Bite-sized Backstory 2: The Brave Exiled Sisters
The king of the Osmium Court, one of the nations of the short lived, three-eyed creatures adrift on the seas of Fundament, was old. He was senile. He was dying. His three daughters, Xi Ro a warrior, Sathona a leader and thinker, and Aurash an explorer, were skilled in their own fields, but it would have been difficult for any one of them to assume the throne.
Their teacher, the sterile mother Taox certainly thought this, which is why she made a deal with the Helium Drinkers, a nearby warlike nation of their own species, to overthrow the sickly king and kill his heirs.
Fortunately, the three sisters managed to escape. Xi Ro distracted the attackers with the bright glowing “bait stars” that her combat skills had previously allowed her to cut from the tentacles of the predators that inhabited the clouds above. Sathona’s tricks and cleverness allowed the sisters to evade their enemies, flee their home, and reach their nation’s coast. And once there, Aurash’s exceptional sailing skills allowed them to escape their enemies by fleeing their home and country on her personal sailing ship.
For over a year, a good tenth of their lives, the three sisters sailed away from home. They sailed passed many dozen foreign continents. They lived off the sea, catching and eating creatures they’d never seen before. They encountered and escaped powerful monsters through skilled sailing and risky maneuvers.
And they explored.
And they explored.
And they explored.
And what these brave seafaring sisters found out in the vast ocean in the heart of a powerful maelstrom would not only change their fates, it would change the fates of thousands of races and hundreds of trillions of lives spread across the spiral arms of our galaxy.
Sources:
II: The Hateful Verse
IV: Syzygy
Previous: 1: Fundament
Next: 3: The Hesitant Oath
Bite-sized Backstory 1: Fundament
Destiny’s history starts some fifty thousands years ago within the layers of a gas giant called Fundament. Unlike the gas giants in our solar system, Fundament is host to well over five hundred species.
Most of these species live in the dark beneath the outer gas layers of Fundament on a large number of continents all floating on a massive sea that is suspended between storms and gas clouds overhead and the gas giant’s increasingly thick oceans, liquid metals, and solid layers below.
We don’t learn much about the numerous inhabitants of Fundament. Only one of the five hundred plus species gets much detail.
This race of three eyed humanoids are described as the smallest, weakest things on the seas of Fundament. Living gas clouds with glowing balls at the end of long tentacles reach down from the storms above like flying anglerfish and try to eat them. Acidic rain and deadly lightning storms occur frequently and kill many of them. And even though they have cities and science and some level of seafaring technology, they sometimes wage war on each other and demand sacrifices and eat their own. Maybe worst of all, this smallest of races usually only live 8 – 10 years.
There are a few other interesting things we learn about this three-eyed race:
– They all appear to be born female.
– At around four years of age they choose to morph into one of three forms: The king morph, the knight morph, and the mother morph. Notably, mothers live significantly longer than the others, but we are not told how long.
– This race, and many of the others, did not evolve on Fundament. Instead, they arrived on the gas giant’s hidden, suspended seas when each of their planets collided with Fundament long before anyone can remember.
Unfortunately, this weak, short-lived, three-eyed race is never given a name, but they eventually rise up above their lowly station and do much to shape the world of Destiny.
Something Shiny
Sparks Clearpath continued along the unfamiliar forest trail before her, not at all sure of where she was being lead this clear, chilly morning. Dressed in her soft, warm hunting gear with little more than a bow and a handful of arrows in a quiver across her back, she had, two hours ago, realized she was being hurried along off her usual paths to parts of her forest she did not know. Ordinarily, she might have preferred a slower pace, but that wasn’t an option, not with the Dymestl-aeron siblings encouraging her ever onward.
Somehow, her four Gnomish friends seemed to have no lack of energy, darting in and out of the foliage around her, even though they were half her height and very nearly had to remain on the run for their short legs to keep up with her brisk walk. They were laughing and fighting and playing little games that Sparks was sure she’d never fully understand, even having observed them for the better part of two decades.
At a little over fifty years of age, Sparks was a good ten years older than Tân, the oldest of the Dymestl-aerons, though one could hardly tell, what with the differences in the two races heights and manners of aging. It was the most unapparent of facts that the four Gnomish brothers and sisters were all nearly considered adults while Sparks herself was only a few short years into her long transition to maturity.
“How much farther?” Sparks asked in elvish, addressing the four gnomes scurrying around her. Even she was beginning to tire despite being as fit and at home among the trees of the forest as any of them.
<“Somewhat!”> the white haired Gwynt answered with unhelpful cheer in Gnomish as she, and her long, hair breezed by.
<“It’s too late to turn back now…”> Blue eyed Dŵr gushed.
<“You promised you’d help!”> Tân said, almost accusingly, so quick to anger, as he always was.
“Why do you ask?” Galon asked sincerely in return, the only one of the four to reply in elvish, even though they had all learned to speak it years ago.
“We’re getting pretty far out…” Sparks answered. <“And I will help, Tân, but I told my parents I would be back by nightfall.”>
<“They will understand you had to keep moving forward,”> Dŵr insisted.
“Will they?” Galon inquired of his sister, his tone ever kind. ”I would think they would worry, they lov…”
<“It doesn’t matter now, ’cause we’re here!”> Gwynt interrupted.
Here, it turned out, was a curious clearing that seemed to have no place so deep in the woods. There was no stream or river or solid, growth-impeding rock jutting out of the soil. It was only as she passed out of the tree line and into the bright sunlight that Sparks got her first hint as to the cause of the clearing. A dozen steps closer and she had her answer for sure. Though it was still a good twenty feet in front of her, she could now make out the rounded rocky lip of what had to be a large depression or some sort of sink hole. Slowing her movements to careful, creeping steps, Sparks edged closer, eager to know more.
“Whoa…” she exclaimed as she reached the edge. What lay before her was no depression or minor sinkhole! No, somehow the Dymestl-aerons had found a huge, ten foot wide shaft of a cave that dropped almost one hundred feet straight down. Along the way down were a multitude of outcroppings, divots, and patches of lose rock covered in moss or vines, but beyond a very good grip and a whole lot of rope, there was seemingly no safe way to descend… which is why Sparks was entirely unsurprised when she turned around to find her four smiling companions holding one of the longest lengths of sturdy rope she’d ever seen.
“No.” Sparks told them at once. “Very much no… and where… how did you keep that rope hidden all this time?”
<“Magic?”> Gwynt asked, as if she too were unaware of the true answer. Her brothers and sister all nodded in unison, each of their smiles flashing even larger than before.
“Fine, keep you secrets…” Sparks said, knowing she had no choice but to relent, at least on that point, “but there is still no way I’m going down there. Even with the rope. One false move and I’d be killed!”
“But look!” Dŵr replied, moving over to the cave’s mouth. “Can you see it? At the very bottom?!”
“See what?” Sparks asked. She walked around the circular opening until the sun was at her back. She shielded her eyes from the still bright, cloudless sky, but even then the deep shadows that covered the lowest parts of the cave made discerning much of anything impossible. Except… Sparks squinted harder and angled her head and… yes, there was something there. Something… “Glowing?” she asked.
“It’s glowing fungus!” Galon explained.
<“It is a pool of moldy water.”> <“No! It is a firebug,”> <“A mirror!”> the other three Gnomes disagreed all at the same time.
“So none of you know what it is but want me to risk going to find out?” Sparks asked once their explanations ceased.
The four Gnomes looked to each other for a moment, then, again in unison, nodded and begged in their best Elven, saying: “Please? We just have to know!”
Sparks sighed. She turned back to the cave and began tracing a route from crag to outcropping to handhold. It looked…doable, and her friends had helped her with more and required far less… It was only fair that she try.
<“Okay, I’ll do it,”> she answered her friends in Gnomish, causing a small cheer to pass between them. “I want this tied around me double tight,” she indicated as the four Gnomes jumped into action. Tân and Galon helped her with the rope while Gwynt and Dŵr scouted around for the best place for their Elven friend to begin her descent.
<“There’s a smooth patch of ground over here for the rope to slide over!”> Dŵr called out a few moments later.
When everyone was ready, and her four small friends had taken their positions in a line holding the rope, Sparks carefully lowered herself over the edge and began her long climb down. It was a slow, tricky process, dealing with unyielding rock, crumbling dirt, and thin unhelpful plants. She’d spend minutes just testing her weight on the next ledge or next set of roots before proceeding. Halfway down she passed into shadow but fortunately the sky above was bright enough to continue to light her way after her eyes had a minute to adjust. She slipped twice, but each time only dropped a few inches as the uncharacteristically quiet Dymestl-aerons did their jobs holding the rope. After nearly an hour of slow, tense work, Sparks was finally a few feet from the bottom.
“Let go, give me slack!” she called up. A second later she felt the tension on her safety rope fall away and was free to hop down to the cave floor. “I made it!” she called.
Above her, four small heads poked out over the edge of the drop off, each casting a comically large shadow on the sunlit section of the cave wall far above.
<“Well? What is it?”> Tân’s voice echoed down in impatient irritation.
<“Fungus?”>
<“Water?”>
<“A mirror?”>
<“A fire bug??”>
“No, none of those…” Sparks called back as she stooped down to inspect the glowing object before her. “It’s… like a torch, alight… but not on fire…It seems about done for…” She smiled at the distant, excited chatter that filtered down from the Gnomes back up at the surface.
Taking a moment to really examine the dimly glowing torch, Sparks put it in her quiver along with her arrows then began her climb back up. In truth, she should have taken some time to rest, but the Dymestl-aerons’ joy was so infectious that she’d forgotten just how much her arms and legs had been aching just a few minutes before.
Some twenty feet up, Sparks stretched to reach the next obvious handhold, only to find her other fatigued hand unable to keep its grip. For a long, desperate moment, Sparks felt her fingers slipping and slipping and slipping free, and then she was falling. One of the Dymestl-aerons must have remember their job though, because a moment later the rope went tight, causing her head and body to slam painfully into the cave wall. Dizzy, and in pain, Sparks felt herself being lowered back onto the cave floor. She shifted to lay on her back and when she clutched at her forehead her hand came away wet with blood!
Sparks stared up at the circle of light coming down from the mouth of the cave, but she could hardly seem to do any more than that. Distantly, she was sure she could hear the cries of her friends, but answering them… it seemed… but she couldn’t… to get her thoughts… line up properly…
Then, far above, she saw a small shape, complete with hands, feet, and long blowing hair, jump out over the mouth of the cave. For a long moment, Sparks watched the in terror as Gwynt fell down the center of the shaft. The gnome fell closer and closer until Sparks had to force herself to look away, only to have a sudden gust of wind kick up along the cave floor. Sparks shielded her eyes from the dust thrown up by the sudden gust and a moment later… there Gwynt was, kneeling by her side.
“Sparks? We’re so sorry! Are you ok?”
“No… Not really,” Sparks answered. “How..?”
“Magic.” Gwynt replied with a shrug, as if the answer was the most obvious thing in the world. “Can you hang on to the rope? We are going to pull you up.”
Sparks nodded and, placing one hand above the other, weakly gripped the long length of rope that stretching upward before her.
<“Ok! Pull!”> Gwynt called up to her brothers and sister.
Inch by inch, Sparks felt herself being lifted out of the cave, even as Gwynt remained on the floor below. Sparks helped where she could, stretching out a hand or foot to push herself out away from the cave wall when it was necessary. At the cave’s mouth several pairs of small hands helped pull her back up over the edge, and then…
…she must have walked back home along with the Dymestl-aerons, but Sparks could remember very little of the return trip. It was almost as if one minute she was being helped back into the noonday sunlight and the next, it was night time and her mother’s worried arms were encircling her outside of their forest home.
“My child, you must not be so reckless! If you had hit your head any harder…” her mother scolded before trailing off. Not even she wanted to speak the dreadful words that would have finished that sentence. Instead, she placed a firm palm on her daughter’s gashed forehead and closed her eyes.
Sparks shuttered slightly as her mother’s powerful magic flowed into her. This time, when Sparks touched her hand to her own forehead she found the gash that had been there was now completely gone. She sobbed her apologies softly into her mother’s shoulder and then was sent to her room for bed without supper as a punishment for putting herself in so much danger.
It was only late into the night, when memories, good and bad, of the day’s events kept playing out in her mind, that Sparks realized one of the Gnomes had swiped her hard won magical torch!
She couldn’t help but smile. It was going to be a lot of fun getting it back.
Ddaear
The storm had come and stayed and stayed and when it had finally gone it left so much changed. To Mkali Moto Kipande Njia’yawzai's young eyes, each new downed tree, flooded lowland, and reshaped hill was an adventure that called, no that demanded, to be explored. The eleven child, appearing no more than eleven or twelve human years of age, seemed only to know how to laugh and run as she carved a curving path from her parents' small, sturdy home. Trailing far behind, the child's mother walked slowly, her long white hair hanging still in the quiet, her steps somehow regal, her face calm but for an occasional smile at the antics of her offspring, as she too surveyed the damage the swirling winds had done during the long dark day and even longer and darker night.
The two proceeded as such for some time with few words spoken between mother and child, excepting when Mkali Moto Kipande would come running back with some curiosity in hand, eager to show it off and win some small amount of rebuke or praise from her parent.
Then came the odd stillness.
"Where have you gone, my child?" U'tulivu Nyeupe-nywele Malaika Njia’yawazi, called to the surrounding woods when the sounds of her little one’s quickly moving feet and awed giggles did not soon resume.
"Mother, it is awful..." came her child's reply so very soft and sad.
For the first time in their morning outing, U'tulivu Nyeupe-nywele Malaika picked up her pace. Her slow, regal walk gave way to a speedier movement still far too elegant to be termed a mere run or dash. The worried mother soon slowed once more as she caught sight of her grief stricken child kneeling and crying on the now smooth, washed out slope of what had been a notable hillside the day before. Beyond Mkali Moto Kipande’s crouched form, bones and still decomposing flesh half emerged from the soft soaked soil.
U'tulivu Nyeupe-nywele's right hand moved to cover her mouth as her child turned and looked up to her, teary eyes glistening with fear and despair.
"It is Ddaear," Mkali Moto Kipande informed her mother before she brought her own hand, shaking with grief, up to her face forming a miniature mirror image of her mother.
U'tulivu Nyeupe-nywele knew the name well, better even than her daughter, though the gnomish boy had been one of her child's closest friends. U'tulivu Nyeupe-nywele Malaika had counseled the Dodohyd'iaeron family to allow her to attempt to heal their sickened eldest son, but very little could be done to dissuade gnomes of their traditions once their minds had been made. Ddaear had passed not two months before and both elven mother and daughter had attended his burial just weeks earlier.
"Do you remember, my only and dearest child, what you asked me the day he was laid to his final rest?" U'tulivu Nyeupe-nywele questioned gently as she moved closer.
The tiniest shake of her daughter’s head was the only reply she received.
"You asked why we buried our departed. This is why,” the mother told her daughter. “Because the body rots once the soul has moved on. We respect the life that was but place the body out of sight so we can remember our friends as they were, not as their empty shells become.”
For a long while Mkali Moto Kipande sat and considered her mother’s words. Eventually her gaze returned to the remains of her friend only to be soon turned away once more by her mother’s gentle hand.
“I miss him,” she told her mother.
“I know. But it is not right for us to look upon him as he now is. Instead, we shall take a trip to the Dodohyd'iaerons and inform them of what has happened.”
Now, daughter and mother journeyed side by side, small fingers gripping tight to offered hand, in saddened silence.