The angels of darkness made the Roof of the World their home, and after deceiving the followers of light who had eagerly welcomed them, they wielded the ancient and dreadful weapons of Heaven and vanquished those who rejoiced in the light.
In those first dark years, there were none at first among the dark ones who could descend to the lower lands and bear the heat, and the lords of mankind, their true daughters, and their consorts rejoiced that this was so.
For the angels of temptation bore blades that slashed through armor and loosed arrowheads that treated iron bucklers as if they were rotten wood, and they raised a mighty stronghold called Westwind, anchored on Tower Black, that rivaled Freyja in power. And the followers of light, who had ages earlier forsaken the powers of the heavens, relinquished the barren heights to the dark angles and their evil powers.
The dark angels were women who made a mockery out of hearth and home, who reviled men and laughed as they destroyed all the armies of the Westhorns sent against them, as they forced the great lords to heap dust and ashes upon their own heads and to bend their knees and pay tribute, and to stand helplessly as their daughters were tempted from their hearths and consorts.
Yet an even more deadly evil was to flow from the Roof of the World, and none knew it, from the mighty Nylan, smith of the angels, he who builded the Tower Black, he who forged the blades of night and the arrows of the storms …
| [Preface] |
| (The Chaos Balance, 11) |
Disdaining the Angel Ryba, the smith Nylan, knowing the fate of the once-mighty hunter Gerlich, made his way from Westwind, with all the stealth and craft that befitted the one who had re-created the fires of Heaven and the rains of death.
The soul-singer Ayrlyn accompanied him, and a child, and far more harm than mighty Ryba did these three portend for all of Candar, and all lands, even unto the ends of the world …
The Angel and Marshal of Westwind was sore vexed, and sent she her guards after the three, but, against the dark arts of the smith and the singer, they could not prevail, and in time the three came to the ancient and powerful land of Lornth.
The people of Lornth closed their shutters as the angels passed, and feared as the dark shadows crossed their doors.
The leader of the council of Lornth was a woman, and guileless, and, beguiled by Nylan and the sweet songs of the dark singer and the seeming innocence of the child, she offered them respite, and opened her land unto these dark ones, despite the counsel of those who cautioned against what would come from the angels.
And there, for time, abided the mighty smith and the singer of dark songs, and the child.
| [Preface] |
| (The Chaos Balance, 142) |
In the mighty city of Cyad dwelt the mages of the white rainbow, whose ships fueled on fire and spanned the seas, whose white marble palaces glittered in the sun of contentment, and who pursued the knowledge of the distant stars.
Horseless wagons, harnessing the power of chaos to the will of man and mage, traversed the polished stone roadways smoother than glass. Those great firewagons sped more swiftly than the wind, bringing crops and goods and wealth to all of Cyador.
All were content in the order kept by the white mages, and seldom were necessary the shimmering shields and burnished blades of the mighty Mirror Lancers, for there was peace.
In those days had Cyador allowed Lornth privileges in the Grass Hills, among them the privilege to remove metals from the earth. Seeing this privilege, the smith Nylan, in his guile, asked of the regents of Lornth why they existed upon the suffrage of Cyad, when for generations they had slaved and the mages of Cyad had done nothing with the bright copper buried in the Grass Hills.
Those of Lornth pondered his words long into the deeps of the night and recalled that the Grass Hills were yet those of the Lord of Cyad.
As they pondered, then sang Ayrlyn the soul-singer of that darkness of despair that would follow when Cyad asked back what was its due, and when Lornth could no longer mine the bright copper of the Grass Hills.
What can be done, asked the leader of the Lornians, for she was a woman and trusting. How shall we hold to the delvings of our fathers and forefathers that have sustained us through the years?
In response to such questions, the dark angel Nylan offered a great wizardry against which the might of Cyador and her mages would not prevail, and, persuaded by the wily Nylan, the council of Lornth said, it shall be so, and they turned their eyes from the evil that Nylan proposed.
| [Preface] |
| (The Chaos Balance, 198-199) |
… and when the White Lancers of Cyad had come at last to the copper mines of the north, those of Lornth threw down their picks and shovel and their blades, and fled into the Grass Hills, for they well knew that the copper mines were not theirs, and they were sore afraid of the righteous wrath of the Lord of Cyador.
The White Lancers rebuilt and refurbished the mines, and brought order and discipline back into the Hills of Grass, nor did they afflict the peoples nor their hamlets.
The wily Nylan, like the mountain cat who cannot face the the well-prepared hunter in the light of day, advised the guileless council of Lornth behind heavy doors, saying, If the Cyadorans cannot eat and they cannot sleep, they will not hold to the mines that your fathers and forefathers have worked. And they will depart.
The delvers and diggers of Cyad labored long and with great effort to bring forth the copper from the mines, trusting in the honor of the Lornians and in the forces of the most honorable White Lancers.
For in that time, none believed that even the wily Nylan would stoop to slaughtering innocent horses, nor to murdering hapless wagoners, nor to raising fireballs in the night and dropping them upon lancer and digger alike while they slept. All this did Nylan, and more, terrible and dishonorable deeds better lost in tumult of time. Yet remember we must, for this is how the dark angels came to power in Candar …
| [Preface] |
| (The Chaos Balance, 307-308) |
… and when mighty Cyad asked that her lands might remain hers, that her gifts to Lornth be remembered in honor and peace, Nylan spoke quietly, saying that the legions of Cyad would rain destruction upon Lornth, and that the white legions must needs be repulsed.
Will you have Cyad take all that for which you and your fathers and forefathers have worked and earned, asked the dark Nylan. And all of Lornth said that Cyad must be destroyed. From the shimmering cities of order and their peoples to the polished stone roadways smoother than glass and the great firewagons that sped upon them more swiftly that the wind, Cyad should be no more.
None would stand and state that Cyad had been kind and just, and that her peoples lived in justice and peace. For such truth was struck down by the dark mage Nylan with his black hammer, and also by the dark Ayrlyn and her lute so that none would know the grace of Cyad.
The Mirror Lancers burnished their shields and lifted their lances, and the sound of the hoofs of their steeds echoed through rocks and stones of all Candar. The white mages, powerful in the paths of peace and wary of war, girded their robes and invoked the hopes of peace … but all were doomed.
For Nylan, the dark angel, again lifted his hands, and he unbound the Accursed Forest of Naclos, and the forest rewarded him, and rendered back unto him the fires of Heaven and the rains of death. And Nylan laughed and cast those fires and rain across the west of Candar. And Ayrlyn sang songs that wrenched soul from soul and heart from body.
The Mirror Lancers found their light lances turned upon them, and the very earth rose and smote them, and the righteousness of the white mages was for naught as their glasses exploded before them, and death rained upon all the armsmen of Cyad, until none stood.
The very ground heaved, and belched, and
{swallowed
the great cities of Cyad and Fyrad, and the winds flattened distant Summerdock
so that no stone remained
upon
another.
}?
The Grass Hills were
seared
into the Stone Hills, so dry that nothing lives there to this day
.
{And Lornth rejoiced … until its time had come …
}?
In WHITE ORDER the previous 2 paragraphs read as:
The very ground heaved, and belched, and … the Grass
Hills were
seared
into the Stone Hills, so dry that nothing lives there to this day …
The few white mages who remaind, they slipped away to the east, far across the Westhorns, and even beyond the Easthorns, fearing that the west of Candar was no place for the goodness of white.
Indeed, they were sore justified in their fears, for the demon women of Tower
Black, the heart of the evil kingdom of Westwind, grasped the Westhorns, as a
constricting snake seizes its prey. Their metalled roads pinioned the very peaks,
and all trade bowed to their black blades.
The dark forests of Naclos swelled back over their former domain, those lands that the ancient white mages had freed, and the forest once again swallowed the lands in darkness. Therein dwelt the evil druid Nylan and the songmage Ayrlyn, and their offspring made Naclos their own, and the shadow of their powers shaded
all of Candar from the Westhorns to the Great Western Ocean.
… and in the fullness of time came the white mages to Fairhaven, to begin again the struggle to reclaim all of Candar from the grip of darkness …
| [Preface] |
| (The Chaos Balance, 441-442, The White
Order, 42-43) |
Unto the generations stood the black tower on the heights of the Westhorns, and from it issued forth the demon warriors and their blades, controlling trade and using the very blood of those who displeased them to create the mortar that bound their stone roads.
Nor did they suffer any grown man to survive upon their heights, discarding him like an empty husk of maize once they had wrested his seed from him …
For all this wickedness, Westwind survived and prospered, until the day when the Guild at Fairhaven sent a hero to Westwind, a stranger who beguiled the Marshall of the heights with song. Yet once she had borne son and daughter, the Marshall laughed and sent away that hero. In her evilness, she had her guards slay him in the depths of the Westhorns.
That son, who was called Creslin, grew strong, and cunning as his mother the Marshall, and before he was grown to the age of death or exile, he sneaked away from the heights, taking the talismans of darkness that had held the forces of white and right at bay for long generations.
In time, he came to Fairhaven, pretending to be but a poor soldier, but the brethren were not deceived, and they discovered his deception and captured him and bound him to be a stoneworker on the great highway, far from Fairhaven.
The powers of darkness, in their sinuous way, corrupted a young women and a white mage from the far west, deceiving her into thinking that she was but escaping from the captivity of darkness, and enticed this mage Megaera into freeing the black demon that Creslin had become …
| [Preface] |
| (The White Order, 60) |
Under the spells and songs of Creslin, who descended from the black Nylan and the dark songmage Ayrlyn, Megaera persuaded her cousin, the Duke of Montgren, to give both herself and Creslin refuge, for the white brethren had pursued the two and sought to bind them before they brought yet more darkness unto all of Candar.
In his weakness the duke brought his cousin and her dark leige Creslin under his protection, and Creslin used the refuge at Vergren to build his powers, until darkness infested every stone of that ancient keep, until the very sun was kept at bay.
In the depths of that keep, Creslin took Megaera for consort, and bound her to him with the dark tie that meant, should he die, so, too, would she. Such blasphemy of light and goodness was too great even for the duke, and he fell into a stupor.
Fearing that, without the duke's protection, the keep would be opened to the forces of light, Creslin and Magaera fled over the northern hills.
As he knew what the evil pair might bring upon Candar, the Viscount of Certis sent forth a host, but Creslin seized the winds of the north and pummeled that force with spears of ice and hammers of frost, and he slew from the depths of a magic fog the fair young wizard that advised the lancers of Certis, and only a handful of those lancers ever returned to Jellico.
When Creslin and Magaera reached the port of Tryhavven, there they seized a ship of the duke's, binding the crew with darkness and forcing them to carry the two dark mages across the gulf to the desert isle of Recluse …
| [Preface] |
| (The White Order, 77-78) |
… and when they had come to the desert isle that was Recluse, Creslin the black slew all those of the duke's garrison as who would not swear unyeilding loyalty to him, and the remainder he bound with the chains of dark order.
Once this evil deed was accomplished, more of the dark mages appeared, as if from the shadows, and stood behind Creslin, and gloom darkened the very sun.
A handful of stalwart blades, seeing the powers of Creslin and the darkness that cloaked him and the faceless dark mages, swore such a powerful oath, yet resolved to stand firm against the evil, seeking a means by which they could return Recluse to the white fold, and peace and prosperity.
Megaera the wily, putting on perfumes and essences, enchanted them, and then, once under her spell, when they revealed their stalwart nature and fidelity to the Duke of Montgren and to the White Way of Truth, she laughed.
She turned her powers upon them and burned them, saying to all that such stalwarts had attempted to force themselves upon her, and that she had but defended her virtue.
Creslin and the dark mages declared that it was so, and so it was recorded, save
in the true records of the Guild …
| [Preface] |
| (The White Order, 126) |
The isle of Recluse was hotter than the Sand Hills raised by the treachery of Nylan, and drier as well, and not even the sorceries of the dark mages nor the fires of Magaera could bring forth water from the dry earth and barren rock.
Children shriveled and died; despite even the spells laid by Creslin upon his followers, more and more voices were raised in anguish and in pain, asking why Creslin had brought them to such a desolate place.
He answered them not, but withdrew into himself, then sent forth ships to plunder the seas. Yet the plunder would not buy water, nor food enough …
Why should all the gentle rain fall upon Candar and upon the lands of our enemies, and those who have sworn to destroy us? asked Creslin of Magaera. Why should we not turn the great winds so that the rains return to Recluse as they once must have fallen?
Even the faceless black mages shivered as they heard Creslin's words whisper across the barren rocks and bleached sands.
Yet none would raise his voice when Creslin and Magaera set forth to raise the water and the skies and fought the winds of Heaven, nor was a word spoken when fires blazed out of the sky and floods of water cascaded across Recluse.
The fires burned across dry Montgren and the crops of Certis. Even the hardy oilseeds withered and died, and the forests of Sligo blazed through the long summer.
The floods subsided, and the rains fell upon Recluse, and Creslin and Magaera rejoiced, never looking into a glass or caring about the destruction which they had wrought upon Candar …
| [Preface] |
| (The White Order, 207) |
The struggle between the white and the black, between the way of rightness and the powers of darkness, will continue so long as the world endures, for even as the Guild has banished one twisted vine of darkness, yet another springs from the wickedness of the world.
When the ancient white mages had imprisoned the dark forests of Naclos and created the great and peaceful land of Cyador, they believed that they had banished darkness forever, but the demon powers reached and drew mighty champions from far beyond the world, and the blackmage Nylan sundered the prison created by the righteousness of Cyador and freed the dark forest.
When Westwind sundered the lands of the west, the white mages of long ago rebuilt the lands of the east into a bastion of light and prosperity, and founded the city of light itself, a beacon unto all the world that light, like the sun from which it comes, always conquers the darkness.
Then, after years of struggle, the white brethren of the Guild at last overthrew the tyranny of Westwind. Yet before the last stone had fallen, before the last female demon had fallen on those defiled heights, the black wizard Creslin created another haven for darkness upon the barren isle of Recluse.
In the fullness of time, when Recluse is sundered and split in twain, then, too,
will yet another black fortress arise, for never can darkness be overcome, but
only conquered and held at bay so long as the right-thinking continue their efforts …
Yet, we should not consider such efforts as futile, for with each effort, the powers of light have increased and grown more able to provide peace, prosperity, and the providence of life to those who follow the path of light
| [Preface] |
| (The White Order, 263-264) |
When the winds warmed and the rains and snow fell less heavily upon the Wethorns, fewer needed the protection of Westwind, and the summer heat prostrated those of the chill heights, and their crops and their flocks.
Lacking the dark talismans of order borne of to Recluse by Creslin, the Marshal of Westwind attempted to persuade the folk of Sarronyn and Southwind to stand behind her and to offer more coins to her.
As they feared the double-edged twin blades of the Westwind guards, those of the lands beyond the Westhorns pledged their allegiance yet again to the Marshal.
Yet even as they pledged, they gathered together in the darkness they had brought to the once fair-lands of the west, and they plotted as haow they would bring down the Marshal and split the plunder laid up over the generations upon the Roof of the World.
For honor had they none, even after all the years that Westwind had protected their dishonor from the efforts of the Guild to redress the ancient wrongs.
Following their custom of dishonor, they invited the Marshal to Southwind, where she might receive gold and tribute and grain. The Marshal traveled from her black tower to the great banquet, and flower petalsrained upon her, and then arrows from behind the screens of flowers.
The Marshal had not been withought forethought, and had left upon the Roof of the World her daughter the Marshalle and the mighty arms master of the gaurd. And the Marshalle gathered together all the guards of Westwind and vowed that those responsible for the devastation would pay.
As the Marshalle prepared her retribution, there came a traveling minstrel to Westwind, a minstrel known of old as of trust and worth—save the minstrel, for all that his face was of old and his voice as well, was not as he had beeen, but enslaved to the tyrant of Sarronyn.
As he sang, the minstrel lit a candle, a marvelous candle wrought as a model of Westwind——and then the candle exploded with the ancient fires of the West, and claimed the Marshalle and the arms master, and the senior guards of Westwind.
Yet this treachery did not repay the tyrant, for the remaining guards, they packed the treasures of Westwind, and they took their blades and cut a trail of blood to the sea.
There they seized a ship and forced it to Recluse, where they laid all the coins
of centuries at the feet of Creslin and swore their blades to his service …
| [Preface] |
| (The White Order, 323-324) |
| [Preface] |
| (The White Order, ) |
( <book of ?> Chaos subsection
) ?
All life compose itself of chaos and order. Yet too many
forget that without chaos there is no life. Far within the earth, chaos abides,
giving
warmth and life to the depths beneath the lands and oceans.
The very light of the sun is white chaos, and it, too, brings life. Within the
very light sunlight are all the colors of white, the pure chaos from which springs
all life …
The sun can be seen but by solely its own light, thus all that is under the sun
can
only be because of the chaos of the sun. Even the wisest of mages cannot
perceive any portion of all that exists on and under the earth itself except
through the operation of chaos.
To claim that order is the staff of life, as some acolytes have done since the
ancient heretic Nylan, is not only false but folly, for the sole perfect order
in life is death.
Even a blade or a sheild must be forged through the heat of chaos and weilded
by a man whose very lifeblood is heated by chaos.
Chaos is the foundation of power and strength. Mastering chaos is the first step
in controlling power. Power is the foundation of all lands and towns that would
prosper, and those who would have their home-lands free of invaders and devastation
must then seek the mastery of chaos …
| [Preface] |
| (The White Order, 15-16) |
A mage must use order to channel chaos, for nothing else can
contain the pure flame of chaos, yet he must not be constrained by that order,
lest his powers to use chaos for good be turned to naught …
| [Preface] |
| (The White Order, 139) |
…there be two types of healing, the use of order
to strengthen the flesh and the use of chaos to destroy all manner of illnesses
arising from whence the elements of the world mortify the flesh … in
the second, the mage must ascertain the very source of the mortification … his
energies must but destroy that source and none other, for any other destruction
will most assuredly destroy also the patient …
| [Preface] |
| (The White Order, 139) |
… those marshalling the fires of the air must understand that the aether itself acts as though it were a function of order, pressing in upon the energies of chaos focused by the mage …
… so that even a line of chaos fire will reassemble itself into a globe of such fundamental fire when hurled through its own power over even the shortest of distances …
| [Preface] |
| (The White Order, 140) |
… light, being the spirit and manifestation of chaos, has neither order nor more than minimal cohesion … but embodies all the power of primal chaos in a manifestation that must be weaker than its source in order for those objects on which it falls to survive …
… the challenge facing any mage is to strengthen the power of chaos embodied in light without reducing light to mere streams of color without true power …
| [Preface] |
| (The White Order, 236) |
| [Preface] |
| (The White Order, ) |
| “Great Historie of Candar” |
… yet Relyn was skilled with words and his blade, for the black demon Nylan had given him a mystic blade and an iron hand in return for his good right hand, which Ryba the evil had sliced off to place Relyn in bondage to Nylan …
After the battles for the Westhorns, Relyn made his way eastward, beguiling all who would listen with sing—gifted words and honeyed phrases.
… Relyn, traitor as he was to the great heritage of Cyador, not only built the first black Temple east of the Westhorns, but spent his years preaching against the truth of the old Empire.
Where the first Temple rose is uncertain, for it was rightly burned by Fernard the Great as an abomination …
Later, Relyn fled from Gallos through ancient Axalt and came to Montgren and spent many hours with the shepherds who lived there … with him came the teachings of the black demon Nylan and the forbidden songs Ayrlyn …
… and Relyn brought them the way of forging the iron that burns chaos and cannot be broken, and the shepherds turned their forests into charcoal and their hills into gaping pits and charnel heaps and wrought the blades that severed souls … and bloody Montgren came into being …
| “Sciences of the Heavens” |
… not always understood that all the stars were not studded on a distant and concave surface, but are scattered at immense distances from one another in space so limitless as to be inconceivable …
| (The White Order, 108-109) |
| |
… stars, established and scattered as they are at vast distances from the sun, cannot receive the fires of chaos from the sun, and thus, must contain their own founts of chaos, which appear as points of light in the night sky …
| “The Management of Offal” |
… the heavy greases, be they cooking tallow or renderer's leavings or … reform in a weak order upon exposure to heat or chaos or heat created by the chaos within chaos—rich wastes … such scattered blocks of order combine with detritus of a less solid nature to impede the flow of fluids necessary for evacuation …
… odoriferous as they may appear, night soil and animal droppings retain but a weak order and will dissolve in the presence of water into a liquid which can be purified through the application of simple techniques …