This is a story
about the past refusing to rest.

• Cast
• Locations
• Stories

ere now
may this communion formed
never know a parting.

The hero of our story. Aesaelion Tathviel lives on borrowed time, but perhaps his future isn’t as set in stone as it seems... after the intervention of a mysterious "Speaker" enabled him to live through childhood, Aesaelion has chased a dream of also learning the Speech, a secret language said to be the words by which the world was writ - and by its power, permanently escape the dreadful fate that has plagued his family for a millennium.

A TIME IMMEMORIAL
A beast appears, arisen from a foregone conclusion in the words that make the world.the will for assigned meaning,
the desire for fate,
for a future that could be understood and accepted by a searching mind,in some small corner of the world
not everywhere, but truly, here,
splintered, changed, and become more.It began as a unique quirk in wording, in the composition of a single, simple spider. It existed on such minor scale, at first, a kind of memetic ripple through the names of things that the spider came upon, in its tiny little life. The mark wrote itself upon the outcomes of cause and effect with ease, for it was so, just – a little new sort of so.And as the spread of its influence grew, the mark developed temperament, the basics of personality – ways in which it would favor being spread, rather than not; it was now no longer a toolmark that operated without conscious choice. It learned.This simple bit of existential grammar, something like – ‘and so it happened, as was the only imaginable outcome’ – became in itself that which decided what the only imaginable outcome was. It became the hidden meaning behind events.In short, it became Allegory.

Rennuid's elder brother, the firstborn son of Vaerdet and Mirhosa.Guelhenthart Tathviel was a famed cartographer, whose specialty was 'arcane' cartography; the creation of maps marking the ebb and flow of magical energies. He spent his life traveling the world, gamboling after leylines, and the like....Until he died young, the second victim of the brutal curse that would hence blight the Tathviel name.Never married. Had like three illegitimate kids.

The last Tathviel to live out his life free of the curse. Mirhosa Tathviel was a celebrated war hero, who never truly recovered from what that made him one; years spent hiding in eastern wilds of Gorogor'nac, fighting against an invading army alone, with only his fellow apprentice and eventual wife, Vaerdet.He was a serially emotionally unavailable father to all but Guelhenthart, his first child; 'pleasantly vacant' is, perhaps, the kindest words one could use. When his youngest son Rennuid was barely 58, he passed away. Painful rumors would abound as to the unclear circumstances of how.

Rennuid Tathviel, priest of the Cult of Gorfuin.A long-dead elf shrouded in mystery. Reputed to be the man responsible for the Tathviel family’s deadly curse....Once upon a time, a boy wandered deep into the forbidden reaches of the forest. There, he found the creature he would come to call 'beloved god'.

GllChk the Fair, courtly knight, former college professor.A holy warrior and knight errant who, once upon a time, stumbled upon a place deep in a wood that seethed and roiled with an evil presence. Carefully, he investigated. Carefully, terrible truths unfolded before him. Carefully -- he took up his sword.GllChk is not his real name, but what he prefers to be called by those he meets in his travels. He's a member of a species called Precursors - one of the first, and in fact the oldest surviving civilizations. They are generally quite insular. GllChk, however, has a self-imposed quest - to find the truth behind all the faerie tales told to him as a child.His search for an immortal and mercurial beast, As-It-Follows, leads him into the depths of Gorogor'nac.

Gorfuin'taenac means, literally, 'ruin in the dangerous part of the woods' - and indeed, that's what it is. But beneath the layers of dirt and overgrowth, it was firstly a prison.There the sentient Word, Allegory, languished for eons - until, one day, a foolish boy named Rennuid sought the ruin out, meaning to use the wood of the strange trees that grew there to craft a bow for his coming-of-age ritual.Thirty years hence, Gorfuin would come to rise as a religious site, as an adult Rennuid claimed to all who would listen that he had discovered a forgotten god.

'Carsigan' is the name of a federation of kingdoms, whose ruling lines all trace back their lineage to a fearsome warlord in antiquity known by the same name. It was a Carsigan nation that launched a failed invasion upon Gorogor'nac in the 3rd Millenium.The majority population of the Carsigan kingdoms are humans, followed by lycnids. Otherwise, it's hard to quantify the region by any one trait.