Welcome to Gaia! ::

part one :: in the beginning



... But first, let us go back further, to the days before the rise of the great gods and rulers of men and beasts, before the era of those who would rule the worlds. Back... to the beginning.

Here, at the start of all things.

At that time, there was only Absence, the essence of the void, the true meaning of the word nothing. But within the Absence rose a deep and primordial power, Chaos, and with him came the power of Will and of Action; the desire to create and the ability to do so. But even with such a vast canvas as the Absence, there was no inspiration, and so the worlds remained unformed.

Then, as Chaos drifted in the void, there rose beside him a bright spark in the darkness. With her came the power of Imagination and Creativity, and she was called Dream. The two great Founding Powers came together and, with Chaos' Will and Dream's Imagination, filled the Absence with light and with Being. And thus did everything come into existence.

Chaos and Dream took great delight in this, for they found together they completed each other; ability and desire, skill and inspiration. So they continued further in their partnership and created still more; beings of light and of shadow, of fire and water, and all these things sprang into being by their twin power. Thus were the Gods and their domains born.

The Gods were many, and young, but flush with new power; yet Chaos and Dream remained wild and strong. And so from them came the final of the great Founding Powers, their strongest children, so powerful that they were beyond Gods in their own right - Time, he that lays forth the path of gods and men, and Destiny, she that guides the movements of gods and men.

Chaos, Dream, Time, and Destiny; the four Founding Powers upon whom the foundation of all worlds was laid.

And so the young gods prospered, and Chaos and Dream took delight in them. They warred, and allied, and spun great stories under Destiny's guiding hand. They came even to build a city of their own, called Tiers Lea - where the gods discovered each other and their worlds below, finding what it means to be worshipped and to rule. This city was filled with activity, with alliances and discussion.

Everything lived and grew as the gods too, were inspired and took the will to create into their own hands, forming worlds of their own. All was bright and new, and all prospered. Dream floated serenely above it all in peace and happiness, and Chaos moved among his children with a powerful and active joy, speaking with gods and men alike.

So it went, for thousands of Time's years.

And then, one sudden day, everything changed.

Nobody quite knew how it happened, or why, but Chaos changed. No more the jovial and laughing craftsman, the eager ear and the sly smile - all that was gone in one terrible instant.

In the place of the Founding Power they once knew was a mindless force for destruction - for that which creates may also destroy - and this changed Chaos struck out, obliterating several worlds without any apparent provocation.

When a group of the gods approached him, seeking an explanation, they too were destroyed. Chaos had become mad, unstoppable, a raging force of anger and utter destruction... his previous good nature gone without a trace. All attempts at parley or even at calming him failed completely, with all beings who tried to reason with him also brought to ashes. Not even Time nor Destiny could stall him, and of Dream there was no sign to be found.

There was a desperate meeting in Tiers Lea, a convocation of all the gods from large to small, be they called 'gods' by men or 'demons' or any other name - all the beings of power save the Founding Ones came together in a frantic peace, their previous squabbles forgotten in the face of Chaos' madness.

As Chaos' rage continued to burn, his destruction spreading across the face of all worlds... they concocted a desperate plan. A plan to stop him, to seal him away, since they could not dream of killing him. Perhaps he could not be destroyed, but he could be stopped.

And that is what they did - all the little powers of all worlds, working together, managed to seal him in the remaining Absence, the place of Nothing that is between all worlds. Many, many of them died in the attempt, their power and substance going to create the seal - and those who did not die were severely weakened, much of their strength burned away from them. But the seal, and the barrier realm known as the Spirit Realm that lies between it and all worlds, remains to this day.

The seal was intended to hold until some attempt at parley could be made, but as before all their attempts to reason with Chaos met with great rage, so the crazed Power was left alone. Eventually, the gods created a guardian to watch the seal and turned nervously to their own affairs - for they still had followers to worry about, and alliances, and the immediate threat was gone, was it not?

As time passed and the seal continued to hold, the gods began to forget. New gods came into the world who had not seen Chaos' fury, and they could not understand. And within the seal, Chaos himself seemed to grow quiet and still, perhaps even falling into hibernation. And so it went, until now the gods blindly trust that their seal will hold - it has done so for so very, very long... surely it will continue.

And so there is nothing to worry about, they say. They are so very busy with their own affairs, after all.


-- from the Tales of the First Days, as penned by the servant Ioriel of Tiers Lea

part three :: chaos reawakened


The problem with the Fa'e is that their summoning, their very creation, defied the laws of the multiverse. And nobody, no matter how powerful they may be, can do that without angering something. Call it karma if you will, but there is always an answer to such actions.

In this case, the answer was the stirring of that old and ancient power. Chaos, though locked away behind the Barrier of the Spirit Realm for thousands upon thousands of years, began to make himself known once more. Perhaps it was the touch of the Fa'e that roused him from his reverie. Maybe it was Airi, or another power entirely.

Whatever it was, Chaos began to move.

Though he himself could not break free - the Barrier was not that far gone, and with the realm's guardian reborn as a Fa'e and maintaining the seal once more, he could not outright destroy it as he wished. However, something in him remembered his past, it seems - cracked and crazed though his memory was - and the power of creation. Though warped and mangled, that power still existed in a twisted form.

So, Chaos spun echoes of himself in the Absence into form, and named them Legion. The Legion numbered in the thousands, and ranged from the mighty and wise generals to weak-minded drones who could only take and follow the most basic orders.

Using his full might, Chaos forced the Legion through the Barrier, where they fell to the worlds below. Most of the Legion were merely shades and spirits with no bodies of their own, so they had to posess others in order to take on form.

The Generals, following orders and moving with cunning, took their followers and vanished, unseen. The drones were given commands - follow the Fa'e. Seek the blood of Airi. Hunt them, if the chance permits. And watch. Always watch.

The Fa'e have had several encounters with Legion's drones, and survived them all - sometimes unscathed, sometimes not. Conrad, the cheerful wanderer, had the misfortune to be hunted by one of the Generals, and barely escaped only through the intervention of another. Several of the Lost Children of Fa'e were destroyed entirely by Legion, with only their blackened bones remaining to show they had lived at all.

Nobody but Chaos knows what his purpose is, why he focuses so on the Fa'e... and what the Generals of Legion are doing, or even how many there are. But they are here, and they are free.

part five :: the end of the quiet years


After so much panic and fear, so much struggle to find the Lost Children - things became quiet.

Chaos was not moving. There were no more Lost Children to be found. A few quiet weeks became months. Months became years. Life went on, and the Fa'e adjusted to a peaceful life - or at least, as peaceful as it was possible to be, with their own threats and challenges to face. So tame these days seemed to be, no one quite realized that Chaos might not be still. And when the danger came, it was as unforeseeable as it was crushing.

It was not the Fa'e who were attacked this time, but their Guardians. All at once, in the middle of the night. Many Guardians were killed; others injured, their bonds broken. Some lucky ones were unaffected, but no Fa'e was left untouched by the experience. And then, when the chaos was at its peak, disaster struck anew as the Absence, the space between dimensions and the cage which holds Chaos, advanced suddenly onto Gaia, invading the Fa'e HQ and forcing out its inhabitants. Only Airi, secluded in her glade, did not escape.

Following this terrible night, the Fa'e began to have dreams; and when they awoke, each had a mysterious riddle written onto a scrap of paper, written in someone else's handwriting. Working with one another, they came to realize there were at least four different kinds of handwriting - but what could the clues mean? With so many Fa'e out of touch, there were so few clues available - can the riddle (or riddles?) behind them be solved?

To be continued.


- ???

part seven :: as yet unwritten

part nine :: as yet unwritten

part eleven :: as yet unwritten

part thirteen :: as yet unwritten