ReopeningOfTheDoors

Once upon a time, our World was visited by beings of great power, and there were disruptions in the land and sea, including, it is thought, the creation of the RiftLines?. But for millennia, these greater powers have been quiet, and the peoples of the sea, land, and air created their own civilizations after their own fashions. Great MithrilEagles were tamed, giving the highlanders mastery of the air and a way to strike back against the aerial predators that caused the uplanders such grief. After mastering the mountains, the HighCourt took lordship of the lowlands and turned its focus to the PilgrimageOfTheChords, the craft of LightningBottles and their successive refinements, and commerce with the DeepCourt.

The ReopeningOfTheDoors shook us to our foundations. At first it was series of plagues of unknown creatures invading us from we knew not whence. When we found the sources, the ThreeGargoyles were sent to seal and defend these openings. But the plagues of beasts were not all. The ancient creatures of power who had shaped our heights and depths, who we had thought were myths, were indeed real, but had little thought for our world except as a way station, a refuge, or a place where ancient relics were hidden, a tool or a toy. So small we seemed in their eyes, a world within a glass globe upon a table, a keepsake or a token to be used and tossed away. We are not sure that any WardenOfTheGrandStair? could ever be called a friend; rather they were abrupt, peremptory, creatures of subtle humor, great power, and great impunity, leaving they-cared-not-what in their wake.

Until we discovered the messengers from Erde, and until we discovered that some of us were WalkersOfTheStair?.

-- By LilyQuillpot

Commentary, footnotes, disputes, refutations, addenda, quibbles, but-actuallies, yes-ands:

At this point I'd be fine if the Doors close, really. Erde doesn't call to me anymore.

-- JuneLaveau

Wither the tide turns, the fronds turn also, and from a broad vantage one sees the tide, the water, the fronds, the people, as all the same. Indeterminately flowing back, flowing forth, shaping time, changing names, changing who we are.

Long ago, so long, too long ago, we know that the mouth of the leviathan did bear us onto shore and sink again, sink so low. We pined for its embrace again, and dove to the water, dove as deep as we dared go and it was not found, so we were lost.

It is a memory I sing to you, as my teacher sang to me.

-- HalloaGrisau