Legends of Remia (Mythology and History)

Legends of the Gods

In faraway lands where strange tribes worship only one God who takes no interest in the lives of men, there are books of ancient lore which say that our world was not the first in creation, nor will it be the last. These tomes reference these as the “broken spheres” of creation, where many things not possible in our own world have come to pass, and then were shattered and left to spill their contents out into the Great Beyond. Some, driven mad by delving too deeply into the mysteries of the Beyond, even say that our world is a splinter of another sister world -- but we of course know this to be pure folly.

The lore of the Elfish peoples, whose memories are the longest among the civilized races of the world, describe an ancient and chaotic time when Gods and Titans roamed the world and fought for supremacy. The War of the Gods left many destroyed for eternity, and many more cast out of the circles of the Gods with few powers save their longevity, and in the end, only one family of Gods emerged victorious -- the Gods of Olympus.

In the chaos of the War of the Gods, the blood and spirit of many of these divine beings fell to the Earth and spawned plants, beasts, monsters, and sentient beings. As the war drew ever-on, the Gods marshaled these races together in Ancestral Homelands, to serve their purpose in conquering the servants of other Deities.

The Mists have taken the knowledge of which races were spawned from the blood of which Gods, but it is believed that the Dragons were the first of the sentient beings to roam this world, near-immortal themselves. Dragons of all kinds flew and raged in warfare that set the world ablaze as they fought for their masters, and even today their bones are found buried under mountains and in deep caves. Today these great wyrms have all but passed from this world across the Western Ocean, leaving their progeny, still dread and powerful in their own right, to lord over the skies and their hoards.

To this day, the Elves and Dwarves hotly contend that it was their races who were the first among the civilized races to walk the Earth, these arguments having led to more than one war to prove their superiority with no clear answer yet in sight. From the northern corners of the Middlesea which joins the Northern, Southern, and Eastern continents together, these two races did emerge to heed the Gods’ calls.

The races of Men, as varied as the different seasons and just as wild, then emerged to fill the world with their wild seed, spreading to the furthest extremes of all three great continents. Before the War of the Gods had ended, the different races of Men with their short lifespan had already forgotten their Ancestral Homeland, different tribes laying claim to lands they had discovered or conquered, growing as separate and different from each other as they were from Elf or Dwarf.

Monstrous races, Orcs, Kobolds, Lizardmen, Bugbears, and Goblins all, emerged to serve Gods who waged war against the champions of Olympus along with many other creatures that many today accept only as myth: Cyclops, Minotaurs, and Centaurs to name but a few. Even the spirits of the Earth itself spawned sentient beings to serve the will of the world, also known to myth as Dryads, Naiads, Nymphs, and Pixies.

In the waning days of the War of the Gods, those who stood against the Olympians were few in number but great in power for having thrived for so long in their eternal war for control of the world. Facing destruction and banishment to the Great Beyond, they gathered together in a hidden place and somehow opened our world to other “planes” -- the “broken spheres” of lore. From these ancient worlds, other races appeared scattered in small numbers, such as the “Kindly Races” of Halflings and Gnomes, the “Angelic Races” of Aasimars and Tieflings, and the “Bestial Races” of the Ursine, the Anubi, the Bastet, and the Ganesh, and lastly the Dark Elves, who were rejected by their elder cousins and hunted down close to extinction.

The summoning forth of these races was not the intent of the embattled Gods, but rather to draw upon the immense power of these other realms to vanquish the Olympians. From strange and alien realms of existence did these powers ebb and flow. Beings of light and darkness crossed through into our world, hiding themselves in the service of lesser Gods or gaining power through the worship of those mortals seeking power. Raging fires, sweeping waves, storms of air, and quakes of the Earth itself spread through all of the Ancestral Homelands, driving out all of the sentient peoples to the final battlefield of the Gods on the slopes of Olympus itself, its peak reaching far past the clouds.

This great battle raged nonstop for six mighty days, where heroes and villains whose names are lost to the Mists did valiant and dread deeds upon the field. Dragons, Elves, Dwarves, Men, and all manner of races fought on either side, with terrible weapons and supernatural powers flying all about mighty Olympus. On the seventh day, the Gods arrayed against the Olympians let loose great monsters more terrible than Dragons, and passed into the hands of their servants weapons and technology born of an age not native to our world, and all seemed lost as Olympians fell in battle and whole tribes of civilized races were annihilated one by one.

As the eternal sun began to dip towards the horizon at the end of the seventh day, wide-seeing Zeus, father of Gods and men, made a dread choice which would echo throughout all time. Fearing that the Olympians might not prevail, Zeus and Vulcan the great craftsman had created a lightning bolt so destructive it could sunder mighty Olympus itself from the world. Gathering together the Gods of Olympus, Zeus and many of the others gathered up their mortal servants and fled past the base of the mountain, while some among the Olympians remained behind to give the appearance that all was still as it had been. Then, in a single terrible moment, Zeus master of lightning used his great bolt to sunder Olympus from the world, and in doing so destroyed all the Gods who would seek to wrest control of the world from the Olympians, and nearly all of their dread creatures.

In the aftermath of their costly victory, the Olympians found that, while still the most powerful of the Gods of the world, they were also somewhat removed from it, as their Ancestral Home had been sundered to save the very world they wished to rule. The base of Mount Olympus remained intact, still the mightiest of all the world’s peaks, and from there the Gods sit as they once did. Some few other Deities survived as well, but pledged to the Gods of Olympus that never again would they seek to overthrow the Olympians. Our world had now been true and truly forged, and the Gods of Olympus seated at its highest peak, to rule over all.


A Brief Interlude

It is here, noble student, that I must pause in this grand tale. Though I write this tale for the first class at our new Patrician Academy, it is my hope that generations yet to come will read these words, the only collection of ancient lore that we Men know to likely be true.

Of the sentient races of this world, Men were graced by the Gods with the greatest capacity for expanding our horizons, logic, and wisdom…tempered by our far too short lifespan. For us to say that these ancient tales are rumored to have occurred over ten thousand years ago is something even scholars such as myself can barely fathom. Elves and Dwarves, who may live for close to a thousand years, refuse to even speak of such things, not thinking any race beyond their own worthy of such knowledge…but in this, bright students, we may suspect that which neither Elf nor Dwarf scholar would dare to reveal openly -- that the Mists have affected all the sentient beings of this world, including these “Elder Races”.

Being that I, Aristophin, am a scholar of such renown even among other races, I have learned that when the Elves arrive close to having lived for a millennium, they nearly universally choose to leave the world as we know it, embarking on ships shaped like giant swans of the purest white, sailing past the Western Straights and across the great Western Ocean to an unknown realm known in Elfish lore only as “The West”. Dwarves too, when they reach advanced age, tire of the world, and descend into the deepest tunnels of their homeland from whence they once emerged. Their legends say that these Dwarves travel to the center of our world where they work the bellows that keep it alive, but none who have ever tried to follow either Elf or Dwarf on either of these final journeys has ever returned to describe what fate befalls them.

The Mists, you see, are what we Men call the time since the War of the Gods, when the world was given its final quenching in Vulcan’s forge and Zeus’ fire into what we know it as today. All we know of the past is from the foundations of our now-great Empire, which is where I will continue our story.


The History of Remia

The Great Diaspora, when all of the sentient races left their Ancestral Homelands, saw many tribes of Men unite to form larger communities, and there was even some mingling of races between Elves and Men and Orcs. Oral histories tell us that our ancestors were a tribe of Men who came to these fertile lands nearly a thousand years ago, led by two twin brothers: Romulus and Remus. Finding seven hills all about a river that spilled into the Middlesea, they set about settling their people…but as in our own history we have learned, having two leaders can cause nothing but strife.

As our tribe grew more and more prosperous, the followers of Remus and Romulus feuded, and came into war with one another, until the day when Remus did slay his brother Romulus upon the central hill of Zeus Capitoline, sending many of Romulus’ followers fleeing, never to return. This city of seven hills was renamed Remia in honor of its first true ruler, and the families of the original followers of Remus were the ancestors of the noble families of our Empire, the Patricians. Those who remained of Romulus’ people, the Plebeians, were still admitted as citizens, but of a lower class for they doubted the vision and destiny of Remus when he declared that his city would one day arise as the center of the world itself.

Over time, Remia grew and continued to prosper. As our city expanded, those who followed after Remus devoted an entire district of our city to Temples to the Olympian Gods, gaining their favor by the piety of our people. The Capitoline Hill remained the heart of our community, home to the Senate and the twin Consuls elected yearly to oversee our ever-growing nation. The Patrician families took two great hills as their own, leaving the Plebeians and Foreigners with two more to make their homes upon. The final hill, close to the mouth of the river, became our city’s famous Harbor district, where all manner of goods, services, pleasures, and sins may be found.

Many men flocked to the famed Remian Legions, which brought the enlightenment and stability of our nation far and wide from our home, and such peace reigned here at home that it became forbidden for the men of the Legions to enter the city past the Fields of Ares, the security of the city falling to the hands of the Patrician families and those who served them. As many of you fine young Patricians already know, the Plebeians had been growing increasingly restless with their place in our society. Two hundred years ago, in a political move still viewed today as the basest form of villainy, Gaius Gracchus, one of the Consuls, renounced his Patrician blood and declared himself the first Plebian Consul, demanding that the Plebs receive equal representation. When Gracchus was killed by a mob in the Forum, the Plebeians revolted against the Senate, razing the entire Palatine Hill and its Patrician holdings to the ground before being brought under control by a hastily-recalled Legion from the North.

The stirrings of civil war were upon us, but for the vision and presence of one man, Gaius Justinian Caesar, Legate of the Thirteenth Legion which came to Remia’s aid. Through a series of bold moves by dividing his Legion into smaller forces, and equally bold and moving speeches in the Forum before Patrician and Plebian alike, Justinian convinced the Senate and people of Remia to forego the system of Consuls, and instead unite under a single Emperor. Justinian rebuilt the Palatine Hill as the Imperial Palace Complex, and also built the Circus and the Coliseum for the enjoyment of the people of Remia in the Emperor’s name.

Emperor Justinian kept half his Legion here in Remia, broken down into what we today know as the three Urban Cohorts whose trappings are black and silver and maintain the peace in the city, and the Praetorian Cohort who wear the Imperial purple, direct guards to the Emperor himself. The other loyal men of his Legion went forth to take command of all the other Remian Legions, and under Justinian’s brilliance, began a two hundred year expansion of the Remian Empire into what it is today.

Today, under the rule of our most glorious Emperor Sarpedon, the Remian Empire rules all the nations that border the Middlesea. Some lands, such as the Ancestral Homelands of the Elves and Dwarves, are considered allies and have even sent their own Patricians to sit in the Imperial Senate, while others such as the lands of the Orcs and the Bestial Races are still being pacified by our invulnerable Legions.

The borders of our Empire continue to expand, and members of all races enjoy the Pax Remenia, the “Remian Peace” which makes them all citizens of the Empire with the right to live as they will, where they will, so long as they continue to obey Remian law.

While this may not be a true ‘peace’ and there are still many dangers to be had outside of the capital, our Empire is strong, and its heart is right here -- in Remia.