The First History

         Morgann gazed upon the sky over Broken Thir.  He willed it to burn with fire, and so it did.  The First Sorceir rose from the settled dust of the birth of man.  Rage burned in him, an unbridled fury driven by power begotten madness.  It called upon the winds.  They came to him, flapping against his filthy brown robe.  He bore the scars of an entire people, and his pain only fueled the fire in the sky.  They would burn.  They would all burn.

         The others gathered behind him, having forgotten the Ley Stone as Morgann had.  In their moments of empowerment, in their lunacy, a decision had been made.  Individually they had chosen, but as one, they knew.  The old way, the first way, would end.

         The World’s Heart beat from far off in the east, but the gathering held no notice of its location, for an overwhelming wave of energy pulsed into their bodies, a multicurrent of power that brought with it the memory of a thousand years of anguish and pain.  They remembered…

         In the time after the First Forming, when the world was young and the Kin Peoples a mere spark in the flame of creation, Giants ruled over all of Aotara.  Behemoths that stood the height of three men, they were as living gods walking the land.  By steel and stone they sought dominion, and warred often with each other while enslaving all others, for they posessed the secrets of all things in the world.  The lesser races were but children to their might, toys to some but slaves to many, and toiled in constant fear of imprisonment or death.

         The centuries flowed to a time when the Titans of Thir began to see err in their actions.  They were abusing children.  Torture, rape, mass murder; they were guilty of it all, and it weighed heavily on the minds of this most noble of giant breeds.  Under this weight, an idea was born.  A code was formed in Thir; The Promise of Life was made.  A promise of compassion, of devotion, of duty, of love, of honor and bravery, of account and respect.

           For the first time in their short existence, the Kin Peoples  learned to read and write, to calculate and construct.  The Titans gave them religion in teaching the Book of Dominus, and many other great things.  Time became as water, a wave that rolled forward to the beaches of another century.  In this time, Greater Thir shined.  The gifts the Titans had given the Kin Peoples had strengthened their kingdom, and it soon spread across all of Aotara, giving birth to Greater Thir, the first and only time Aotara would be united under a single empire.  Tyranny and slavery seemed to be at an end as the Titans prepared to give their most precious gift of all to the Kin, the gift of magic.  But in the shadows of their empire loomed the many tribes of giants that had been dethroned as gods of this world.  The Titans had ended their entire way of life, and their contempt and spite united them.

         Mist swirled around the gathering as time caught up to them, and then dissipated to reveal the burning sky.  They knew enough of what was happening now to understand how it had come to this.  Greater Thir had failed.  All along the horizon, cities could still be seen falling, burning, and dying.  The Titans own cousins had destroyed them, and in doing so destroyed the very ideals of Thir.  The Promise of Life had been broken.  There would never be peace under giant rule.  There would never be hope.  There would never be life, only a continuous cycle of murder and extortion.

         No more.

         Morgann’s lip quivered in rage, his breath coming in strength.  The memories he’d been given were like a picture of his life.  He was born under slavery, freed into Greater Thir before he became a man, and driven into exile as he neared old age.  He and the others had witnessed the fall of Thir, survived and escaped it.  They had run half the world across, it seemed, in fear.  Now retribution was theirs, imbued by the very item the Titans were going to use to give them magic.

         The World’s Heart beat once more, and The First Sorceirs exploded with arcane power.  The fire in the sky rolled down and consumed all that lay before them.