Elemental Inspirations
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Excerpt from "Guardians of the Telenanth"
Appendix D: The Tragedy of Draginol & The Arnor
Draginol the Mithrilar was not wholly ruined in the beginning. Unlike the other 4 Mithrilar, Draginol was not created in the beginning. He was once mortal and like all mortal men, he sensed the passage of time which, ultimately, would be his undoing.
Where Draginol came from and who he was is covered elsewhere. What is relevant is that for a long while, he found himself alone. The other Mithrilar had no concept or understanding of a physical form. They existed as spirits and did not view time and space in the same way a mortal man would.
In time, Draginol came to understand the Telenanth. This immense crystaline object was the source of all energy in the universe. As the tool of creation, it was the ultimate source of power and Draginol came to yearn for the ability to control that power such that he could order things as he saw fit.
With the Telenanth, Draginol created the Arnor. As powerful as the Telenanth and Draginol were, however, creating a form of life was beyond Draginol’s capability, even with the Telenanth. The Arnor were and still are, merely mechanism that are aspects of Draginol himself.
During the creation of the Arnor, Draginol strove to make them truly alive. It was only after nearly a hundred had been made that he came to understand that he could not truly create lives but merely mechanism that were reflections of himself. As a result, Draginol changed his objective from creating life for the sake of life to creating tools that would do his bidding in help order the universe to his liking. To that end, Draginol created a legion of other Arnor without putting in the time and effort he had put in to the first 5 score of them.
This distinction in how the Arnor were made led to a rift between the two groups. The first group, like Draginol, sensed the passage of time and were filled with a need to right the wrongs of the universe. The second group, unlike Draginol, did not sense the passage of time and were far more passive and malleable to strong leaders.
However, there were a few Arnor that existed in the transition between the two groups. Like the first, they were filled with a need to right the wrongs of the universe. But, like the second, they did not sense a passage of time. Of this transitionary group the best known is Tandis the Arnor.
For a time, it was good. The mightiest of the Arnor, the first group, led the second group to building a great civilization. As with Draginol, however, time was their enemy. The passage of time on a mortal consciousness is a great destroyer.
Eventually, the need to do right led to the need to control. They knew that other life would be appearing in the universe relatively soon but had no way to leave their world. Because they were immortal in body but mortal in mind, they lacked the capability of growing in mind indefinitely. They reached a peak of understanding and could never grow beyond that. As a result, the Arnor were slow to develop technology, to leave their world.
But these Arnor did understand the power of energy very well. The dark energy (what some might call “magic”) that resided in themselves they harnessed extremely well. With enough of it, they could build a device that would let them travel anywhere.
With the only source of this energy being the Arnor themselves, the mightiest of the Arnor began to subjugate their weaker brethren. This caused the irrevocable split between the two groups of Arnor with the former becoming the Dread Lords and their minions, the Dread Knights.
In time, the Dread Lords had nearly wiped out all of the other Arnor in an effort to take their life force and place it into an orb-like object that would contain enough power to let the Dread Lords do virtually anything they wanted.
But the Dread Lords were ultimately defeated. Tandis the Arnor led the other Arnor in a last-ditch defense of their people but the ultimate downfall of the Dread Lords came from Draginol himself in the ultimate act of betrayal.
Draginol had used the Dread Lords to create the orb so that he could take possession of it when the time was right. His path of ruination had begun before the Dread Lords had been created and thus had fallen far further than the Dread Lords had in their rationalization of using other sentient beings for their own ends.
The Dread Lords would bide their time and rise again once sentient beings began to take shape and would scatter across the universe. That tale, however, is told elsewhere.
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