The First Ones

Prologue

"When the worlds revolve and the stars travel, at the end of all things always be truest to one's home."

-Ancient Seerini saying

 It was a rare and beautiful thing to find a dream-chaser in full bloom. The flower did not have a blooming season; its buds spawned, grew and died all year round but only very occasionally, sporadically decorating the landscapes with their muted colors. It was difficult to find, but easy to spot once you did see one- dream-chasers sported bright petals which were of a shade astride sorrowful magenta and laughing vermillion. Thus, it was easy to locate in a field of corozane wheat.

Dream-chasers, while lovely, were pitiful things, because they only grew on the surface of the third planet. Of this the Armui were very proud. They had chosen the flower as the banner of their world, proof that beauty was abound in nature's simple realms. The other sects could be persuaded to agree if only to end the discussion. The Redan were convinced that technological sophistication was the highest, purest form of art, and they crafted magnificent cities which stood beneath the mirthful glow of the universe.

What did the warriors of the Markua have to say about this? Nothing. The Markua hardly spoke to begin with, and whenever they did it was usually war poetry or calls of loyalty to Rikofor, whom they worshipped as a wrathful god of war. Those earth-skinned beings were warmongers, every last one of them, down to the little children, who were raised to bear weapons. The Markua had no love for beautiful things, nor ceremony, nor development of the arts. Theirs was a harsh existence, a life of stringent discipline, little luxury and admiration. But what else could you expect from the sect that dwelled on the innermost planet, right on the boundary of the habitable zone?

On a planet ablaze with the fire of their star, everything was different. The Markua constructed monolith temples to Rikofor and trained their children to adulthood. But they were bound by loyalty to the other sects, and they protected their brother-dwellers on the second and third planets. The Redan were sophisticated scholars, beings of science, and provided the other two with technology. And the Armui? They lived on the outermost planet, the last in the system. They were a peaceful people, who kept the land looked after and grew food from the earth to feed all.

Seerin was a quiet, idyllic pastoral world, with a gentle blue sky and a fertile crust. She was the largest and the only planet in the star system of the First Ones to have moons of her own, and the Armui danced in their light after the setting of the sun. The Redan had built their own satellites, colossal spaceborne superstructures that gave rise to cities and artificially-constructed environments. But the Armui had no need for such sophistication and intricacy; they were a simple people, who lived in a surreal agrarian society. Twice a year the harvests turned in a progressive pattern across the various regions of the planet, yielding tremendous amounts of corozane, milfor, honeynuts, and roday. Thanks to the Redan, the oceans of Seerin also became arable, and massive maritime facilities grew and harvested underwater flora and sealife on an industrial scale of global proportions.

There was the quiet village of Farron-Toulu, whose inhabitants were responsible for cultivating crops in the surrounding region. Located by a small local lake and dark forests, this village was, like most others on the planet, relatively unimportant. Seerin had only eight major cities, one for each quadrant of the planet, and Farron-Toulu was close by one of them. Her children played in the streets and sang in the sun, while day in and out spacecraft went to and fro from orbit down to the city, visible as a constant whirlwind of lights traveling between the sky and the horizon. They looked rather like fireflies dancing along the length of the space elevator, shining on its own, and whose tether reached nearly halfway to Seerin's closest moon.

Such a pretty thing it was. Rare, just like the dream-chaser.