The Emergence of the Prime

Era beginning/end

In Alathor’s first epoch, the Harbinger Caelumbra unleashed Prism-Conduits, awakening the Prime—self-aware beings with elemental powers, corrupted by Harbinger malice. Their destructive potential alarmed the Stewards, dividing them: Zun called for annihilation, while Isoko advocated guidance. At the Battle of the Fractured Dawn, the Stewards defeated Caelumbra, scattering his Prism-fiber remnants across Helvania. Though victorious, the legacy of Caelumbra’s tech and the Prime’s volatile magic endured, profoundly shaping Alathor’s future.

Eventually, a hidden corruption took form. Following the Mother’s sacrifice and the founding of Alathor’s life-circuit, a new threat emerged from the shadow of the Harbingers. Caelumbra, known among his kin as “The Great Prism,” devised a living weapon called the Prism-Conduits—bio-engineered organs capable of fracturing Vitaeon’s Lifeforce into pure elemental streams and channeling Soulforce into unsuspecting hosts. His twisted purpose was twofold: to awaken Alathor’s nascent sentient creatures and to enslave them as amplifiers of his Prism-weaponry for a Harbinger conquest of the world.

Eventually, this hidden corruption coalesced into the first of the Prime, later known as the Progenitors. Crafted from the very matter of the world—Mother’s flesh—and suffused with the Giver’s Life Force yet stained by Harbinger malice, these humanoids awoke with self-awareness and a fledgling command of magic. Though their mastery of Lifeforce was far weaker than that of the Stewards’, it was sufficient for them to learn to bend earth, water, fire, and air to their will. Unchecked, their ambition and hunger for power led to internecine wars and the pillaging of Alathor’s burgeoning ecosystems, alarming the celestial guardians.

As the Prime threatened to unravel the balance of the young world, a schism formed among the Stewards. Zun, the youngest and most impetuous, demanded their immediate eradication. In contrast, Isoko, the Steward of Spring and life’s first steward, argued passionately that the Prime—born of their own Mother—deserved guidance, not genocide. She believed they could be nurtured toward harmony, becoming true stewards of the life-circuit rather than its destroyers.

This crisis culminated in the Battle of the Fractured Dawn, where the four united Stewards—Resh, Huichi, Isoko, and Zun—confronted Caelumbra and his legion of Prism-Conduit-wielders. In a cataclysm of elemental fervor, they routed the invaders, mortally wounding Caelumbra as he fled north. His shattered vessel crashed in the primordial Helvanian mountains, scattering Prism-fiber cortex shards—the seeds of future magi-tech—dormant amidst the wreckage. With Caelumbra’s defeat, the Stewards claimed victory, but the legacy of his Prism-Conduits and the awakened Prime would echo through Alathor’s history for centuries to come .