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Preface
“I introduce myself, Cheng Lai'Suki, translator and restorer of this book. A few years ago, when my friend Vao and I were crossing the Witherings on our way to Aeden Aqueous, a lucky fall led us to discover a hideout tucked away in an air pocket between two thick roots. The place was very roughly furnished with shelves, a desk and a small bed. Several objects were also strewn about the floor, including many books. Among these, one particularly intrigued me: The Sacred War, by Belenor Nebius. It was an old and battered collection, written in the ancient Zorai dialect. We also found a dagger with a finely chiseled black blade, and a set of seven dice, with between four and twenty sides that were not numbered, but engraved with fine intersecting lines.
For the next few months, I studied the book. It told a story from another time. It was a story set in the Old Lands more than a hundred years ago, after the kitins' Great Swarming had ravaged them and forced the people who lived there to flee to the lands we now occupy. This story was the story of the Black Mask, who in the wake of the devastation and his encounter with the Great Genitor, gathered survivors and began the Sacred War against the Karavan and its minions.
Although I have never been able to authenticate the historical content of this story, the author of the story has been answering questions that obsessed us, me and so many others since our childhood. Unfortunately, as you know, today's civilizations have little knowledge of the Old Lands, most of the information about them having been lost during the Great Swarm. Every document from that time is therefore a valuable source of knowledge. However, this epic tale, because of its setting, could just as well be a fictionalized account. After all, how can one take seriously the story of a black-masked Zorai, who traveled for a time in the company of the terrible Marauders, and who, invested with kamic powers, exterminated the faithful and the agents of the Karavan still present on these lands ravaged by the kitins?
No matter, such is the answer. Themes such as family, relation to faith, free will, and the search for our origins have moved me deeply in the story of the Sacred War. I am glad to have found this book, and I hope that by sealing its contents in an amber cube and depositing it in the Temple of Knowledge, many people will will be caught up by Belenor Nebius' tale, as I was. If it is possible that some decide to make this heretical text disappear, know that I remain in possession of the original manuscript.
I dedicate this work of restoration to the Sages, who will forever delude themselves, and to the disbanded guild of the Rôdeurs d'Atys, which I know to have been linked to this story in some way.
— Cheng Lai’Suki
Table of contents
- Chapter I - A Fate Paved with Glory
- Chapter II - Brotherhood
- Chapter III - Dying to Be Reborn
- Chapter IV - Sylvan Exile
- Chapter V - The Seed of Doubt
- Chapter VI - The Awakening
- Chapter VII - Slaying and Polishing
- Chapter VIII - Lies
- Chapter IX - Solitude
- Chapter X - Heroes (to come)
- Chapter XI - The Generation of Miracles (to come)
- Chapter XII - Family (to come)
- Chapter XIII - The Desert of a Hundred Perils (to come)
Acknowledgements (non diegetic)
“Thanks to Lai, who like Looï gave birth to Pü, is the one who allowed my ideas to bloom. Thanks to Namcha, Atys, God, the Law, the one who governs what is possible or not, the one who allowed me to anchor this story in the reality of Ryzom. Thanks to Nilstilar, who by sublimating the Form, helped me to transcend the Substance, and who like Sirgio di Rolo and Pü, sees in spite of himself his soul to link with the author's one. Thanks of course to all those who, in one way or another, have brought me advice and knowledge.
— The author