Chapter 1: The Seed of the Second Hope
I. Planet Magmar — 1336 A.S.
I’ve never been fond of fire. Not in life, not in death. I remember landing on Magmar for the first time, after two years in the space cruiser. While we were flying through the Great Empty, I felt like we would never get to that new planet they had promised us, with all that talk about Project Ignis and Satoshi’s perfect plan. Then we arrived on Magmar, and practically the whole darn planet was on fire. Imagine my bliss. It was still better than sitting in a small cell waiting on a mysterious promised land, unable to do anything to speed up the process. Still, it doesn’t take a genius to take a look at Magmar and figure out that it’s no place for humans to live.
Either way, even if I didn’t like the planet, I guess we did manage, in a way. We made it our home. I spent months in the Vulcanides, building the lava canals and the ponds where those Shades ended up setting camp. The Dark Forces damn them.
It still pains me to think of all the work we put into making this planet a home. After the Cloud wiped us all out and we came back to life, gasping for air, still thinking that we were choking on the toxic gas, it was hard not to think that maybe we were never meant to do it, to transform the planet’s landscape and bend it to our will. But Master Senved says the Dark Forces have a purpose for us, and I believe him. I will believe him even if I die a dozen times again. At the end of the day, so many centuries after the Cloud and the Return, it’s quite clear that there is no way we could have predicted it. And if ever there was a way, perhaps it is better for us to keep believing that there wasn’t. It would all hurt a lot more knowing we could have done something about it.
One truth is undeniable: we grew arrogant. We tamed this scorching hell of a planet, and we felt immortal and we got what we were asking for. Just not in the way we thought we would. There are few houses in Magmar with a mirror in them, but we all remember our true, human faces very well. And as Master Senved taught us, good riddance to them and our fragile bodies of flesh and blood. The vanity that doomed our race and our former home Planet Earth were the real curses, and we are free of it now. I will never be able to thank him for all that he’s given us, all that he’s given me, since the day he erected that makeshift temple near the main square of Tuzz. I began visiting the temple from the very beginning. So far we go, Master Senved and I.
II. Tuzz, Capital of Magmar — 1212 A.S.
I will not dwell on the horrors of the Cloud and the madness that ensued after the Return, a thousand years later. I already lived them once and I have no interest in living them again. Like most of my Undead brothers and sisters, I have to come to terms with the reality of our kind and embraced the guidance of the Dark Forces. And that’s exactly what I want to talk about.
After the Return, we all scattered throughout the Blackrock Plains, trying to find what little strength we could in numbers. That’s how cities like Bruluu, Khrem, and Bruk began to form, and of course, how the majestic capital of Tuzz, for centuries my home and the seat of the Haunted See.
Life on the Plains was tough. Many lost their minds and ran amok, attacking groups of wanderers while they attempted to build camps or small settlements. It didn’t take long before opportunists who fancied themselves fiercer than the bandits or the Vulcanides themselves talked the hopeless and terrified masses into bowing to them in exchange for protection. For the Dark Forces, was that a tumultuous, horrid time…
I was lucky enough to find myself among the community that founded Tuzz, the only one that didn’t buy the lies and empty promises of those self-serving grifters that would later call themselves Warlords. We helped each other, and we didn’t want to build our new life on the despair and suffering of others. Perhaps that’s why our settlement grew and thrived faster and better than any other, and why for so many years we kept ourselves apart from the petty squabbles of the Warlords. Until the refugees started flooding in from all over the Blackrock Plains, fleeing from either war or tyranny. Undead from all over Magmar — from Aag to Amahl, from Bruluu to Chamsk -, pilgrimed to Tuzz in search of a better life. One could say that’s how our capital began to take its current shape, but at the time, we were simply not prepared for it. There was no room or supplies for everyone, and the ugliest aspects of our kind began to resurface, the same defects that had doomed us when we had been human: selfishness, envy, greed… Tuzz was descending into chaos. I remember feeling the same way I had while in the space cruiser on the way to Magmar. Helpless, furious that I couldn’t do anything to help my people. I saw the streets of Tuzz slowly losing the life we had worked so hard to find again after a thousand years of slumber.
Until one day, Master Senved stood in the very center of the town’s main square. Back then, you would have been called a madman if you suggested that that little patch of land in between the blackstone huts would one day become Eternity Square. What it is today. And in that tiny patch of land, Master Senved began calling people to gather around him. That was the beginning of our civilization. Unfortunately, it would also have to be the beginning of the greatest war this planet has seen.
To be continued.
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