I am as you have made me. From the earth and the stone, the blood in my heart is your blood. The quiet in my head is the mountain’s silence. I speak now only to teach what you would have me teach.

Humanity saved the People from centuries of death and battle. All was forgiven. With open arms and eager hearts we welcomed the humans into our lives, eager to see where their wit and ambition would lead us.

It lead us to the lash, it lead us to the steelbolt collar around our necks. It lead us to Empire.

Humans do not breed as fast as the ratfolk or the naga, but they make up for that with ceaseless effort. Their hands never tire of building new things, their eyes never cease looking for the next opportunity, and no other of the People are as quick to abandon their morals or their creed if profit is in the offing. After the Eon of Cinders, a Council was formed, lead by our savior, the wizard Bex. Humans were quick to press this advantage, in only a generation ten human families had grown to hold unprecedented power in the young lands the People were carving for themselves.

Ten families that would grow to become great merchants, then the nobility, then the royal blood of our oppressors.  And one bloodline among them was greater still, the cursed family called Bright.

Even now there are many tales of this family, a family of mighty heroes. All lies, of course, the ill-reflection of the first Emperor’s light shining into the past to aggrandize his forebears. But they were the first to unite the great cities of Cynus, the first to put the crown on their heads, the first to put their boot on the necks of the People.

We served at the beck and call of human masters. Races that they found comely were kept in foul bondage as concubines and bond-slaves, races they found not to their liking were shut out  and hunted, and dubbed ‘monsters’.  We prayed in our pain to the Balance, but the gods act as they will and waited many long years before they sent our deliverance.

He was a simple farmer. A half-orc, like me. His family was killed by Imperial power, a blade buried in his back he fell to the earth to bleed out his final moments, just as many had fallen to the arrogance and cruelty of the humans. 

But he did not die. My Lady of Stone lent her grace and his wounds closed. He pulled the sword from his own chest and stood up amongst the ashes of his lands.

Thistledown. Our savior, the Undying One. The one to lead the People, to pick us up from our bended knees and show us the path to our freedom.

And so it began, the Revolt. Small at first, like tiny sparks in the dry forest — but they spread and grew into a mighty inferno. We shook the pillars of heaven with our wrath, and pulled down the Brights and all the Great Houses of humanity. We sowed the fields of our world with human blood and reaped a harvest of liberty. We did not slaughter every human that we could find, though perhaps we should have. They are a vile race.

And so the Second Empire began, with Thistledown as our new Emperor – guided by a true Council of the People, as it was always meant to be.

And for a time peace was ours.

For a time.

I speak these words as you would wish, Jocasta of the Sand. Let the knowledge pass from me to the next, that these things never shall be forgotten.

–Davan Marlowe, Cleric of Jocasta