Prologue: Yoshan's First Lesson

Lorekeepers' Tents

Stone Moon, 2nd ninemoon of New Solupian Reckoning

Alright, settle down now, you kids. This one's a story I haven't told you before. Actually, not one of our lorekeepers has told this one yet. So quiet down and listen, you hear?

Every Nuidya knows the story of Sena Yuleng. How she fell from the sky as an infant, and grew up to become the first ancestor of our people. How she has been reincarnated through the moons since, and how her second incarnation was the mother of our sacred cats.

How her firstborn daughter betrayed her and, in death, became the Storm Queen, forever trying to destroy anything we build.

We also know that many stories follow Sena's. The legends of the ten greater ancestors, some as recently departed as Serendipity zan-Carmela, others as far back as Rommy zan-Ace, the first and only headman.

Some of our elders still remember the battle against the zombie pack, two generations ago, and they will have learned about the twenty moons our ancestors spent constantly moving, trying to stay one step ahead of the Storm Queen, from their own grandparents.

Kulo Seeri as we know it today has stood for three generations. Our headwoman, Etan mi-Avira, is six generations away from Sena, and also her fifth incarnation. You kids are eighth-generation Nuidya, most of you at least.

Let's not forget the stories that came before us - those of the earliest days of the world and of the seventeen gods: the Electria Dragons, who each embody one of the eight elements; the Skyborn, patrons of creativity and magic, and guardians against the Void; the Transmuter, who oversees the cycles of life, death and rebirth; and the River Fortunes, the triad that guides the flow of Time.

How they walked the lands regularly until the day of the Shattering, fourteen aeons ago - a great battle against voidbeasts, in which the Electria Dragons were broken into thousands of sparks and the other gods cut off from the realms of mortals. Each of those sparks was one of the first dragonkin, and one of them, of course, was Sena Yuleng herself - an earthspark.

And here's the one all of you will tell your descendants about - their return, only a few moons ago. The Electria, when they re-formed, offered a blessing to each mortal who had carried a dragonspark, including Etan. They also freed the bound spirits powering all those crazy gadgets used in the northern cities. That's why there are so many outsiders visiting now, when we had very little contact with the outside world before. They need to trade with us more, without those spiritbound machines giving them everything.

Some of you are also beginning to notice strange, unsettling new abilities. Sala and Vel, you two are the first voidling alphas born since... well, before there were Nuidya. Vinya, of course, is already quite a powerful fae, and my own foster daughters are tiny little archaetherlings. Even those of you who don't have any such abilities, you will all grow up in a very different world to the one I remember.

Which brings me to this, the most important story. This is the one about the heroes who will shape the future - ours and the traders' - and who will walk alongside gods for the first time in generations. It's the one that tells us what kind of impact our little village will have in the moons to come.

This is the story of all of you.

So stop sitting around like a pile of fallen logs and go set it down. Lesson's over.