Ancient history

From Crossroads Wiki

Crossroads. A land of possibilities, set on an island in the middle of a ring of islands, each separated by magic from the other, with the isle of Gateway and Crossroads city the port in between.

This, then, is the story of how the isles came to be, the tales that children know.

Legend tells of a time before Crossroads existed, when The Lord of the Abyss ruled the seas and the people were naught but slaves to its will. Demons, giants, dragons, ghouls, and creatures too dark to imagine feasted on men, fouling the very land on which they stood and enslaving all life. It was a time of torment, a darkness from which rose a Champion, blessed by Providence to defeat the evil that ravaged the lands.

The Empire of the Lord of the Abyss was a spot of terror for all those who lived on the lands near it. Slaves were captured from Tyr and Tolek, from Pais de Leuvier and Abayoshu, from Avanna and beyond. The Demon Empire stood for ages untold before Providence heard the call of Her people. Bards tell of many reasons why it was that Providence rose then, but not before; some claim Providence Herself was a captive of the Abyss, and still others that the Lord of the Abyss was a punishment for Man's sins, but whatever the reason, none challenge the fact that the Demon Empire was a place of horror and suffering for the humans enslaved there.

Until the rise of the Champion.

He was a young man, the Champion, with long, flaxen hair and deep emerald eyes. Powerfully built, he was taken by the Demons on his twentieth birthday, to participate in their most gruesome sport - the Games. The Games were a vile entertainment for demonkind - men forced to battle creatures of darkness to the death; weaponless, armorless, ill-fed and weak, the men stood no chance against their mortal enemies. The seas ran red with the blood of men slaughtered to this purpose.

This Game was to be different though. As the Champion strode forth, Power pulsed through his veins - a power strong enough to defeat even the mightiest of the demon overlords. His first battle in the Games was also his last - and the last that would ever be - and yet he struck not one blow against his oppressors. Confidently, the minstrels say, the Champion entered the Arena and crossed without stopping to its very center - and there he called forth the Gateway.

The Gateway was birthed in the depths of the sea, a whirlpool of immense power that crashed over the small island in the center of the Isles, where the Demons made their sport, and sucked the spawn of the Abyss into a vortex of pure, glittering energy. None were spared - demonkind was powerless to resist the pull of the Gateway. For hours, it seemed, the whirlpool raged, and all the while the Champion stood in the center of the now-ruined arena, his arms uplifted to the skies, while Armageddon raged around him. And when it was over, still he stood, in a silence that was so encompassing he could hear his own heartbeat. And the Gateway shimmered, suspended in a fluctuating oval before him.

Then did the Champion raise his arms once more, and the ground beneath his feet trembled, and shook, and rose from the waters of the sea. Higher and higher the earth rose, the waters churning with rabid froth around the edges, until the land had grown of a sufficient size to harbor the Gateway and the Keepers, and then all was still. And the Champion set the Gateway into the earth, in a room hewn from solid stone, and caused a castle to arise around it, that the Keeper should be ever-close to guard against the return of the Lord of the Abyss.

To the waters themselves did the Champion turn. The seas responded to his call, forging new, fast currents that resisted navigation, drawing ships into their path. With each subsequent isle raised, the Champion surrounded it in a barrier unseen to guarantee all transit must pass through Gateway Isle. In such a way did the Champion ensure that the Keeper would never desert his post, for should the Gateway be unguarded, then surely would the Lord of the Abyss reign once more.

And then the Champion retired to the castle he had caused to be, and he was the first Keeper, and the first Emperor, and all others are descended from him. For five hundred years the Keepers have safeguarded the Isles from the return of the Abyss and, for five hundred years, relative peace has reigned.

Is this truth? All truth is written by the victor.