Whispers of Heaven’s Mandate to Ears Young and Shells Soft

Let the gentle summer afternoon’s wind carry the wisdom of the Ancestors to the ears of the innocent. Young man of Dragon’s Land and the life reborn, listen deep.

You have heard the whisper of ancestors. The next lesson concerns their mandate, and the fate of the old ones.

As the sun sets on the West, so fate will call our people to that land when the sun shall set on the world. We reside apart, removed from the children of the wind. We face the tiger, the monkey, the demon, who do not know of things beyond the horizon. To them, time began, and shall end in this land alone.

Are they to be pitied for their foolishness? No, but rather they must be envied! By searching within, they have found God in one lifetime while we rest search a thousand immortalities for him without. To be the tiger, is to be the dragon. But, hatchling, we are not tigers.

It is known but never appreciated that our land and the West were once joined together. There were no distinctions, only land, sea, and towers. But as time persisted, prejudices cemented. People grew fixated on ideas and schemes, land divided land from land. Seas snaked in-between it all. And the divisions remain.

But once, all man were one on the same land together. Men wandered with the tall ones, their old cousins, as far as the frozen north. And man wandered East to the place of Dragons. And man wandered everywhere in-between. And from the South, eventually, the children of the wind came forth too to bind the Children of Shahar to slavery and darkness as Shahar had bound the wind to the dragon.

Ah, but do not be deceived. The children of the wind are not like their father. They do not flow as he did, they do not gently embrace the dragon as he did. They are bound beings, stubborn, prejudice, single-minded, flailing, yet unable to break free. It was into the lands of man and beast that these tyrants and schemers roamed and conquered.

They never did reach beyond the heart of the West. The harsh cold that Kayana blessed the north men against for their friendship to the tall ones whom she loves for their loyalty, this was too much for the children of the wind at first. And yet, a zealous few braved the ash and sulphur of the Red Tower to learn its secrets. These penetrated ash, then rock, to learn an escape from that which made their brothers flail.

Man, though, spread across the land unto endless divisions. The horsemen rode the hills of the grassy sea that separated East and West of old. Then, even this land was larger. There were more beasts, and more jungles. The monkeys speak of strange black and white bear peoples, and horse peoples, and even the ruddy snake peoples. But they are no more, gone with the land which could never outlast the dawn.

The tiger in his pride claims this land as his, but it never belonged to him. This is dragon land. This was where the old ones watched creation.

That is what the old ones are. Watchers. Their eyes see all things that can be, and the great dragon A Ka sees us, knows us, apart from the thousand and one other us-es, through their eyes. What we know as life and being is only a vision in the eyes of Dovah.

Dovah – those of the dawn. As soon as the two spikes were planted, out of the East came dovah to greet the new forms. East from their perch where they witnessed creation, this time.

They were surprised to see man so numerous. Beings in all times would come to Dovah for wisdom, and the Dov would look on the unique beauty of each world and weep for joy because of it. Kayana and Dovah with their abiding mutual affection held their pact, and Dovah would care for the beasts, and guide them. Yet never had they seen the children of Shahar so plentiful. Yet they treated them no different. Respect for respect, disrespect met with vengeance. Together, the dragons and man loved Kayana, and the dragons taught man her ways and theirs.

But it could not last.

There were two brothers, Zaltan and Casaba. Hunters of the plains, horse riders. They rode far far to the West, to the Red Mountain. There they met the children of the rock. These had discovered dark things, not meant to be known, in the heart of the mountain. The Way of Shahar, that he himself could not see for we do not see the path we walk when we walk it.

The children of the rock sought slaves, to delve deeper, after greater wealth, knowledge and power. The men wanted riches and comfort. So Zaltan and Casaba and their thousand armies drove man from the plains to the ash.

Many were enslaved, but there were far more of man than the deep ones required. For a time, people thrived as well as they could on the mineral rich ash. The first art and culture of man was born, beyond the simple earth cults of the north led by the old ones.

It is said that one calls the void to oneself as the last of ones virtues are drained by the weight of the multitude of ones vices. The deep ones had dug too deep, their lust for what should not be known was too strong. And the ash-men, who had ones roamed the plains, their greed was too powerful. And so the void noticed the petty mundane.

Hermamo, the seeker of forbidden knowledge was summoned by the sheer extent of the deep ones’ lust. And his was greater. But the deep ones hid in the rock, and were far too clever. So Hermamo, going to great lengths, called upon the other dark masters to form an alliance. A scheme was hatched.

The deep ones understood, the dragons see all, and all is together with all. They hid from the sight of the old ones, they burrowed into rock. They sought to be apart. But even so, hiding from petty dragons does not free one from the gaze of the great dragon, not in a world bound to him. And where they were frustrated, Hermamo had an answer.

A pocket of time, apart from all, apart even from the great dragon. They would be taught of how to make it, and they would use it to find the knowledge they sought that they could not while bound to the dragon. And they would tell him what it was.

And so it was done. Secrets of Shahar, discovered, Kayana, even A Ka. But it was forbidden. That which is found in time is bound to time, but that which is found without is not, and indeed has the power to unbind time. Which is why the dragons gaze upon time in the first place, to guard forever against mortal tinkering. So, as the deep ones stepped momentarily apart, the rage of Alduin was kindled.

Alduin, the great dragon master, was not meant to rule. No, he comes and he eats and grows full on time. None of it escapes him, when its time comes. Alduin then was sleeping, the other old ones watching time until he could eat it. The time-eater sleeps, and is jealous of his rest. When parts of the world are stolen from him, so he cannot eat, then he must awaken and reclaim what is his. He never shows mercy to those who wake him early. Once, a beloved king of leapers felt that it would be merciful to save some of creation from Alduin’s jaws. For the king’s gentle scheme, Alduin ate not the leaper, but saw that he would persist forever as the lord of doom. Lord of hell.

Never had time itself been ripped from him before. Alduin’s rage was unquenchable. He could not see the deep ones, they had hidden themselves too well from the eyes of the dragons. Alduin’s fury saw only the mountain, and the men. He rallied his lieutenants, and they attacked.

The ash-men were accustomed to smoke and fire, but that day even the stoutest among them shook at the flames. The great mountain itself, for one day, ceased its smoking and bellowing completely, humbled by a mass of fire which it would never rival. Many dragons were killed by the accomplished warriors among the ash-men from the plains, but in the end the ash kingdom was desolated.

Very few survivors were left to join the northern men, scattered in very small villages in the kingdom of the ice mer. These through magic, extreme piety, and cold soothed the flailing of their kind, nonetheless bound to creation as much as ever.

Alduin’s rage never ceased, however, and he began exerting greater dominion over the centers of worship shared between the north men and the dov. He wanted man to be dominated, and also punished. Once he learned the treachery of the deeps ones, he cared not, man had provoked his ire, man had defied dov, man would not survive to the end of this world.

There were old ones among the armies of Alduin that saw the battle, fought in it. They saw it against all the other times and worlds. They saw fall of immortal dov against mortal man. They comprehended mortality. They saw the struggle to survive, the valor of the fighting men, the strength and resilience of the survivors. They saw the endless cycles of time, as a wheel that keeps turning, saw it turn, and reveal the I. Shahar was not a troublemaker who annoyed, he was an ambassador from the void with a message of truth. The universe was a tower, of aetherial light flowing into dark oblivion, the brief union of the two in the middle the shining exclamation point on existence.

These few dov saw man fight for their young. What for? They asked. The dov preserved the cycle, they were the cycle. But what was there to preserve if it was to all end? What was the point when none of it would last? Why did mortals behave this way? And these, the ancestors, understood.

As light flowed into dark in a singular channel, it hatched the egg of the world. Meaning derived from self, but which did not bind self to the torment of immortality. No more endless visions of worlds, but one vision, one meaning, that could last forever. As these few flew East, away from Alduin, the Red Mountain began to erupt in its fury and glory once again.

These ancestors gave their immortality, and became an egg. Hatchling, hear and remember the previous whispers. You are the memories of the ancestors of your line, and their will. You are all that’s left of them. They have left time and space, they have gone back to the void. You will hatch, and bind to your brother as Shahar bound earth to the great dragon. Young man, you will receive your brother, they will consume your will. Through you they will see and feel. The hatchling cannot see nor feel, nor ever has after the ancestors conceded their dragon nature.

Together you will fulfill the mandate of heaven, the will of the ancestors to ensure Shahar’s plan is fulfilled.

First, you will not tolerate the presence of the old ones. They are to be hunted and eliminated. That they were once brothers does not affect the choices they have made under Alduin. Their presence binds the timelines and frustrates Shahar’s plan.

Second, you will seek they born of the dragon. When our ancestors left, the pocket of time that they embodied was left shredded. As the damage is repaired, echoes of those pockets will reverberate. The dragons are no more, but the essence of the dragon will weakly manifest itself from time to time. These are more than our ancestors in memory, these are their last dying breaths, these are the ancestors. They must be obeyed and honored until they finally pass. A dragon does not die quickly or simply. Our ancestors chose man as the vessels of their offspring, they shall likely choose men as the house of their spirits.

Third, you will preserve the binding. Alduin must not eat the world, he must be stopped at the end of time. And other schemers must be stopped as well. Until the day of the world’s last sunset.

This is the mandate of the ancestors, the mandate of Shahar, the mandate of heaven. We shall keep it, and prepare, until the day we are called West to fulfill it.

As for the ash lands, it is said Hermamo promised them to other dark lords, empty and prepared for a people they could rule over. And so it shall be, if Hermamo can keep the dov away. And, forget not the deep ones, for their schemes are now bound to this world and shall never be unbound.

Young ones, let the whispers run deep.