The Eye of Heaven

[Wensleydale]

The Eye of Heaven

Come closer, little Manling,
Into the darkness. There
That's better. I see you
More clearly now than before.
Let me tell you a story,
Or stories; of Darkness,
of Dead Gods and Old Ones,
of Scavengers, of the
Great Cities of the East,
of Ships-that-Fly, of Sorcerers,
of Tick-Tock Men and Spirits,
of Ghosts and Darrows, of
Wyrms and lonely nights
When even the firelight seems dim
In the indescribable blackness of space.
Of your Brothers and Sisters, of
Wonders and Mysteries beyond
The ken of Man. Perhaps you
Will learn a little. Perhaps
not. Your kind are quick
To judge a story, and slow
to learn from it. So harken
unto my words, the
Watcher-in-the-Dark,
for it is Truth
I speak.

- Old Khemani Nursery Rhyme, Anon.

Seven-thousand years ago the world began,
In fire and flame it began, and the Gods made it.
For four-thousand years they ruled us,
Kindly and benevolent masters.
Three-thousand years ago, the Gods ascended to the Above, as was foretold.
The world ended, and was born anew. We were alone.
They are not dead; they are simply Beyond.

- Excerpt from the Meri TÉman (the Song of Timon)

The Eye! The Eye of Heaven! In the Great Darknesse it is as a Ring; and one Fiery Pupil is unto it! If thou readst this, o Childe, think not of me; avert thy gaze from this Manuscripte, for this way lieth only the great Madnesse. Beware the Watcher!

- Excerpt from the last papers of Ilanu TÉ-SÌŒakho, famed occultist, after his confinement in the Rukhat Tower Asylum

[LordVreeg]

The Khemani have pretty long and convoluted nursery rhymes.
Not to mention the ability to scare the crap out of the kids..and nurse.

[Wensleydale]

Introduction

In the dark and colossal dockyard of El, at the edge of everything, straddling the void between existences, seven great ships were built. Their purpose? Perhaps to take another step away from nature, from mortality, another step on the ladder to transcendence; perhaps as transports for some great journey that they knew was to come; perhaps just because they could. Seven rings, seven eye-rims of metal around seven burning pupils, each a god-corpse decomposing in a colossal thermonuclear reaction. It was a mere eyeblink later - a few thousand years, give or take - that the Old Ones, at the height of their power, having destroyed or subjugated everything that presented the merest hint of a threat to their hegemony, experienced something they had long believed themselves above: epidemic. Beginning at the heart of the empire, where it slaughtered the royal family and most of their court, the Divine Flux raged across the universe, killing those whom brutal civil war had not yet taken. A mere fifty or sixty years after the disease had emerged, the Old Ones had been utterly destroyed.

Their end plunged the universe back into a dark age of technology. The Old Ones' slaves - largely humans, chosen for their almost-unique susceptibility to their powers of control - had little or no idea what had occurred: many terrible things had come to pass, and at the end, their gods, their benevolent rulers, were gone from the world. The slaves were suddenly free. Human society had to undergo a massive reconfiguration. Kingdoms and empires rose and fell. Almost the only constant was a class of slaves; perhaps proving humanity's inability to change too much at once. Where once they were the lowest of the slaves, humanity has largely established itself as the dominant oxygen-breathing species.

It has been almost three-thousand years since the collapse of the Old Ones' empire. Only one of the great ships survived - one last ring, suspended in space. The interior is a great, fecund garden, a true second Eden for humanity. Some of the new human societies - the more successful - scavenge and partially replicate technology from the dark and dangerous tunnels beneath the surface, but in the ignorant belief that they are simply accepting gifts from the old gods, or perhaps, at best, that they are tomb-raiding. Others have simply reverted to hunting and gathering. None have any grasp of the original purpose of their world.

But for all the paradisical nature of the world's surface, things, terrible things, are once more stirring. Word has reached the Great Cities of a new and rising Empire in the far east of Kheman, an Empire proclaimed and ruled by a man who is half-god and his hundred semi-deific children. From their hiding places in the far reaches of reality, the enemies of the Old Ones are taking their first timid steps back into what was once theirs. Scavengers return from underground routes once considered safe missing many members of their party, grim and muttering only amongst themselves of footsteps in the darkness and a high, terrible laughter. And in Marat, the dead will not stay in their graves...

[Wensleydale]

The Khemani have pretty long and convoluted nursery rhymes.
Not to mention the ability to scare the crap out of the kids..and nurse.

Have you seen the original Brothers Grimm stories? :P

[Seraph]

The Khemani have pretty long and convoluted nursery rhymes.
Not to mention the ability to scare the crap out of the kids..and nurse.

Have you seen the original Brothers Grimm stories? :P

It's true, the Grimm stories are pretty dark.

[Weave]

Nice to see this got up quickly! I'm looking forward to see where you take it :).

Off the top of my head: if the decomposing gods act as the suns at the center of each ring, is there even a day/night cycle, or is it always just "day"?

[Seraph]

Well, this sounds like it has the potential to be very exciting.  Actually, the rhymes at the beginning could almost apply to both of my own settings.  The flying ships and "tick-tock men" would fit in with Avayevnon, and the idea of gods "leaving" in a way fits both it and Cad Goleor.

The idea of using dead gods as fuel is just awesome.

Safe to say this peaks my interest.  More please!