Gentle reader, take a guess as to where it is you look upon. No doubt many of you shall give the same answer: Ascalon City. The Pre-Searing. The crown jewel of a peaceful and prosperous kingdom, recovered from the terrible Guild Wars, and now looking upon a bright and glorious future. Though we all know it to be doomed, for now, Ascalon City is a bastion of justice, prosperity, and hope. As the economy expands, a trio of dancing girls celebrate the rising glory of Ascalon, unaware of the fate that awaits them in just a few short weeks.
This, surely, is what our eyes behold? Yes, gentle reader, but watch carefully as the image is about to change. You are now in neither one place nor another. You’ve just begun a journey to a place both familiar and strange, a place on the other side of the betwixt and between that you see now.
Can you see the difference yet? Has the horror begun to creep into your mind, or have your own senses of self-preservation flinched away from the realization that these three girls, six arms raised in supplication to some unknown being, are not quite right? To what great horror do they reach their arms? What ritual is this, and how has it come to pass on the streets of a bastion of justice?
See how their legs are stitched together? See how this abomination struggles to raise itself up? Its dance is a twisted agony, born of a will both desperate and futile to pull free of its own tortured existence. This abomination, simultaneously hideous and beautiful, has been cobbled together to celebrate the birth of a scion of darkness, the heir to a legacy of carnage that stretches back over a thousand years. Both less and more than a man, tainted forever by his dark blood, this terrible prince of evil bears a name you know well. The birth celebrated today is that of Prince Rurik, heir to the throne of Ascalon, which is itself descended from the great King Thorn, he who shall someday return and spread his manic glee across the entire world.
You are now through the looking glass. You have arrived on the other side, in a place where black is white, left is right, and right is wrong. A dark reflection, where the heroes are villains, and the villains unspeakable. It is a dimension of opposites, but also of haunting familiarity. You’ve just crossed over into the Mirror Universe.
Feel free to cue up the spooky Twilight Zone music now.
What is this strange new world in which you find yourself, gentle reader? Perhaps it is best to start with the similarities. There is a continent of Tyria also on this world, and it is also ruled over principally by five great nations: Ascalon, Kryta, Orr, Deldrimor, and the Charr Horde. The first three are Human kingdoms, the second Dwarven, and the final one is of course Charr. The Kingdom of Orr answers to the Six Gods: Dwayna, Melandru, Lyssa, Grenth, Balthazar, and Abaddon. The Charr worship the Titans, who are not gods but instead the creations of Abaddon. The Dwarves cling to legends of a Great Dwarf not seen in millenia. Very soon these nations will be rocked by the uprisings of the Stone Summit, by a bloody civil war in Kryta, by war between Charr and Ascalon, by a great Cataclysm that will shatter Orr forever. For now, they are at peace, having just ended the Guild Wars with one another.
But now let us examine the differences. Keen readers will have noticed already that Orr alone answers to the Gods. For the Humans of Ascalon, it is the ancestral spirit of King Thorn they answer to. In this reality, Thorn came to power soon after the Exodus and ruled all three Human nations, and his sons bickered and squabbled over the remains after his death.
The Kings of Ascalon and Kryta are said to be directly descended from him, but Kryta overthrew their tyrant king in favor of the White Mantle, who are led by the Unseen Ones, angelic beings of a race in its twilight years. They see Humans as their successors in the world, and seek to guide them to greatness, that the governments founded on justice and freedom the Mursaat created would not fade away forever with their inevitable deaths.
Ruling from Orr, the Marutuk are what the Six Gods are called in this reality. In the primordial age, the Marutuk, then consisting of six incredibly powerful mortal sorcerers including the Harpies Dwayna and Melandru, the Dryder Arachnia, the Giants Dhuum and Menzies, and the Human Lyssa. The Marutuk struck down the great Tiamat and split off her five heads all across the Tyrian continent (or, some say, the entire world), thus ending the age of darkness and bringing about a new age of civilization. But Tiamat had her revenge. Forever tainted by the battle, Lyssa was split in half and began a slow descent into madness, while Arachnia was cursed, that she would turn to evil. When Arachnia turned to wickedness, she laid waste to the Margonite Civilization. It was then that Abaddon, a Margonite sorcerer, used the Cauldron of Catalysm to sear away the Crystal Sea, dooming his entire civilization. But Arachnia, caught at the epicenter, was destroyed. Abaddon consumed her divine essence and used his newfound power to preserve his people, but only as angelic creatures of magic more than flesh. It is said that Abaddon, in consuming Arachnia’s power, had also inherited her curse. Afterwards, the Marutuk struck an agreement with the other gods of the age to withdraw from the world, that a divine war would never again devastate civilization.
The Guild Wars were a religious war, fought by many competing sects (“guilds”) of each of the three religions, sparked by the overthrow of the Krytan monarch and never resolved to anyone’s satisfaction. And yet this conflict shall prove to be the overture of a new era of chaos. The Dwarves, traditionally an oligarchic ally of Orr, had their government overthrown, the pro-Ascalon Ironhammer Clan installed as dictator. The government of the White Mantle was undermined by Orr under the guidance of Abaddon, who has always believed in taking extreme measures when necessary and opposed the Mursaat rule on a number of key issues (most notably in that Abaddon favors theocratic rule over the corruption-prone democracies supported by the Mursaat). The Charr were stirred up against Ascalon by Krytan agents provacateur.
This is the world into which you have crossed. This is your new reality. This is the Mirror Universe.
Greetings,
ReplyDeleteI'll start off by saying I don't know much about Guild Wars. I've never played it, nor heard more than a whisper about the game. However, I thought I'd take a read.
The story seems interesting. I'm not so sure the accompanying images do the story justice--while I know the story is the most important part I would toss the images into photoshop and put put perhaps a dark look on things. It just seemed too bright and colorful. But as I said that's not really too important.
The Mirror Universe does sound much like the Twilight Zone. It made me want to go find the theme and play it haha. Well, nice job here. I plan on reading more soon and I applaud you on use o a prologue. I hear so many people say they skip them that it's a bit unsettling.
Keep on writing! :)