KÁRINDOR

Excerpted from the Book of Memories

My name is Héssoj of Ácrollam, historian, instructor apprentice, and representative of my city before the Council of the New Era — a city I love and revere with all my heart. When the Council asked me to put into writing the history of Kárindor, our venerated mother and homeland, I thought I would never be able to complete such an immense task. To write in one or two volumes the thousands of years that have passed since the arrival of the First Ones to our present day seemed like mere illusion. However, I have devoted my life and energy to the goal of recording all those events.

From the Sky Tower of Zulá to the depths of Moradas, through the hollows of Abismos, I have traveled to every place where remnants of our history and ancestors might be found, with one sole intention: to bring into the light of our days the forgotten shadows of the past.

I should begin this compendium by speaking of the beginnings of what was once called the Fifth Era, and then gradually move backward in time until reaching the First Dwellers and their original home — the sacred valley that gave them life and welcomed them at the dawn of time. I believe that, before anything else, it is necessary to explain what our world is like and how the fateful and perilous years of the Esai Dorlav unfolded. Therefore, I shall now speak of our venerated mother, origin of life and guardian of the undying light: Kárindor, the Living Land.

Kárindor

Our homeland is our life. Kárindor, which literally means “the land of men” in the ancient tongue, has been divided since time began into four great zones or continents: the Northern region, the dangerous and frozen lands known in that ancient language as Válruz; the Southern lands or Belfáel; the untamed Eastern continent, Valtra; and the inhospitable West, Valgora.

Válruz, the home of evil and cradle of the wound of the North, is the smallest and most dangerous of them all. A place where the sun does not warm and the light does not shine, few survive in such dark lands. If the cold does not finish you, the heavy snowfalls will — and if not, then fear and despair surely will. Only one people managed to settle there: the children of the night, known to us as the Néldor, men of cold and hardened hearts, like the ice that covers Válruz. The Evil of antiquity dwelled among them, transforming them, stripping away their humanity, using them for its wicked designs as a scourge upon the other peoples and races. Válruz is the place where death resides, the place where our inner strength is tested, and only the strongest manage to survive.

By contrast, Belfáel — my continent — has always been the most populated and beautiful region. The light of Elf, which gives life to all, floods its valleys, rivers, and mountains with every sunrise. Its climate is generally mild and welcoming, with three seasons that allow us to feed ourselves and enjoy all the good things our generous mother provides: rest in summer, nourishment in spring, and work in the gentle winters. From the sky, water falls regularly to nourish our fields. From the earth, food is born and grows, sustaining both man and beast. Some regions, like Darbruná, possess their own time and climate: a single season made of refreshing daily rains, high temperatures, and heavy humidity, fostering the growth of the sacred forests where the wisest beings of all creation are born and dwell — the ancestral trees, living creatures older than mankind itself.

They are the first inhabitants of Kárindor and its rightful owners. Darbruná, blessed cradle of the onimods.

Valtra is a continent similar to Belfáel. Its climate is somewhat warmer and its weather slightly more erratic. In Valtra’s winters, heavy rains and hurricane winds often break loose, costing the lives of more than one unwary traveler. Its people tend to be impetuous and somewhat rough — much like Valtra itself. But for those who have lived or still live there, leaving for another place feels difficult, if not impossible. Those who visit the East rarely forget its vast plains, slender mountains, or green valleys. Poets often speak of it as if it were a bird, always in motion and always distant:

“A beautiful place for restless hearts Valtra shall always be, like a swift falcon in the skies from which no one wishes to flee. When your eyes tremble and the last master calls your name, go East and ask the indomitable lady to teach you how to fly with her...”

Valgora is a world apart. True, its climate is warm and comfortable, but many of its lands have remained uninhabited for centuries or even millennia. If the changes in Valtra’s weather are unpredictable, in Valgora they are even more so — fiercer and harsher, and occurring in every corner of the vast continent. Sudden and extreme shifts in temperature are the rule rather than the exception, making it possible to go from intense cold to scorching heat, or from persistent drought to endless downpours. And all of that within just a week — or, in most cases, mere days.

The West has always been a great unknown, explored only by the hybrid race and a few adventurers or fugitives among men — never mastered.

Our source of life, Kárindor — sacred be her name — offers us a great variety of vast and mysterious forests, deep and beautiful valleys, wide plains, mighty rivers, and wondrous meadows. But our homeland also contains countless other habitats where an infinite number of beings with their own light may live and endure: what can be said of the swamps and marshes, of the towering zones in the inaccessible mountains, of the scorching deserts and all those other regions of sparse vegetation — arid, lonely, and empty places... In the most remote areas of Válruz or Valgora, one may find spectacular fire mountains where rivers of incandescent lava flow down their slopes into lakes of burning magma, where the heat makes breathing impossible...

Without a doubt, not everything created by evil is devoid of beauty. An indescribable beauty that cannot be compared to anything else that exists.

The place for man to live is the earth.

And the earth is the place for man to live.

She gives us everything and asks for nothing in return.

A few mad and ungrateful souls have attempted to cross the sea that surrounds our world, apparently in search of a new world or new lands and kingdoms. Let the ungrateful ones who abandon Kárindor perish there! If any reader feels curious about the great ocean of water that envelops us, they must know that life does not exist beyond our homeland. The great blue, or sea, has always been an unknown, a mystery from which Kárindor protects us. In fact, it has never been given any particular name. Within it dwell truly gigantic creatures — monsters capable of swallowing the largest and best-armed ships ever built. In Darbruná, I found considerable information about the sea, despite the fact that the onimods — wise and cautious beings by nature — have always been reluctant to speak on the subject. After much effort and patience, even battling my own well-founded fears, I managed to extract the name they secretly gave it: “Present Death” or dffá káddfker, since according to them, life cannot remain upon that sea but only within it — meaning that those of us who need air to exist are doomed to die in it.

Our light cannot shine in the depths of the ocean.

As if that were not enough, it seems that on multiple occasions a powerful wind awakens over that sea, known by the name vattúshs, which makes high-sea navigation impossible, as it devours everything in its path. It is curious that the race of the onimods, who arrived at our homeland by crossing such a perilous sea, held the strange belief that vattúshs is the invisible and ever-moving boundary with the lost and imperishable land of their gods — mighty beings who protect, aid, or punish.

In any case, if those who came by crossing the vast expanse of the sea remained far from it, it is and will always be folly to believe that mere men — mortal beings of short life — can cross its endless limits or ever grasp and uncover its unreachable frontiers.

EVERY apprentice instructor must know the ancestral gift of the Kradparuná. As a belief — especially among men — the existence of a shared force that lies dormant in every being upon the Living Land of Kárindor is widely accepted. A light that would arise from the depths of the earth itself, and which, in its journey toward the heavens or the infinite, would take on many forms — some visible and easily recognized, others hidden from our gaze.

It is evident that only from the middle of the Second Era onward — with the emergence of the wise Instructors and the construction of their beautiful White Tower — did this belief spread across the known world. However, the Kradparuná is not merely a religion or faith, nor is it some kind of magic or supernatural power, although its effects may suggest otherwise.

The Kradparuná is an art in itself.

An ancestral art that perfectly combines knowledge and willpower. Through this art, it would be possible to change, transform, or alter the course of the inner light that each living being — like people, animals, or plants — or inanimate object — such as elements, materials, or anything without life or consciousness — would contain and harbor within. It would even be possible to alter the light that emanates from oneself, as is believed to have been achieved by the first mystic or visionary — titles once given to those who practiced this art — the powerful and cruel King Béhej’Ari, the Immortal, ruler of the ancient Black Empire (later known as the Dominion), who, obsessed with absorbing all such power, ultimately became the first corrupted or fallen — the name given to those who use this gift to enhance their own strength by absorbing that of others.

Since this ability is linked to the will of our beloved Mother Earth, it is usually only possible to activate it using the ancient language of the First Dwellers — those to whom Kárindor itself gave a final refuge, those whom it also taught to speak. It is widely accepted — as the most credible theory — that the First Ones came to possess profound knowledge of existence itself, creating a set of sounds capable of capturing that light. Though this is only one among countless theories seeking to explain the mysterious workings of the Kradparuná.

It is evident that sound is not the only vessel for that powerful force or inner light. Examples of other channels might include certain objects or materials used by the Instructors, or — if any still exist — items once employed directly by the First Dwellers.

“...I thought all was lost. Our enemies outnumbered us and surpassed us in strength. Death seemed close, but then something no one could have foreseen occurred. The White Instructors appeared with a blinding flash atop the hill overlooking the plain where we fought. They raised their staffs in unison, and to my amazement, I felt strength returning to me. All my men seemed to draw power where before there had been only weakness and fear. Soon we managed to make our enemies flee in terror, retreating beyond the river. I stared in disbelief at the Sages, and without thinking, I knelt in gratitude...”

— The Prophet of Belfáel

I shall continue my compendium by explaining that...

THE history we know only goes back to the time of The First Inhabitants and their establishment in the sacred valley. That date is the one with which the computation through eras or times began in Karindor, five of these ages being established, according to the model of the wise elphic people. These ages or times do not cover the same number of years or cycles as others, although they all occupy long spaces or periods in time and mark the beginning or end of great events that shaped and changed the world, either for the better or for worse.

Despite all my efforts to go back further in time I did not get a single piece of information or clue about what life was like before The First Inhabitants or where they came from. It is as if our beloved mother Karindor has erased that past so that we men will never discover it. I have decided to mention the five ages mentioned, contributing the most relevant and well-known events that I managed to discover about each of them, as I was able to extract from the remains of the Sacred Royal Library of Kradovel, accepted by our contemporaries as the most complete and exact (although I must clarify that some of these events could be exaggerated, omitted or fragmented; for which I apologize in advance to the reader while I encourage you to complete my discoveries).

In the beginning of time The First Inhabitants arrived, after many hardships and for causes unknown to me, to the sacred valley that Karindor provided as a last refuge for men and their children. Centuries later, the onimods arrived from across the seas, beings different from them with strange customs and beliefs. It seems that both races coexisted in peace for several generations until men began their division among themselves into clans or family groups, from which the great patriarchs of the past would emerge, from which all of us human peoples descend.

It was at that time that the Kradparuna began -of which I have already spoken before- and that would finally end in a tragic way in the destruction of the sacred valley after the appearance of a new race emerged becouse the forbidden crossing of men and onimods.

An evil patriarch named Ura-Ross, eager for power, enslaved many with the help of the hybrids -the new race-, why broke the first major war in which were involved those who cohabited until that day in the sacred lost valley. Men against men, onimods against onimods, hybrids against hybrids... no one was left free from bloodshed.

The valley was destroyed and uninhabitable for any of the races.

Ura-Ross, the first patriarch-king, was banished along with his people beyond the limits of the valley while the rest of clans and towns tried to rebuild everything that had been lost in the fratricidal struggle.

It was useless.

One by one, all the patriarchs and their peoples left those lands in search of new homes. Finally, the onimods and hybrids, after a brief new confrontation with each other, also moved away from the refuge that Karindor had generously provided for so many generations. The great exodus of that time gave rise to the name by which that First Age is known: the Ether-Muit or Age of Exodus.

As the end of it, Karindor swallowed the sacred valley for himself without leaving a single clue of where he was.

The world changed the way it would never do again, great mountain ranges emerged and lush forests disappeared. Rivers dried up disappearing into nothingness while others sprang up with force creating new valleys and new lands. The sea withdrew in some parts of the world, leaving more dry land on which to dwell, while in other places it flooded, hiding under its abyssal depths everything that existed in them. For tens, or perhaps hundreds of centuries, Karindor suffered an intense glaciation that separated some peoples from others. To some races of others. Ancient customs were lost and the common language of The Firsts fell into oblivion.

The days of peace are over.

Evil was present in Valruz.

The end of the ice age, in which many perished, was the beginning of the Second Age, the Kradovel Dorlav or the Age of the First Kings. An age that began with the creation of large cities and new trade routes between some towns and others. One was that at first it was only threatened by small revolts of the neldors against the rest of its race brothers. The appearance of some onimods, who called themselves The Righteous, changed all that. The return of those onimods, which we know as The Uncouth, was only the prelude to the great war of that time, the ”Hjari Groa” or final day.

The onimods fell into a deep civil war with those uncouth rebels, who pursued the extermination of the rest of the races of all Karindor. The two great kings of men, lords of the ancestral art of Kradparuna, also went to war.

On the one hand the mighty Sun-King Elf of the golden town of Belfael and, on the other side, the mysterious King of the Black Empire of Valruz, the Immortal, Behej'Ari. After the "Hjari Groa" and the fall of the Immortal, the benevolent Instructors would arise and the White Tower of Albnoc would be built, as a refuge for the wisdom of that time. The day of the Elf king's departure, in which he made the promise of an heir who would protect all free and peace-loving peoples from Valruz's Evil forever -known as the “promise of the heir”- marked the beginning the end of the Second Age.

For millennia the Instructors watched over the peace in Karindor and, under their protection, the peoples and other races thrived and prospered. That was their time, the Third Age, the "Luev Haecoc" or Era of Light and Peace. But a new age was to begin. Not even the wisest of Albnoc's visionary instructors could foresee the new scourge with which Valruz's Evil and the neldors would fall upon them.

The worst of the nightmares of living beings took shape throughout those millennia in the dark mountains of Krad-Muna. Beings that lived on the blood of others. Servants of evil and darkness. Forged by and for war, they appeared as a swarm over the rest of the continents, ruining and consuming everything within their reach. They had come to Karindor with the sole objective of exterminating and maiming our beloved mother.

Their name: the gonks.

Their lord: the Evil of Valruz.

Their banner: the rebuilt Black Empire.

Thus began the Apocalypse of the Third Age, thus began the Kradovel Akluev. The invasion lasted for a long time and the men suffered great losses. When all seemed lost, after the sudden and unexpected fall of the Tower of Instructors and its near total genocide, an alliance was forged between the remnants of the races that still lived in freedom. The new allies, who until then had been scattered and at odds, rallied as one to face the gonks. A new and more bloody war, the ”Akluev Groa” or the day without light, took place on the plains of the Laoent River between two armies so numerous that they shook the earth as they passed. Whether by fortune or the help of the nameless gods, the gonks were miraculously defeated and returned to the other side of the Red Mountains from which they had descended.

A new city then arose where so many men and onimods had died, remaining the greatest symbol of freedom and victory over Evil that had ever been built. The immense city of Travaldor was proclaimed capital of a new kingdom without a king, the Republic, which would later be called the Council of Peoples. After many vicissitudes an agreement was reached between all the races and peoples that made it up. As a seal and guarantee of this pact, The Stone of Forgiveness was placed in the ruins of what was once the capital of the elphic kingdom, which fell due to a painful and painful betrayal.

For thousands of years peace reigned in the domains of the Council.

In time Judges emerged, men and women of enormous power and wisdom who dispensed justice throughout the free land without asking for anything in return. Their age had begun, the Etherdor or the Age of Judges, the Fourth Age.

But the Evil of the North was not completely defeated and took advantage of that long time to regain strength and prepare a new and more violent offensive that would lead to the final victory. Little by little he put in the hearts of men of not so noble intentions the desire to rule in Travaldor. Finally, one of these men, a lost descendant of some ancient king, claimed the throne of the city. The brave Judges, who at that time were not many in number or very popular, were betrayed and mercilessly executed with the invaluable help and collaboration of the neldors and their terrible emissaries.

How many of our most precious works tell us of such cruel and unjust betrayal and death! May Karindor remember them and carried them with alacrity beyond our skies...

After the advent of Travaldor, the kingdoms of the past re-emerged which, dissatisfied with the new way of doing of the Council, reclaimed their old borders and lordships. At that time the Sigrim, the gray people, abandoned their slavery in the North and sought the help of the elphics, who generously gave them lands where they could live in freedom.

After a while, a scattered group of hybrids arrived in Belfael from the depths of Abyss, claiming to be enemies of the Evil of Valruz. What seemed like an impending civil war between the kings of men and the newcomers quickly morphed into a struggle for survival. The gonks returned to Karindor more fiercely than in the past but with an equal desire for destruction, death, and blood. Finally the great city, the capital of the Council, fell to the neldor armies commanded by Naam, the worst of all men to ever set foot in our world.

He was the greatest general and first guardian of the Black Empire, which would be renamed the Domain after the conquest of Travaldor.

The invasion did not stop and the Dominion extended its borders west, east and south, defeating all who opposed them. The fall of Zula, the great capital of the people of heaven, was what unleashed the fury of the kings of Belfael, of Valtra, of the onimods and of the hybrids and sigrims newcomers. They firmly marched together to confront an enemy that surpassed them in number, power, and malice. But fear did not stop them.

How many great warriors fell those days in the long struggle of the North! How many lives were lost in the “”Ether-Ruz Grodavor”!

But their efforts and their lives were not a futile sacrifice, as the advance of the Domain was stopped short and the peoples enjoyed a tense peace. Few of those who made up that army returned to tell what they had seen. The only certain thing is that the gonks disappeared for twenty years from the face of Karindor. With that period of time, called thev”Dab Akluev”, the Fifth Age began.

The Second Great Age of Kings had begun, the Esai Dorlav.

*Note from the author: since the events that occurred after the ”Dab Akluev” up to our own days are more recent in our memory and more scrolls and works that deal with them have been preserved, I have decided to include them in a later work. Furthermore, all the events from the Fifth Age turn out to be too extensive to be included along with this compendium in a single scroll or volume.