There once was a dream. A dream that people who had never met before shared. For this to be possible, only by experiencing the same nightmare. This nightmare had a name.
Gralgor.
Not just one, but many.
The Winged Death, Rage Incarnate, Evil In Scales, Doom From Above, Ruin of Life, Black Devastation, The Last Fire, Burner of All, The Beast, The First Calamity, The End of the World.
The number of its names grew along with its fame. That thing was more than a dragon, it was a punishment, as soothsayers said all over the world. It killed, destroyed and burned without distinction.
Good. Bad. For Gralgor, there were only victims.
That is until there were servants. The Beast began to see value in the existing and potential tyranny wherever it went.
The dragon seemed to have an incredible and arrogant sympathy for the oppression that beings he considered inferior were capable of carrying out against beings even more inferior. Gralgor’s disgust for the wretched was so great that he felt no motivation to even blow a spark of his fire to incinerate them, or even move his colossal paws to crush them like vermin. No, the suffering and despair of those who were already slaves did not amuse or delight him. There was no pleasure in taking the lives of those who did not even have one.
Thus, Gralgor preferred to allow the existence of tyrannies that exploited and removed the pleasure of life from the lives he would no longer take pleasure in taking.
Devotion and tributes. Everything that Gralgor asked of those who remained governing due to his benevolence. Whether with statues, monuments, temples and prayers, they paid their devotion. Whether with gold, jewels or slaves, they paid the tributes. All in exchange for not having their empires that took years to build, destroyed in a few days.
The continent was then taken over by corruption, cruelty, violence, ambition and tyranny. Gralgor took possession of the region of Swormundí, in the center of Eredwyn. A flat region of vast green fields, now obscured by the presence of the Beast and his fanatical followers. Because it was located in the center of the continent, Gralgor kept its territory close to all the governments that owed it money, moving an immense amount of resources and people to the core, like a true funnel that unified and monopolized everything on the edges.
False devotion and forced payments. This was how the tyrants supported by the dragon kept their governments and themselves alive.
Always keeping their proud heads low, for they were afraid to look up and see nothing but the dragonfire that would extinguish their ambitions for great conquests. Through strength and fear, Gralgor brought the greatest names on the continent to their knees, and kept them that way throughout his life. All these tyrants who had their plans and ambitions curbed would be known as “Successors”.
In the south, there was Maliris. The oldest, at least among those born in Eredwyn, of the tyrants conquered and allowed to continue existing by the First Calamity. His government was the Dranate, which he ruled with his descendants generated and multiplied over 300 years. Dranis, they called themself; all who had the blood of Maliris in their veins. Being an elf, Maliris tolerated the elves in his Dranate, but only Dranis were true citizens with rights and true freedom. Any other race and individual who was part of them and did not demonstrate great usefulness was promptly enslaved and assigned to carry out the activity that their drani master found most necessary. Through 3 centuries, countless descendants, and blood supremacy, Maliris made the Dranate the largest empire in Eredwyn.
In the east, it was the domain of Golenat. One of the two Successors who were not born in Eredwyn. He was an Interegor, a being born from the essence and will of a god, in his case, the god Horblash, The Peacemaker and The Ruler. Horblash was not even a god of the planet Eredwyn, in fact being one of the Profane Universal Gods, with reach and influence throughout the universe. Golenat was brought to the planet by Maliris to help him against an enemy which the king of the drani was having great difficulty in overcoming. The Interegor and his allies were the leader of the Dranate, but not beyond that enemy. After the victory, Golenat took the newly conquered territory for himself, reaching a stalemate where Maliris or even Golenat himself were able to defeat each other without great losses. In this way, Golenat established itself in eastern Eredwyn as a profane kingdom where cruelty, malice and wickedness are more than valued, they are rewarded. This union of different beings, mortals and immortals, servants and devotees of malice and cruelty became known as the Unholy Alliance.
In the northeast, there was Hanadon. Along with Golenat, Hanadon was not native to the planet, nor even to that Plane of Existence. Being a member of the spiritual race of the Oni, Hanadon warred against the natives of the isolated region of Desoria. Despite the number and strength of his race, born of the spirit Rekonitar, The Great Arm, the oni were the monsters hunted and massacred in the region; that is, until the arrival of the Winged Death. Gralgor turned the tables on Desoria, making the oni the dominant ones in the region, now hunting and enslaving the mortal races that lived there. Being the strongest of his kind at that time, the dragon placed him in command. Since then, the oni ruled Desoria with great strength and hatred for those who hunted them and who were now oppressed by them. Without the mortals of Desoria to contain the oni population, the day would come when these monsters could no longer fit in the isolated region alone.
In the north, Voligar emerged. In the icy region of Joturn, the giant Voligar was not allowed to continue ruling by the dragon, but instead became ruler by the will of the Beast. With a strongly repressed desire for conquest recognized, the giant became leader of his tribe by order of the dragon, and thus began to conquer and assimilate all the other great tribes of the primitive and barbaric region. All conquered and now followers began to call themselves Volgans. In less than a year, he had already become leader of all Joturn, and under his command, progress flourished. Trade, cities, fortresses and weapons. Everything was improved through Voligar’s decisions, even through much violence and blood to allow all this to be possible. However, there would come a time when Joturn would become too small to contain the giant’s desire.
In the west, Kenast inherited. King of the great desert of Kereth, Jamast was a great conqueror in his youth, taking possession of the lands to the west and north of the desert. Unlike the other rulers, he was just, wise, and kind. It came as a real surprise when the dragon spared his kingdom the devastation it was capable of bringing. Even before the First Calamity arrived, Jamas had already surrendered his rule to the dragon. The king’s reputation was well known, a ruler who cared for his people, the kind of king and kingdom that Gralgor delighted in crushing. However, he accepted Jamast’s proposal, perhaps the Beast liked someone truly good under his control, it was the closest thing he had to true devotion, for the king would do anything to please the Scaled Evil, so that his people would not suffer its wrath. Kenast was the only son of Jamast, and through poison he usurped his father’s throne, calling himself the One Pharaoh. Along with their new ruler, those called the Kenastrins dedicated their lives to spreading the greatness and glory of Kenast to the entire world, all cultures, and all kingdoms, whether they wanted it or not.
In the southwest, the Zaroth built. Leading an expedition out of the dwarven capital of Goriath, Zaroth rescued as many of his compatriots as he could to escape the End of the World, but upon arriving at the Mother Mountain, they were met with a closed gate in front of them, and the breath of the Beast behind. Contrary to expectations, Gralgor spared those thousands of dwarves, granting them a southwestern continent to be their new home. Shaped in vengeance and forged in hatred, the now-called Sindarklai, the Dwarves of Calamity, are the only ones of all the Successors truly dedicated to the First Calamity. Ruthless and merciless, they consumed the land they were given, exploiting it and all its inhabitants to build and improve their vile industry of fear and misery. Alive and aflame with a vicious flame of pure hatred, they lived to wreak the same misery and oppression that the Black Devastation left in its wake and on those unlucky enough to live on; just as they lived to exact revenge on their traitorous cousins in great Goriath.
This is how the continent of the Time of Calamity remained. Those who did not die in the World Devastation of Gralgor lived only to suffer at the hands of the tyrannies supported by the Beast. Life had become a torment, the horizons were covered in darkness, for there was no place to escape, no place for hope.
Even with so much misery, misery and suffering, they still could not stop people from dreaming, not even The End of the World was able to take that away. No one had nightmares anymore, for reality had already become this; so sleep could only be filled with something good. A light. A light to shine in the darkness. A light to challenge tyranny. A light to stop the End of the World.
A dream to end the nightmare.
It was nothing more than a dream, an unlikely and useless desire that took up space and time in the minds of every living being tormented by the fact of being alive. Still, no one could stop dreaming about it, there was nothing else to think about. A dream was all the wretched people had. Until the dream became reality.
Gralgor’s death was not just the end of the nightmare. It was the beginning of the dream. A dream of hope that no longer existed in the unattainable world of the mind, but that could be seen on any horizon.
This dream was called Otesis.
Built by the god Kion, Otesis descended from the heavens through the death of the Beast. A gigantic white and gray city, made of rock and steel. Its shape was ring-shaped, with its outermost wall in the shape of a perfect circle with five large gates: one to the north, east and west, and two more to the southwest and southeast. Its walls were metallic, robust and visibly indestructible, almost a hundred meters high. Like a pyramid, Otesis grew towards its center, making the city easily kilometers high. It was divided into several levels and floors that climbed like a staircase of rings, one smaller than the other until the city’s core, where its highest point was, like the longest finger of a hand trying to touch the sky. Its floors, connected by endless stairs and elevators, were an infinity of streets, alleys, lanes, towers, forts, houses and balconies that stacked up respectfully and efficiently among themselves. Balconies that, the further to the center and higher up in the city, the easier it was possible to see it as a curved descent with various structures filling it up to the ground outside the walls. Even the dead and desolate soil of Gralgor’s territory was purified by the simple arrival of the city, bringing back the green and clean fields around it. The soil, the air and the sky near Otesis always seemed to shine with a glow of life that begged to be maintained. Cloudiness and morbidity seemed to have been purged from those lands that were filled with a vigor and life that was once more than natural. The influence Kion received from the death of the End of the World allowed him to not only bring this dream city into the mortal world, but also create a dome-shaped barrier of pure silver-white energy that surrounded the city a few kilometers beyond its first walls, leaving a beautiful and shining portion of land between the city and the barrier. This protection would exist for a few years, years that should be used to advantage. Used for Otesis to prepare. For Otesis to strengthen. For Otesis to threaten.
During this time, more and more people converged on the city of their dreams. Refugees, slaves, fugitives, the desperate, and warriors. They arrived in their thousands, all guided by the light of hope for which they had waited so long under the reign of terror of Gralgor and his now Successors. All those who sought a safe place, a place of rest, a place to live, were welcome to pass through the barrier that was as resistant as the air. Never in the history of Eredwyn had there been a worldwide migration on such a scale. It could not have been any other way or at any other time, for in a world that for years offered only darkness, who could blame them for walking towards the only light they saw?
Happiness, comfort and relief took over all those who passed the barrier and saw the city of Kion for the first time. Each one reacted according to the suffering and despair they experienced. Some felt pains in their chests that made them fall to their knees, because their bodies were not ready to glimpse such beauty and feel such hope after so many desperate years. Others remained paralyzed for minutes after crossing the barrier because they did not want to stop looking at the city whose existence they never thought was possible. Others, especially children, ran through the green and vast fields around Otesis, because they had never been in a place that allowed them to be as free and happy as that. No matter how different their reactions were, everyone shed tears that fell on the grass, and that shone like drops when hit by the sun’s rays coming from the pure and clear sky whose barrier allowed it to be seen without actually falling apart.
It was more than a dream. It was real.
However, even with Kion’s barrier covering the fields around the city protecting it, there was one enemy that was capable of breaking through. An enemy that King Otes, the hero who killed the End of the World, would soon face.
Even though it was newly created and protected, even though its people had not yet properly established themselves, Otesis would receive its first direct attack.
Its first siege.