Essenash's Guide to Blood Curses

I have learned in my extensive travels that, in the East at least, it is customary to begin an epic tale with an invocation of one’s muses. To that effect, I invoke the name of Essenash:

Essenash the Spectacular.

Essenash, (formerly) of the Flying Citadel.

He of the Golden Bough, found via miracle by Lithilin the Splendid in the divine ancestral lands of the Procyonids across the Great Ocean.

To him I dedicate this, my autobiography.

I shall begin at the beginning. Not my beginning, but the beginning of everything: The antecedent of everyone whose name has ever graced our lips or who has been written about in any tome or parchment. The ones who came long, long before the first fledgeling mage drew the first rune in some dark bolthole.

Long before we strode the lands, conquered magicks, and warped nature to our various uses, prehistoric beasts plodded across the world. For interminable epoch after epoch, these creatures made the world their own in their... dumb way.

That is, until, two new Gods appeared.

Allow me to interject for a moment... don’t mind me, I simply wish to tell how I came across this information. Whilst meditating in the Tsavu Pass in the northern South Continent, I happened to create a sigil for fire to brew some tea.

The sigil for fire - one of the most basic and easy to stumble across - behaved strangely. Only I - an accomplished archmage - could have noticed its slight bubbles and waverings. Within the day I had uncovered that a blood curse had affected the land.

Imagine my astonishment when, whilst communing with the spirits of the curse, it called to my entire species!

Well, I shall delay no longer in my telling.

Eventually, through various perterbations in genetics and whathaveyou, two new Gods appeared, worshipped by two new subcategories of some even more ancient precursor had appeared: The Goddess Mammalia and, a few millenia later, the Goddess Avia.

Now, we have all heard of the Great Mother Goddess. These days she is rarely heard from, but when she first emerged from the lifestream, Mammalia had settled into a life of hardship. She had taught her adherents and children - for they were one and the same - to build burrows in silty riverbeds and avoid the colossal beings that thundered stupidly everywhere.

Don’t mind me once more: My research into this titanic class of being has been stymied at every turn, but the search continues!

Avia, meanwhile, was agile. Over eons, her scales had turned into feathers and her fingers into long struts for wings. She now sailed through the air, avoiding her siblings with the greatest of ease.

Avia and Mammalia both occupied vastly different territories: The sky and the turgid earth.

Oh, how the Celestial realm must have looked back then! I imagine more like a swamp instead of the bucolic and divine adornment it has taken now.

In any case, Avia had known of Mammlia for vast ages. Mammalia had barely changed since she had begun competing with Avia’s mother for space on our little rock - skittering from place to place, stealing the large creature’s eggs when possible, barely scraping by.

Don’t mind me and my constant interruptions, but to set the scene I must return to the blood curse: Please excuse my confusing back and forth. In any case, within my communion with the blood curse was Mammalia herself! Curling in her bolthole, protecting and feeding tiny breathing ones with her divine milk, I could hear her voice seeming to emanate from my very blood.

“My clever child,” she whispered to me. “How you have grown, and how warm it makes me to see my progeny thrive... But do not disturb this land, for it is the site of a great betrayal. Leave me be for now... I must tend to my young, for they are your progenitors.”

That was when I began to pick up more pieces of this puzzle that changed the face of the World. Through my studies of this blood curse, I discovered Avia - mother of the mysterious ‘Birds’ who I may now say are confirmed to have existed. Avia conspired with Mammalia to overthrow her mother.

Who, you may be asking, is the mother of Avia? This is a mystery that may only be solved by some kind of divination or hints that may be revealed later in this tome (or in a second tome available at all reputable archivists’)! But for now, all I know is that the mother of the Goddess Avia was... tremendous. Older than the seas. I can barely fathom what kind of creature she must have been.

In any case, Avia called down... some kind of cataclysm, with the assistance of Mother Mammalia. It must have been some titanic conflagration, for it destroyed the mysterious mother of Avia and all her followers and children.

Otherwise she of the mighty thunderstep would still be here, I suppose, although the true nature of the Gods is a mystery to even one such as I.

I was awoken from my mediation at Tsavu by the sound of a roar. This was hundreds of years ago when dragons were frequent. One of the local brown dragons - native to the desert sands of the region - had grown restless and had compelled a clan of Sh’ra to attack a nearby settlement of mammals in its name.

Sh’ra, in case the reader is not aware, are the draconian offspring of some crocodilians and other reptiloids: growing even larger than their already-large and scaled brethren.

I hid for a while using an invisibility enchantment while the army approached, waiting for my moment. I watched as the reptilians, followed by a much larger draconian, marched past my meditation rock with dead looks in their eyes and crude stone weapons in their huge claws.

The brown dragon brought up the rear. It sniffed the air, and then twisted its long, slender head from side to side.

“Essenash!” The bull-dragon roared. “I know you are here! Do not interfere in my plans again, you puny furball!”

“Don’t mind me, majestic one!” I yelled, magically throwing my voice to a nearby cliff using one of my back-up wands enchanted for such a purpose.

The dragon huffed but seemed satisfied with my fake deference. I rolled my eyes however, knowing full well - as the reader probably will not - that brown dragons are the weakest of the draconian line, using brute strength instead of any breath weapons and only living a few millenia.

That’s when I communed once more with Mammalia as the mightest section of the Sh’ra army and the dragon were moving right through Tsavu Pass - the approximate spot where the abominable pact between Avia and Mammalia was sealed.

This time when I communed, it was different. I could feel the tension between myself and the great mother goddess.

“Why do you interrupt me once more, my child? I asked you to let me be!” She said angrily. “And who have you brought to my den?!”

“Don’t mind me, my lady!” I struggled to impart, gritting my little fangs in concentration as the mother of all mammals tried to sever my connection with her.

At that moment, as the ground began to shake, I could hear roaring and yelping down the path. I kept my connection longer.

“What is the meaning of this?!” Mammalia yelled, pulling at my mind harder and harder. “Young whelp! Young intruder!”

The ground shook even harder as my vision began to redden at the edges and the roaring and yelling began to subside. That was when I released my grip and fell to the ground, barely missing a sharp rock.

When I came to, I found that I was alive - which was a great relief, as being brought back to life is quite annoying. I grabbed my staff, which had not been stolen - and which had been enchanted against such an outcome in any case - and made my way down the path to the Pass itself to see that a rift in the sandstone had opened up and swallowed a large part of the army. There were large, scrambling claw marks as well, indicating that my ‘nemesis’ (I put ‘nemesis’ in quotes here to denote that he was, in fact, not a nemesis but barely a nuisance) had flown away just in time.

Perhaps in some future tome I shall begin with a dedication to Mammalia - the first God to truly impress me.

For now, dear reader, lend me your eyes for a few hundred more chapters as I, Essenash the Spectacular, give you a guided tour of this bizarre world of magic and intrigue.