EXCERPT
A Brief History of Ardalia
by Alan
Spade
Description
This mythological, not to say cosmogonic, story describes in a few pages
the genesis of the four great civilizations of Ardalia and the most significant
events preceding the Ardalia trilogy. For those who have read The Breath of Aoles, Turquoise Water, and The Flames of the Immolated, it offers an interesting adjustment of
perspective. For others, it permits an easy introduction to the details of the
universe while furnishing a complete synoptic history benefiting from a
different viewpoint.
As a bonus: the five first chapters of The Breath of Aoles.
Excerpt
The History of the Krongos
The Awakening of Ast
The eras succeeded
one another, and Ardalia was only populated by savage creatures, predators and
prey. But the equilibrium remained unstable, the strong devouring the weak
before tearing one another apart. Ast, the Creator of all things, incarnate in
the vast molten globe of Astar, observed the animal species battling one
another, beneath the moons Tinmal and Hamal, without ever achieving a result.
The world was chaotic. In order to remedy that, Ast conceived four elementary
gods: Cilamon, the god of terrestrial life and father of Aoles, the god of the
wind, Andunieve, the god of the waves and aquatic life, and Kerengar, the god
of the mineral world.
The creation of the krongos (25,000 cycles of life
before the epic of Pelmen and his companions)
Ast decided to help
Kerengar to create an intelligent species, the krongos. The latter appeared on
Ardalia 25,000 years before our era. One of the greatest krongos mages of that
era was named Terenxar. He fashioned a stone that permitted him to link his
thoughts to those of his friends. Then he founded what was to become an immense
city and named it Terenxinar, after himself. Soon, however, Ast was
disappointed by the krongos, for those beings, to which he had given liberty of
thought and action, after having hunted wild animals and built their cities,
were gradually divided into the Northerners (comprising the inhabitants of the
north and the east) and the Westerners (from the west and south of the Glacial
Summits). Each people strove to impress the other by means of its architectural
achievements, its knowledge and its utilization of magic.
The Genesis of the malians, followed by the
hevelens (-21,000 years)
So Ast dreamed of
harmony, and from his dreams was born Malia, the goddess of harmony. She and
Andunieve gave birth to the malians. But Aoles was jealous, because the wind’s
only representatives on Ardalia were winged creatures called algams, so he
fashioned a carnal envelope to reproduce himself. His intention was to take
inspiration from the krongos and the malians and possess his own people in his
turn.
There were no
intelligent bipeds in that era other than the children of the earth and the
water. He therefore coupled with ten females of a primitive species called
hevels, which had the particularity of climbing trees and gave evidence of more
intelligence than others, but which nevertheless made use of all four limbs in
walking. The Ten First Children, five males and five females, he named Aguerris
and ordered them to take care of their descendants. Shortly after their birth,
they stood up and walked on two limbs, and revealed themselves to be far more
intelligent than the hevels.
Aoles also asked his
own father, Cilamon, to watch over the Ten Aguerris and their mothers until the
end of their long lives, to welcome them in the branches of his trees and to
keep away ferocious beasts, which he did. He also asked him to teach some of
them magic, in order that they would not be disadvantaged relative to other
beings endowed with understanding, and that too Cilamon agreed to do, because
he loved his son.
The Ten Aguerris
lived for five hundred years and had an abundant progeniture. And the ten
mothers, until the end of their long lives—for they too were protected by
Cilamon—continued to conceive a child every year. Thus was born the people of
the hevelens. Ast was saddened by that, because he thought that the beings in
question would have a shorter lifespan than the others—which proved to be the
case—and that they would be in danger of extinction, hunted as they were by
wild beasts, so he accepted that Cilamon might shelter them in the form of a
tree; but he asked the other gods to withdraw, and no longer to walk upon the
terrain of Ardalia in a carnal envelope, in order to leave free will to each of
the three peoples, and not to intervene in their affairs. He was obeyed.
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About the Author
Born in Quito, Ecuador, in 1971, Alan Spade spent part of his childhood
in sub-Saharan Africa. Very soon, Alan was reading French classical literature,
Lovecraft,
Asimov,
Tolkien,
and King.
He worked eight years in written press as a video game reviewer.
Alan loves to write science fiction, mostly space opera, fantasy,
science-fantasy. And thrillers.
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