazian camps in search of nubile females and children for their dreadful sacrifices.In the midst of this desperate situation a prophet arose, one who claimed to reveal a new order of heaven and earth and foretold the ultimate triumph of the Mrazians. Khezmenas the Goatherd, he was called. He burst into the Mrazian camp one sweltering afternoon, claiming that the god Umyr appeared to him as he rested in the shade of tamarisk tree with his goats. The god revealed that to him that there was only one god, Umyr, and taught that the pantheon of the Young Gods were the creatures and servants of Umyr, who had created the heaven and the earth and all things therein.
The sages of Gloab, who recognize none of the gods, but merely regard them as beings wiser and more powerful than we, though still fallible and mortal, say that Umyr wished to rule over the Young Gods as a despot, rather than as first among equals. Thus he revealed himself to Khezmenas as the one god, so that men would become his partisans in a new war of the gods in which Umyr would enslave his colleagues. Whether this be the truth, it is true that great portents and prodigies accompanied Khezmenas's preaching. Some said that this was proof he spoke the truth; others said this proved only that Khezmenas was a dupe of Umyr, and that war waged in the heavens between Umyr and the other gods. Khezmenas's people, led by priests and priestesses loyal to Avaspas, Fagonda and other Young Gods, persecuted him and drove him from the Mrazian camps. He found shelter and converts among the Oundaghir tribes. The pristine ethical sense of these simple nomads quickened at the moral beauty of Khezmenas's new faith. He taught that Umyr required only three things of the faithful: acknowledgement of the sole divinity of Umyr, now called Shahar; acceptance of his merciful judgement; and the destruction and abomination of infidels, heretics, witches, idolaters, sorcerers, inverts, tomboys, nonconformists, wiseacres, skeptics, scoffers, creative types, weirdos, and warlocks. After death, the faithful were to be rewarded in an empyrean paradise, where their souls, purified of sublunary dross, would merge with the being of Shahar. After gathering a horde of armed zealots from the tribesmen, Khezmenas led a nomad army into the Mrazian camps where, after the disposal of his erstwhile persecutors, he was proclaimed prophet of Shahar and savior of his people.Khezmenas, now at the head of vast army of fanatical believers, first ended the harrassments of the Haddee raiders, whom he put to flight after destroying their strongholds deep within the mountains of Ispochar. He tortured the masked half demon priests of Ofkorzag and forced them to reveal the locations of their secret temples. They died horribly, muttering undying curses and imprecations against Khezmenas and his Oundaghir hordes. He freed the captives imprisoned in the foul pits of the Haddee devil priests and then turned his troops upon the Pianggarian forces occupying the valley of the River Basht. After bloody battles, the army of the faithful expelled the Pianggarians from all of southern Uthina. The city of Mraz was rebuilt and christened Sahar Menad, The City of Shahar. Khezmenas took Phoulgad after a long seige. He renamed it Vouzhad, The City of Merciful Judgement, after purifying it of its recalcitrant natives -- who had refused to acknowledge the supremacy of Shahar and his prophet -- in a series of spectacular autos-da-fe.
Taking a little more than a decade the power of Sahar Menad had spread from Zanj and the valley of the Basht to all of Oundaghir in the north and Ebnon in the east. And with it spread the jealous faith of Shahar. In less than half a century, the powerful eastern realms of Rhastikoor and Vedex were on the point of being overrun. Only Pianggar, at the mouth of the River Aloo, the seat of the kingdom of Vedex, held out. Impregnable by sea, the Pianggarians boasted that the Zanji could never muster enough forces to take them by land. But to their dismay Khezmenas's lieutentants succeded in bringing a Zanji army of thousands of men, camels, horses, and elephants across the wintry Oundaghir plains in an epic march. Unprepared for a land invasion, Pianggar soon fell. Khezmenas, by this time a benevolent old man of angelic countenance, expired in bliss after receiving word that the enemies of his faith were utterly destroyed and their women and children enslaved. It is said that winged servants of Shahar were present at his death and that they translated him bodily into the empyrean amidst sweet unearthly music and the weeping of his thousands of wives and concubines. His descendants, all of whom were named for him, ruled Zanj for centuries as autocratic priest kings. The Zanji people of Sahar Menad and their new faith to all of Uthina east of the Ispochar. Only the Tsanians, rustic cousins of the Vedexians and Rhastikoorians, continued to worship their ancient gods, Lampedo and Sarpedon. The price of their freedom was continual warfare with the pious Zanji. The mystic Gloabites, another eastern people, were regarded by the Zanji as atheists and magicians and persecuted unmercifully. They responded by withdrawing further into their mountain fastness where they remained for millenia; an inward looking hermit people, devoted to study and contemplation. Shining, marble walled Pianggar, once the cynosure of the eastern lands, was razed, its glittering spires were cast down and the dour Zanji city of Agathol was built in its place. Pianngar's arcane science and sorcery, the pride and terror of its people, was lost or dispersed as the pious Zanji murdered sages and destroyed libraries. The Pianggarians scattered. Some fled to the north, where they brought much of their knowledge to the fair haired barbarians of Yibma and Oubar. The Pianggarians soon disappeared as distinct race among these northerners, but the barbarians had learned much from them. Later they became great voyagers and traders, sailing their great high sterned vessels from the ultimate north to the frozen antipodes, where the gods are said to dwell in a range of mountains that rise high above the sphere of Antikhton. It was only far in the west that the Pianggarian diaspora took root. After the destruction of their city, great fleets of Pianggarians sailed west around the northern coast of Uthina. Nearly half the fleet was lost at once in a battle with the formidable red sailed Zanji galleys, who were equipped with the dreaded sea fire, a flammable liquid sprayed from bronze tubes mounted on the gunwales of Zanji ships. Many more ships were lost in stormy northern seas and in encounters with barbarian corsairs. At last, nearly a five years later, a number of ships arrived in the Oroolian Sea, at that time a desolate place inhabited only by barbarian tribes. The Vedexians settled on the misty, forested northeast coast of the Oroolian sea and named their city Vedexa. In later centuries this would become known as Ffex, most venerable of the cities of the Oroolian Sea. At first the barbarians mistook the outlandish eastern aspect and manners of the Vedexians for that of gods. And the Vedexians, hated and feared by the pious Zanji for their skill in the Occult arts, were well able to enhance this misapprehension with impressive feats of magic. But soon the barbarians discovered the Vedexians were men like themselves, and they desired to possess the treasures and knowledge of the newcomers. The barbarians began to raid isolated Vedexian settlements, and the easterners responded by besieging the barbarians' crude hill forts with murderous engines of war. However, the Vedexians were few and the barbarians many. Things began to go ill with the Easterners. Swarms of shouting barbarians swept away the disciplined Vedexian legions in battle after battle. Confined within the walls of the coastal city of Ffex, it soon appeared they would be forced to leave their grey city and once again sail the seas in search of a new home. Barbarian hordes were encamped outside the walls of Ffex when Salenx, daughter of a Vedexian noble, met and fell in love with the barbarian prince Orlacad, a mercenary captain employed by her father. Orlacad's people, the Tushana, held lands southwest of Ffex on the River Kafal. The Tushana, through contact with the Vedexians and Zanji traders, had become half-civilized and regarded the easterners with friendly eyes. However, the Vedexians held themselves aloof from all barbarians, civilized or not, and Orlacad and Salenx kept their love a secret. On the eve of a great battle, Orlacad and Salenx were secretly wed. The odds of this battle weighed heavily against the Vedexians and both lovers expected never to meet again. When Orlacad returned from the battle victorious, Salenx could not contain her joy. Her father questioned her, and when he discovered the marriage, imprisoned them and arranged for their execution. Orlacad's aged father learned of this and expostulated with Salenx's father. If the parents of Salenx would recognize the marriage and spare the lovers, the old man pleaded, he would join his forces with the Vedexians and together they would overcome the hostile barbarians. The Vedexians agreed, and their army, together with the Tushana led by Orlacad, scattered their enemies in battle after battle. When their lands returned to peace, Orlacad and Salenx were made rulers of the Tushana and their descendants ruled in the city of Tuza as vassals of the King of Ffex.For two centuries afterwards Ffex dominated the Oroolian Sea. Mailed Vedexian horsemen bearing the scarlet pennons of Pianngar subdued the barbarian tribes along the Oroolian coast and established colonies throughout its length. All Iffaros fell to the Easterners, from the hot, dry south to the temperate, fertile north. The Vedexians next conquered the Janji trading posts of Rhudavir and Myndo and the rich northern trade routes fell into the hands of the Easterners. Amber and furs now flowed into Ffex.
But with their new found wealth the Vedexian dynasty of the West had become rotten with intrigue and decadence. Murder, treachery, and black magic made and unmade kings while avaricious tax collectors milked the provinces. The barbarian tribes ruled from Ffex chafed under the despotic rule, their rustic morals repulsed by the license and vice of the court. Moreover, the Vedexans suppressed the worship of the Young Gods, whom they considered barbarous interlopers. In the temples and groves once dedicated to Umyr, Fagonda, and Avaspas, they set up shrines to their ancient eastern deities, Lampedo and Sarpedon; for the Easterners claimed that these deities antedated both the Elder and Young Gods and were the original creators of the universe.
At last, the decadent aristocrats of Ffex went too far in their hideous folly. Two rival factions, both claiming the throne of Ffex, devastated the city with internecine warfare. When, after weeks of murder and destruction, neither side prevailed, both turned to black magic. Necromantic partisans of each party unleashed demons against their rivals. For three days demons warred in the burnt out shell of Ffex, destroying all human life within its walls and even warping the fabric of reality about the city. Time and space were twisted; men had visions of the past and future and saw hideous, unearthly shapes in their dreams. Many went mad or slew themselves. Others developed queer fixed ideas and pursued expensive and wasteful hobbies. The demons annihilated the wizards who had summoned and controlled them, and it began to look as if the unearthly combatants would soon extend their destruction to all of Uthina. Just as the Vedexians despaired, a bent old man wearing a threadbare toga of antique design hobbled down the high road of Ffex and through the shattered gates of the city. The streams of refugees fleeing Ffex for the safety of the Hyrian Mountains warned him away, but the oldster, a wizened Easterner, merely smiled politely and shook his head. Within a half an hour, the dreadful shrieks and bellows emanating from inside the city walls ceased. Soon those who remained near the city felt that a terrible spiritual oppression had been lifted and knew that the demons were gone. Shortly thereafter, the old man reappeared at the city gates, dusted his sandals on a block of stone, and limped off towards the east. Awestruck, none spoke to him. Whether he was a man or a god, none knew; though many believed him to have been the wizard Mahdivib, greatest of the Eastern sages, who had disappeared mysteriously during the destruction of Pianngar centuries before. Legends told that before his disappearance he made a solemn to return, from beyond the grave if need be, to protect the people of Vedex in their direst need.