The City

It has no other name. It has always been. It existed before the creation of the world and will exist long after the rest has become a lifeless waste. It is all things to all of its inhabitants, and more. It is ancient, teeming, bustling, vital, filthy, stinking, beautiful and hideous.

In the formless void before creation, what is now The City became an island of stability in a sea of chaos. Entities - not beings, for they had no sense of self - emerged from the Void. The entities, the Beginners, literally spoke the world into being, their language being fundamentally tied to the structure of the universe. After unknown eons, the Beginners were supplanted by their own creations and the Gods began their reign. The City was their home, and they used the language of the Beginners to shape the world to their liking. For tens of thousands of years the Gods played their games and created as they saw fit, but eventually they grew tired of this and by ones and twos, they wandered away, speaking the Void away and going farther and farther from their home.

Our people are ancient and proud. The alfar are the oldest of the Mortal Races. Our empire ruled for thousands of years, stretching from the Salt Desert to World's End, and as far north as the Sea of Ice. Our mighty galleys ranged across the oceans as our armies did the land, bringing the glory of our rule to the savage humans and orcs - the mayfly races, living mere fractions of our glorious lifetimes.

Our mages, inheritors of the power of the Gods, learned the language of the Beginners and their magics granted us longer lives, greater power. The least of the alfar was a king to the mayflies, our poorest richer than any human could dream.

Our pride and power came at a price, though. Our children grew fewer and we turned inward. Some of us rejected our mighty heritage completely, retreating to the forests to live lives of contemplation, devoting themselves to perfection of body and spirit. Others retreated to their towers, drowning themselves in decadent pleasures and magical research. As our empire rotted from within, the mayfly races plotted their revenge.

The humans, most like us of the mayflies, by then a majority of our armies, carved their own kingdoms from within our empire. Their mages learned at the feet of ours, their generals broke the armies apart and aped our grandeur on their puny scale, warring at first against us and then against each other, until our empire was reduced to a small fraction of itself.

Then came the orcs, breeding in the decay of our empire's periphery like maggots in a corpse, swarming over the kingdoms bordering the vast steppe.

Our rulers drew themselves tighter, until The City was all that was left and our last emperor ceded the last vestige of our glory to the humans in return for allowing our 12 families some measure of control over our ancient home.

Today we live on, our numbers dwindling, playing intricate games against each other, vying for our own prestige and that of our families, waging long, slow death-grudges against our enemies - an assassination here, a poisoning a century later. Yes, some of our own have since risen to rule The City, but it is a hollow honor when compared to our power of millenia past.

Our ancestors look upon us, upon the pitiful few that remain of our millions, and they weep in shame.

"I'll tell you, it's the brightest of ages for humankind. You can say what you want, but we're the top dogs now and there's no way we'll fall down. Yeah, yeah, I know - The City used to be the seat of empire, but it's still the center of civilization. Why else are our mages in such high demand in the Young Kingdoms? Why else do our merchant fleets dock at every port, carry every cargo imaginable? The sons of kings come to our universities, study in our libraries.

"When you say 'The City', people know what you mean. Sarkand, Marizar, Tchepolotla - they're cities, alright, but they're not The City. That's us. We've got the tallest towers, the richest nobles, we've got the best of the whole world, and it comes in through our gates and across our docks. We don't need to send out armies to get it, not when it's easier to have it brought to us.

"I love this place - from the ivory and gold towers of the 12 families all the way down to each and every shit-covered cobblestone. It's real, more real than any other city in the world - like if everything else was water, this'd be stone.

"Hey - how 'bout a refill there, darlin'? I'm dyin' of thirst here.

"Thanks. Now, where was I? Oh, yeah - The City, it's solid. Ain't gonna ever end. Hell - did you know these walls've never been broken? Never, in the five thousand years they've stood. The only way armies get in The City is through treachery. Silver an' gold are the best keys, that's what they say.

"See, we learned from the elves, we saw their mistakes an' we're smarter than that. The big empires, they're just targets. You concentrate on buildin' yourself strong, on makin' yourself indispensible to everyone, like we done, you'll be sittin' pretty 'til the day the Beginners come back."

We are the People Of The Earth. The One God, the Lord of Stone, carved us thousands of years ago and taught us the skills of stone and smithy. Our realm stretched beneath the mountains, deep into the darkness beneath. We traded with the elves and the humans, the people of wood and grass, but we remained apart, as the One God commanded.

Our pride grew as we mastered all crafts and skills - remembering the order of the Lord of Stone that we become "Clever handed, bright-minded, masters of all elements and servants of none." As our pride grew, our reverence for the One God diminished. Our craftmasters ceased their obesiance and we became soft, succumbed to the flesh rather than holding up the stone.

The One God saw this, and waxed wroth. Our ancestors suffered their just fate when the Great Wyrms descended upon the White Mountains. Ten Wyrms fell upon ten kingdoms and tens of thousands were slain outright. Two Wyrms were slain, though not without cost, and eight kingdoms fell.

We dispersed, carrying what treasure we could, finding refuge in the cities and towns of the humans. The two surviving kingdoms took in those they could, but our people were scattered like gravel falling down a shaft.

Our mastery of craft served us well - we were able to survive, then prosper, as our craftmasters adopted weaving, masonry, carpentry and a myriad of other trades. The One God told us that our penance was to learn humility, that we would not be cast out form our homelands to suffer eternally, but that in the fullness of time, we would return and destroy the remaining Wyrms, reclaim our homes.

We maintain our observance of the laws of the One God - not to eat that which grows in the sun, or flies in the air; to encase our dead in cold, incorruptible stone; to heed our elders and not to touch blade of stone or steel to our beards.

We live and wait for the sign that the Lord of Stone has forgiven us, that we may return to our homelands. Every year, as the Star Of The God returns to the sky, we search for signs that we may return. Every year, we have not seen the signs, but we comfort ourselves by repeating our most sacred hope: "Next year, the mountains."

We are the Orokh!

Strong-limbed runners

Servants of steppe and sky

Fast as the wind, deadly as a fire

The Dragons of the steppe!

The old orc sat next to the fountain, sightless eyes focused into bygone years as he sang the history of his clan. At his feet, a woven basket held a paltry collection of brass and copper coins. I was seeing more and more of this - elders that in a simpler time would have already died in combat or left their clan and struck out on a final, solitary journey to the north that would end in an honorable death on a cold mountainside.

That couldn't happen any more, though. The steppelands were disappearing, had been for a generation. The orcs had fled from an enemy they couldn't see or name - some clans stood and fought, and were never heard from again. Some clans fled east and west, displacing other clans in a cascade of events that sent chaos rippling across the continent.

The clans of the Dragon Horde - the Ezhder Kabila in their language - fled south, following a dream of the shamans of Khagan Atagün, that they would suffer much but ultimately purify and liberate the steppes if they went south, taking refuge with the halk taŞa tut yurtu - literally, "people of the stone yurts".

Atagün held his horde together as they ran without stopping for over a week - a "fist" of days and nights - until the remnants, a few thousand hungry and shattered warriors, women and cubs, stood outside the gates of The City. Atagün was the first to surrender his sword to Peregrine Arminger and the first to kneel and acknowledge submission to the laws of The City.

Since then, of course, the orcs had begun to assimilate. As the elders died off or succumbed to drink and senility, parts of their heritage died. With no steppe, there was no frame of reference for the young, some of whom had never been outside the city walls and didn't believe their people had ever been in a place without walls and cobblestones.

The thought of losing that knowledge was anathema to the servants of my God, Peschin. We began seeking out the elder orcs, learning their language so that we could better understand their customs.

It is a sad sight to see an entire people adrift, cut loose without their traditions and collective knowledge. It is my mission, and the mission of others of my faith, to collect this knowledge and preserve it, until such time as it is needed again.