The Chronicles of Kadin

A myth is, of course, not a fairy story.
It is the presentation of facts belonging to one category,
in the idioms appropriate to another.
To explode a myth is accordingly not
to deny the facts but to re-allocate them.

-Gilbert Ryle

At a point in time after creation first sundered the darkness, bursting into sudden existence, but before our recorded history, there existed an earlier, alternate civilization – A civilization where the rule of science had not yet taken root, a place where many of the beings and creatures consigned to legend and myth by our modern society were living breathing reality. This was a time and place where, before mankind turned to science and cold iron, magic was a force unto itself, a time and place where a small percentage of every race of old could tap the elemental power of the cosmos. It was a time, like every age before and since, where most used their powers and abilities for the good of all and, like every other age, it was also a time where a small minority used their abilities for self-serving and dark ends.

This was the age of the Asrai, forbears of the Elvin peoples, the Alvar and Elves. Unlike most races, they were almost universally gifted with magic: magic that made the Asrai powerful and nearly godlike in their abilities. As the Asrai peoples began to draw inward, away from the younger races, the loss of association with those less gifted gradually became a sense of superiority. This, in turn, led to a time where the Asrai began to see the other races, the Dragons, the Dwarven peoples, the races of Man, even their cousins the Alvar and Elves, as lesser beings fit only for slavery and subjugation.

In time, the remaining free peoples of the world, with those most gifted in the magical arts in the vanguard, led those enslaved by the Asrai in revolt against their Masters. The war raged for decades: the godlike power of the Asrai offset by the ingenuity, sheer numbers, and reproductive rates of the other races. In time, a few among the Asrai who had held themselves neutral, joined the fight on the side of the younger races and gradually the tide began to turn against the forces of darkness.

As the most evil of the Asrai became more desperate, they began to magically manipulate the various races, giving rise to the Orc, the Goblin, the Harpy, and possibly the worst among their creations, the Undead. The evil ones also discovered that, in an odd quirk of genetics, the mixing of the Asrai bloodlines with humans and elves resulted in something phenomenal: those who possessed ¼ Asrai blood were far more powerful than even a full blood Asrai. In the end, the progeny of their experiments turned out to be their downfall when these beings joined the fight against their supposed Masters, and led a final assault against the dark forces allied in the cause of destroying the old kingdom of Kronar.

In the last battle, the quarter Asrai overcame their dark brethren and consigned them to the lower planes, to dwell forever in darkness and misery, as demons and dark spirits. The Gold and Silver Dragons aided the alliance of the younger races in their struggle against their Red and Black cousins, who were allied with the Asrai. In the end, the Black and Red Dragons were expelled, and nearly wiped out, by a force consisting of quarter Asrai and the Gold and Silver Dragons, who absorbed the homelands of the Black and Red Dragons into their own.

It was at the end of the war that those of quarter Asrai blood ascended to heaven, becoming the Gods of the next age. The senior races of the Elvin and Dwarven peoples, the Alvar and the Damarrk, retired from the field of battle to nurse their wounded and find a new path. The Alvar withdrew from routine contact with the younger races, preferring to keep to their own lands in the great expanse of the Greenwood forest. The Damarrk, however, chose another path. They chose to blend in with their Dwarven cousins and to remain engaged with the other younger races. All through the next age, the Elves and Dwarves worked tirelessly to aid those in need and to assist in the process of rebuilding a nation from the ashes of the Kingdom of Kronar, which had fragmented into eleven independent kingdoms. The Damarrk high council, alone among the younger races, maintained contact and commerce with the Alvar, indirectly keeping the high elves involved in the affairs of the rest of the world.

Affairs proceeded apace for nearly a century before word reached the Damarrk and Alvar high councils about atrocities being perpetrated against Dwarven and Human settlements by the Elves known as the Hazar (the mad ones). Fearing the darkness was rising again, the Alvar sent scouting teams to discover the truth. The scouts quickly confirmed the atrocities being perpetrated, one in particular so horrific that its mere memory still haunts the collective conscience of the Alvar. The mad ones attacked the Dwarven settlement of Kolnhaamer: a place that was home not only to several thousand Dwarves, but also an even greater number of human refugees who had fled to the Dwarves for protection. The Hazar impaled the surviving adult males on stakes and cut off their eyelids, thereby forcing them to watch as their wives and children were raped and then cut into small pieces.

The slaughter was such that the battle-hardened scouts who reported on the massacre told of losing control of their bowels at the sight. News of the attack spread rapidly and a furious alliance of the Dwarven and Elvin peoples was forged, with the stated intent of killing each and every member of the Hazar. For the next several years, the Elves and Dwarves tracked down each and every member of the Hazar and put them to the sword. Brothers killed sisters who had married a Hazar. Their children were put to the sword and they were destroyed, root and branch, until only their underground stronghold in the Splitrock knolls remained. The mad ones held off each assault on their underground fortress for over a decade, using the confined access tunnels to their defensive advantage. Finally, the Alvar and Damarrk high councils decreed that the access tunnels to the Splitrock fortress, known as Ravenrock, were to be sealed by means mundane and magical, to thereby lock the Hazar away from the rest of the world for all time.

Thus was another outbreak of evil contained. Over time, people forgot the evil contained within and under the Splitrock knolls, but its reputation continued and it became a place associated with fell deeds and darkness.

It was upon completion of sealing Ravenrock that Tathir, clan leader of the royal house of Aradan, first proclaimed the prophecy. Tathir, who was gifted, he would say cursed, with the gifts of the seer, rose from a meditative trance and spoke these words:

“A time will come when Darkness again draws its shade across the land and fell beings commit atrocity in the name of darkness. In this time a boy will be born to an Alvar Priestess, and his name shall be Kadin. Kadin will be the last child born to his mother, and will be far and away the most powerfully gifted being since the departure of the Asrai.”

“This child will be a nexus: If he is supported by his brothers, he will be a power for the light that leads the forces of the younger races to victory against the forces of darkness. If he is alone in learning the full scope of his power, he will gradually degenerate into a being whose lack of love, connections with other beings, and lust for power, will result in the land, and all its peoples, being covered by an eternal curtain of darkness.”

Thus was born The Kadin Prophecy, a prophecy that, like every other, before and since, was gradually forgotten as the years turned to centuries………