The Soul Harvest

As seen in

13th of Kal'em, 1283 E.E. (Establishing Era) Written by Elder Ha'mak, Stalk of the Harvest
"There once was a great and powerful ruler.
A King of all, and every, the friend of each.
His words flowed with wisdom,
His hands with strength,
And bountiful was his land.


He was needed and wanted,
So he was told,
Begged,
Pleaded with.
They cried out to their weary King.


The nobles in their great houses,
The fishmonger in the streets.
His children lamented his fate.
None could think of who they were without him.
The criminals even wept for his eventual passing.


And so, he sought.
He sought for knowledge,
Dark and Deep,
With thoughts better left unwritten.
He found a way to carve his path,
In stones and hollow deeps.
With nail and hand he dug and clawed,
Ripping in to the belly of his mountainous beast.


A temple of stone and damp grew,
Far beneath the sky.
It continued to eat its way,
A parasite within the earth.


For nigh ten years,
Brought close to death,
He toiled beneath the dirt.
And then it came.


From within his tomb of a temple,
He brought the Pages of Woe.
The song inscribed upon them,
It wispered in our ears.
Preyed upon our innate fears.


We were all too happy to assist.
We paid the cost with pride.
Our joy was our kingdom's end.
We hastened to martyr ourselves,
Giving our essence to our King.


So many of my brethern gave,
The gave their all.
In soul and mind,
In spirit and body.


They gave it all to him.
The Tarnished King,
His harvest of Souls.
Let them be his Ruin.


His madness spread,
An insanity unending,
It ate its way through all.
Every morsel it sought to corrupt.


Our end we saw,
Each waking day.
Each sleepless night.
And yet, we could not recognize,
The lies that blinded our eyes.


We began to hunger, Feast for naught.
Drink with unrespited thirst.
We lacked in every mortal aspect.


We let his Ruin become our own.
We urged him to our doom.
We needed him to guide us.
We begged and wept and pleaded.
We brought Ruin upon ourselves."

---

This scroll was one of many preserved writings from the Collapse of Proto-Humans, found by Recorders from Atheris. It speaks of how the Proto-Humans quickly fell in to the Spirit Harvest rituals for their own lust, though they saw it as self preservastion. It was quick deterioration from there, leading most to their doom within the next two centuries, and anyone left simply withered away as the last few remnants of a doomed race. But humans. Humans lived on. They did not care for their linageas, nor for the rigidity of their forefathers, and so they struck out on their own, leaving behind a kingdom of ruins.