Tome of Ancient Aeons

Legacy of the Ashen Monks

" The holy seed is shaped by two: a righteous side, vile half and a magic flowing through. A one cannot emerge, if another is to be purged since both must endure, for greater balance to be pure" - Scrymgeour the Wise, the founder of the Ashen Friary.

As the greater wars ravaged this world given to us, while the proud Balannarians recklessly impaired the lands in their battles with the Cult, new keepers emerged in the distant regions and knelt before the Gods like none before. We awoke in the later dawns, unknown to the Titans which we have carefully observed from the mountain tops of Ulumband and the humans ruining the world in their pathetic skirmishes.

The Nyrnari we called ourselves or Children of truth; for we believed in the legacy of our Great Makers and we respected the order of things. The first among us, Scrymgeour the Wise, a magic-user never touched by the fine hand of a Balannarian or the vile words of a nekron, a true servant of the Gods and keeper of the balance.

He raised his hands, his inner voice calling for us to awaken in the depths of the Solemn Den, the great cavern high atop Olym Donn mountains. As if a vessel sailing on the currents of magical energy, his words came to us in our eternal slumber and my people rose in the new world. He taught us of the Celestial war, the creation of the universe and the importance of the greater balance.

One cannot know love if hate is none. One will not distinguish light if there is no darkness. We will not admire life if we know not death. Without war, there can be no peace - he said to us and we heeded his words. Scrymgeour showed us the way of magic for each one of us was gifted with the divine spark.

My folk carved the faces of the Gods in stone, among the walls of the great cave in which we resided. Not the eighteen gods of Light, but all of them, since they all made us and each one of them deserves our worship. And we studied the ways of Anaya, the great light and the deeds of Sul'zhagul, for both of them were eternal and without them, all of existence would have had no meaning. As deeper as we dwelled in the vast knowledge and obligation that had been given to us, the more we understood our own existence and the shape of the cosmos. If there was peace, we called for the war. If there was pain, we summoned for well-being. And throughout the ages, "good" and "evil" once used by my people diminished into simple words of no meaning and importance.

As time sailed and my race became older and wiser, Scrymgeour placed the foundations of the Ashen Friary, turning the once barren cave into a sanctuary of both peace and chaos and my folk he called the Ashen Monks for we were the guardians of balance, the pilgrims between light and shadow. All our life have we devoted ourselves in understanding the purpose of existence and the importance of preserving the all-balance of the universe. We delved in the farthest corners of magic, our wisdom extended by the experience in both light and darkness. And we kept hidden; for this juvenile world would not understand the scheme of a greater way.

When the Gods of Light slammed down their brethren in the endless pits of the Underworld and they casted a dam between the living realm and the one of the dead, peace and harmony began to flourish in Nordenheim. The sacrifice of the great Anaya became dust, forgotten in the ancient ages before the birth of the first civilizations. Her pain, the monstrosity of the Celestial war and the price the worlds payed for it faded away, like dust blown by the wind. And evil was none.

It was then when the first monks of the Ashen Order united in a ritual of might, casting a spell which shook the very foundations of the wall between worlds. Cracks emerged beneath Nordenheim and the demons were able to rise once again and stain the world which had not known evil for ages. Dread was unleashed once more to fill the emptiness, the other half of the whole, where it once resided.

The ritual of the Ashen Monks was made a second time, centuries later, when the Balannarians utterly razed the Cultist armies and the balance of the cosmos was sent astray. But then, Thali - Anaad, one of the mightiest beings known to exist, conjured a Veil which mended the barrier between the realms and the last fallen gods were slain by the guardians of the Light. I would not expect you to understand our views or why we did it, but all you must know, traveler of distant lands, is that the greater balance of the cosmos had to be maintained for things to prosper the way they did. There can be no good if there is no evil. And if too much evil corrupts the great Creation, we have the power to bring the things back on their rightful path. Until now, thousands of years later... when our great lords succumbed to the Darkness which we strongly believed it would never happen. And we were so wrong...

None of my fellow monks said it out loud, but I am sure that they all have thought of it. And this doubt has rooted deep in their minds ages ago, when our immortal lord, the great Scrymgeour asked of us to perform a third ritual and break the veil of Thali - Anaad. Some say that he had fallen, that his mind had been twisted by Sul'zhagul himself and that the purpose of the Ashen Monks is fading away. Many monks of the higher ranks rejected his proposal since our watchful eyes have seen more than any mortal to have ever walked. We have seen the remnants of the Cult of Amaddon, we knew that although defeated, they were never utterly destroyed and a time will come, when they would rise once again and oppose the Balannarians in a continuous circle throughout time. But, Scrymgeour got enraged and he did the only thing that he taught us against. He broke his own vow, sharing the spell of the grand ritual in a book and in the black of the night, he sent it far away to Cultist arms so they could achieve what he was unable to. The fallen gods of the abyss shall walk once again.

My time is running out. It won't be long before this eerie darkness consumes my heart and soul and I become a pawn of the dark enemy. I fear that our time has come to an end. The first undead legions have been summoned in the snowy wastes of Ulumband by the Ashen Order and the titans' homeland is no longer the safe haven they got used to in the past. It won't be long before the Veil falls and the green flames of the realm beneath swallow Nordenheim in a cataclysm like the days of the elder ages.

To anyone who reads this scroll, do not judge our actions, but embrace them; for the world will forever need an Ashen Order. The balance must be maintained or it will be torn apart like the shattering shields on a raging battlefield. My people have fought against the pureness of light for so many centuries. But now, I fear that the time of the Archlord has come once again. If the Veil of Thali - Anaad is broken, there can be no redemption for the world above...