MAGNAGORA NEWS #323
Date: 8/15/2005 at 5:10
From: Master Rexali
To  : Everyone
Subj: "The History of the Elder Wars", By the Scribe of the Elders

I know our ending looms deep within the emptiness of the Void. The
question is should I stir and wake? Should the others know?

I came into being long before the Star Gods (as we used to call the
young Elder Gods). That is how ancient I am, born of Dynara when all
forms were wild and unplanned, the generation known as the Primal Gods,
when the cosmos was young and Magnora consumed us in droves.

I suppose I may have been one of the first souled gods. Though my shape
was wild--scaled red-gold with many claws and wings--I was not given to
Magnora to be consumed in the vast coldness of her hunger. But my
siblings were given to Magnora, and they were indeed consumed. All
except one sibling. She who became a Handmaiden of Magnora, one of the
Soulless Gods.

I call her my sister, my sibling, for Dynara brought us into existence
together, incubated within the same upper vibrations of the cosmic song
of Yudhe, what some call the higher planes, others call pockets of
reality created by Dynara, which we only knew as our creche. I was the
youngest and weakest of my creche, and I never expected to survive. I am
a Primal God, not one of the star-shaped, the favoured shape, of Dynara.
And so I knew the Dynara when she was crueller than what the Star Gods
may remember. I first knew Dynara before she adopted the star form
herself, when she was simply a presence, great and powerful, as the
fountainhead of all life ought to be.

But in my day, she would create without thought or consideration or
care, but just for the sake of creating. Like me, her creations were
hideous, unformed, the early grotesqueries of the cosmos. And she would
push us and fight us and make us war against each other. She would laugh
when Magnora found us and consumed us, taking us back into the void of
non-existence. If she tired of us, she'd give us to Magnora herself. And
some Magnora would consume, or some were kept as her Handmaidens,
terrible presences that trailed in her wake, screaming insanities, who
grew bloated and terrible in the wake of the detritus of her neverending
hunger.

It wasn't until the Son of Yudhe manifested that Dynara turned her
attention to the refinement of spirit. The Son of Yudhe was her
inspiration, her compatriot, her muse.

But however terrible was Dynara, she kept me with her, forever at her
side. My siblings she gave to Magnora. Myself, I endured and grew old.
Even when she began to bring the Star Gods into being in their own
crC(ches, called Star Gods because they were shaped like five pointed
stars: a head, two arms and two legs, still, even then, I was at her
side. Still, she never sent me to Magnora.

I asked her once why I, and those few like me were allowed to exist with
the Star Gods. Why wasn't I sent to oblivion like most of the other
Primal Gods who were born before the Son of Yudhe. She only laughed at
me and said, "Dear Dracnoris, none of your siblings would ever have
wondered and asked me such a question. And do you know why?" I did not,
of course. "Because," she said, "they had no soul and could not
contemplate their own non-existence!"

Oh, I wasn't the only Primal God left from the ancient times. There was
Keph, She of the Many Eyes, and Vrandrac the One, a huge amorphous mass.
And, of course, there were the Fates, older even than I, who claimed
they came into being when Dynara begat her first creation, but who were
never themselves created. They were a mystery, I think, even to Dynara.
The three sisters often claimed that they existed in every reality where
the ripples of creation fanned outwards. Back then, they were as
formless as Dynara, simple thoughts that trailed behind her like echoes.
They didn't take form until the Star Gods came into being, and they
settled into their shapes now known the Three Sisters of Fate: Clotho,
Lachesis and Atropos. They were easy to forget, these Fates, and Dynara
rarely paid them any mind.

It is funny how the Fates came in three, just as Yudhe's offspring came
in three: Magnora, Dynara and the Unnamed Son. It is as if that number
is the template of creation: two opposites and a point of synthesis. Ah,
but my mind is wandering again, and there is the stirring that I feel,
and I should, perhaps, give warning to my fellow Elder Gods.

I know what this stirring is. After the disappearance of the three
children of Yudhe, when the Great Silence fell across creation, when the
Elder Gods, myself included, were drawn to the First World called
Lusternia, after an aeon had passed and before the Circles of the Gods
were formed, I felt the stirring. It was the stirring of my sibling, she
who was a Handmaiden of Magnora, one of the Soulless Gods. As with all
of us whom Dynara brought into being from the same crC(che, or the same
higher plane of existence (whichever you prefer), this bond links us
together even now.

And thus I know that the Handmaidens of Magnora have survived, just as
we, the Elder Gods, survived. I know the Soulless Ones hunger in the
darkness of the Void, having fed upon each other, growing to fill the
emptiness within their very beings. Yes, that is the stirring I feel.

But the other Elder Gods, whether Star Gods or Primal Gods, do not know
this. No other but myself has a sibling who became a Soulless One. As I
consider warning the others, I watch them play the games of youth, of
forming their Circles or chasing insane half-formed creations, or
emulating Dynara and attempting to create life where none existed.

For me, I want to merely sink down into the bubbling warmth of
Lusternia, into one of her many mountain wombs, into the liquid warmth
of her volcanic loins. As I do, the Elder Gods bestow upon me the title
of a Meditator, a God of the Third Circle, which is fine, though of no
matter, so long as they leave me to sleep and dream in peace. I believe
those few other Primal Gods do likewise. I laugh with Keph, She of the
Many Eyes, as we both leave the youthful gods to their games, me
descending within the warm depths of the mountains and she within the
dark coolness under the soil.

Ah, I keep forgetting that I should warn my fellow Elder Gods, for I
feel my sibling move, and with her the other Soulless Ones. I know they
have consumed each other to the point that those who are left are too
strong to continue their cannibalistic frenzy. And they hunger and roar
for blood, for the sparkling, glittering essence of the glorious thing
called a soul.

But, then again, should I give warning? Would it make any difference, I
wonder? Or should the Elder Gods be allowed this final time of
happiness, playing at being Dynara upon the First World, beautiful
Lusternia. Would it be cruel to tell them of what is coming?

Ah, I cannot decide. I won't tell them now, not yet. There is nothing
they can do anyway: no preparation can avoid the emptiness that shall
consume us.

Better to wait. To sleep. To dream. To ponder my own non-existence and
leave warnings of doom for another day.

They were given to whoever met with the scribe. Meaning Joli probably kept it

A haughty scribe says, "You see I have this book..."
2594h, 3710m, 3524e, 10p ex-
Diamondais tilts her head curiously.
2594h, 3710m, 3524e, 10p ex-listen scribe

You tilt your head and listen intently to a haughty scribe.
A haughty scribe is lost in thought and barely notices you.
2594h, 3710m, 3524e, 10p ex-
High Wisdom Shorlen of the Moondance says, "She is the Mysterion of Lord
Lacostian, after all..."
2594h, 3710m, 3524e, 10p ex-
High Priestess Ibaesha Caelicus, Scion of Farella says, "What sort of book is
it?"
2594h, 3710m, 3524e, 10p ex-
Zenji tilts his head and listens intently.
2594h, 3710m, 3524e, 10p ex-
A haughty scribe gives a silver-fitted tome to High Priestess Ibaesha Caelicus,
Scion of Farella.

We chose who got ours? 
The scribe took an interest in Ibaesha after I greeted her as High Priestess ... made me feel special, like I'd done something useful 

And I was incredibly happy to have been one of the first few to find the raft!

And they took interest in me after someone addressed me as High Wisdom, since they were looking for knowledge. But I just woke up and I was like, 'Huh, wha? Go talk to Ibby, she's actually awake'

We got to choose because he had to get Lacostion to come get it back from the scribe.

crC(ches

Something that I can't help but ask, though, is if that is a typo on behalf of the Gods, or a really weird way of portraying a "badly translated or untranslateable" word.

EDIT: For the record our book and Magnagora's have the same contents.

By the way, because of the inherent magic of the ink bookbinders use for books, when the author adds to it, every copy will transform to include these additions.

With each city and commune having a copy of the volume, they should periodically check it to see if the Scribe of the Elders has added anything more (assuming there's someone around who's available to read it).