Through the Ages: Evenacht

Through the Ages: Evenacht

In ages immemorial, the syimlin were not like our modern deities. They ruled over the continent of Faeyim and its faelareign peoples with power hunger, rage, and neglect. Numerous wars followed in their footsteps as they tried to elevate themselves over their followers and other syimlin. You see, the syimlin at that time were magically gifted but with a mortal lifespan. When they died, their most powerful follower took their title and either held it until their natural death or fell to a yet more powerful mortal.
It was a time of inventive spellcasting, deception, and deadly plots.
Seeing the syimlin refusing to change their ways, and disgusted by the slaughter and destruction, the syimlin Sun decided to act. He invited the other deities to a banquet in their honor. They accepted, for no one disobeyed he who stood apart from the other syimlin, he who had held the title of Sun for ages even more immemorial.

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The wine flowed, and so did anger, spite and vengeance. The syimlin set upon each other in vicious fighting, and, one by one, they fell to blade or magic. Sun watched, unimpressed with the display, and only rose from his throne when the last of the violent succumbed to their wounds.
Those who remained had not taken arms against their peers. Eight greater syimlin, twelve lesser, survived the catastrophe. They stood before Sun, uncertain what to do. He held out his hand, and Death materialized. The being granted each survivor the The Gift of Life, a legacy meant to quash the relentless wars and the hardships that followed.
The syimlin now had the long lives of an immortal, though they could still die by means other than age.
Sun provided another Gift; mantles. Mantles encompassed syimlin titles and magic power, enhancing the inherent abilities of the ones bearing them. They did not belong to the specific syimlin; transfers could occur by numerous means, and would, of necessity, transfer to another being if the syimlin died.
With these two Gifts, the pantheon was born.

The Problem of Ghosts

The ending of so many syimlin halted the divine wars, but it did not stop the ambitious from wanting to hold a mantle. Syimlin still died in these conflicts--and their angry ghosts littered Faeyim, some gathering other wayward spirits to them and wreaking havoc upon the living in revenge for their deaths, some moaning and wailing because they had nowhere to go, nothing to do.
Yet other ghosts hunted the living. Spiritual essences were powered by mystical energy called ryiam, and those who wielded magic possessed a gland that secreted ryiam. The effort to keep these spirits at bay wore on communities, and they demanded syimlin intervene.
The syimlin, in turn, looked to Death and demanded a solution to this problem. Generations of Deaths failed to find one, and the number of ghosts who refused to seek the embrace of the Void swelled. The identity of the one who finally acted is lost to time, but a long-ago Death made a pact with a people called the Astri. They held great sway in a misty, cloud-covered demesne called the Evenacht, a place associated with, but apart from, the continent of Faeyim. Only the strongest users of magic could drift between the Evenacht and Faeyim, so for all practical purposes, the lands remained separate.

Death saw opportunity in this restriction. In return for the Gift of Life, the Astri Grand Patriarch promised the Evenacht would house spirits who wished to continue their existence rather than seek the Final Death in the Void.
Death set about forcing ghosts to travel to the Forest Temple so they could transfer to their new home, clearing Faeyim of the unwanted spirits. The deceased initially resented the demands and resisted leaving, but an acolyte of Death arrived at a solution to smooth the way. Why not promote the misty lands as a place where one could do that which was denied them in life? Did a ghost wish to paint, to sculpt, to write, but found no time while alive? One could do so, in the Evenacht. Did a ghost wish to travel, to broaden horizons, but found that their back-breaking toil while alive prevented exploration? One could do so, in the Evenacht. Did one wish to leave the noise and bustle and find a quiet existence in nature? One could do so, in the Evenacht.
The propaganda worked, and ghosts, of their own will, flocked to the evening lands.

The Evenacht

The problem was that the Evenacht already had a living population, the umbrareign, and those who were not Astri despised the Pact and fought to keep the interlopers from their lands. War and strife ensued, but in the end, the Astri's Pact held and the peoples of the Evenacht submitted to the influx of unwanted ghosts. Resentment smoldered, flaring into conflict with the smallest provocations.
Time progressed. Another Death, believing much of the strife came from those who lived an ill life and brought those practices and beliefs to the deadlands, created Death's Judgment as a means to punish them. Needing a place to house the punished, they formed the Fields of the Condemned, where the ghosts remained until they had served their sentence and, hopefully, became better beings in the process.
Time progressed, and this Death took punishment further and sundered the essences of the Condemned. Through Death's Mark, the head would be sent to the Fields while the remaining essences would find a resting place in disparate places throughout the Evenacht's continents. To reunite their body, the ghost would need to convince an unpunished spirit to accompany them on a Redemption journey to find their hidden essences.
This need led to the formation of Trackers, beings who scoured the Evenacht in search of essences and performed the Recollection ceremony to make the Condemned whole.

The Promise of the Evenacht?

Time progressed. Eager ghosts realized the promise of the Evenacht: to do that which eluded one in life. The once-propaganda became a dearly held belief for ghosts who saw potential and happiness in the edict. Great art, literature, and philosophies emerged, scientific studies in nature and magic bore tremendous fruit. Researchers of history could speak with beings who participated in long-ago events. Knowledge grew along with the ghostly population.
Then the Keel, conquerors of the continent of Faeyim, changed its name to Talis in 15,489 years previous. They honored the Syimlin of Light, who won his mantle 21,524 years previous in a destructive display of righteous justice.
The change ignited contention in the Evenacht, and came to represent the divisions between ancient and modern ghosts. Modern ghosts did not agree that ancient beliefs, cultures, ideas, and technology were superior to theirs, while the ancient ghosts thought the upstarts corrupted those beliefs, cultures, ideas, and technologies. This added fuel to the already caustic conflicts between faelareign. Dryans, elfines, humans, nymphs, and sprites carried their Talin prejudices into the Evenacht, and not all wished to peacefully co-exist.
Serious conflicts ended with the participants wailing in the Fields, but did not stop the simmering resentment between ghosts of different ages, cultures, classes, and subspecies. Even families were not spared the quarrels between ancient elders and modern upstarts. Difficulties in communities throughout the evening lands spilled into difficulties with the living umbrareign, and clashes ensued, often with no one knowing what, exactly, they fought over.

The Hallowed Collective

Time progressed. From discussions with acolytes beginning around 12,000 years previous, Æshren Gerant formed the Hallowed Collective, an organization dedicated to two goals; acclimating the newly deceased to the Evenacht and their post-death existence through Greeters and Redeeming the Condemned through Finder agents.
Before Greeters, ghosts were tossed into the Evenacht to fend for themselves after going through Death's Judgment. They had no idea how to interact with their new environment and the peoples they encountered, where to go, what to do. Gerant believed that ghosts would integrate far better if they had some idea beforehand about existence in the evening lands. He formed the Greeters to provide this instruction.
Greeters waited for the newly deceased at Death's Arch, the gate beyond the Fields of the Condemned that led to the Evenacht proper. They would round up those whose language they spoke and took them to the city of Evening. There, they would teach them about the evening lands and Touch, the way ghosts interacted with everything in the Evenacht. Once prepared, the ghosts would leave Evening in search of the Evenacht's promise.

Riding on the goodwill engendered from the good they did, the Collective became the most influential institution among the deceased. To cement that influence, Gerant formed the Finders.
He tasked the Finders to select a head to Redeem from the Fields of the Condemned. He wrote out rules on conducting a Redemption, how to perform a Recollection, and what steps to take to integrate the post-Condemned into Evenacht society.
Because of the goodwill they already possessed, the Evenacht's ghostly residents came to rely solely on the Finders to Redeem a Condemned. Trackers, denied entry to the Fields by the Collective, disappeared. Only by the grace of the Hallowed could the UnRedeemed find surcease to their suffering.
Under Gerant's leadership, things between faelareign and umbrareign settled. The newly deceased did not cause the problems they once did, and the umbrareign appreciated the change.
The peace did not last long.

The Beast

The Beast, a mighty begestern chief who died in battle, did not wish to give up his Evenacht influence. Instead of traveling to his people's evening lands, he targeted and defeated the syimlin Old Man Death and claimed his mantle. He was the first umbrareign to wear a syimlin mantle, and with the extra power he gained, he continued in death as he had in life, abusing his charge for millennia.
Faelareign ghosts refused to follow him because they saw in him corruption rather than Judgment, the umbrareign refused to follow him because they saw his donning a syimlin mantle as a betrayal of Evenacht natives. Neither the Talin-based syimlin nor the evening lands' native divines saw him as one of them.
Desperate for the recognition denied him, he made incursions into Talis to create his own following. He slaughtered the living before their time and swept their souls into his temple, keeping them confined to him and his whims.

Both the Evenacht deities and the syimlin wished to depose him, but there was a problem; he, as Death, held their lives in his hands. He could take away their last breath at his pleasure, and he had no qualms about abusing his charge. He bragged he would replace them with loyal followers, and no one wished to cede that much divine power to him.
Intent on protecting the Talin spirits from him, the Syimlin of Darkness created the Tunnel of Memories. It replaced Death's Judgment by forcing ghosts to relive moments of their lives, good and bad, and those with the most egregious records, whom the Beast would prefer as allies, Darkness sent to the Fields. The rest drifted into the Evenacht, existing in terror that the Beast would come for them.
Both faelareign and umbrareign wondered why Sun allowed the abuses, for until the Beast, he kept syimlin well in hand. Whispers claimed he feared Death at the Beast's hands, or that he had no dominion over one who was umbrareign rather than faelareign, or that the Sun Oracle Machella cautioned him against action because a greater threat would rise in his place. Whatever the cause, Sun did not interfere, starting the decline of faith in deities on Talis, which wriggled its way into the Evenacht. Those who followed syimlin found themselves pariahs rather than keepers of morality, causing resentment, dismay, and conflict.
Death continued his rampages on Talis until his minions accidentally left one soul alive during a raid. One soul, who promised to end the Beast and his terrifying reign.

Erse Parr, The Living Death

6119 years previous, this soul, Erse Parr, was kidnapped by the Beast's minions and faced him in the Forest Temple. The Beast, overconfident, declared a duel. She, who had trained for that confrontation nearly her entire existence, defeated him and claimed the mantle of Death. As the first Living Death, she ushered in changes, large and small, and spent her tenure undoing the damage the Beast inflicted. This included restoring faith in the syimlin by defeating the interstellar Flayn Empire's invading fleet in a single death-dealing afternoon.
Her greatest accomplishment (or failure, considering to whom you speak), was to form relations with the Evenacht deities and its living peoples. She saw umbrareign as allies, not enemies, and her rule became a juster one for both the living and dead because of this belief.
This extended to the ghosts of the interstellar invaders. Erse, along with other death deities around Sensour, sent their spirits to the various evening lands. But unlike other deities, she met with a representative and offered to help them return to their home planet's evening lands, if they figured out how ghosts could travel through space without replenishing ryiam.
Her greatest failure was her attempt to fix the unjust Redemption system. Not adding new Condemned to the Fields guaranteed fewer Finders willing to Redeem those who sat there. Fearing a complete abandonment of the UnRedeemed, she continued the practice, and instead of sweeping change, has stealthily implemented minute alterations to create a fairer, if no less harsh, system.

And so life and unlife continues. The idea of the Evenacht is a promise, a hope, an adventure. It is also a dark place of failed ambition, hatred and resentment. It is up to individuals to make of it what they will.

--Lokjac, Acolyte of Sun