Black Ash Days
Summary
Once upon a time, there was a mighty kingdom, its lands spread across the eastern shores of the sea. It watched when the stars fell to earth, it traveled to the moons, it tamed magic and the great beasts. This was the Khazar Empire. They built cities of marble and gold and jewels. They made mystic artifacts that we still covet to this day.
Despite their infinite wealth, power and magic, they couldn't survive the changing tides of the World. East of the Volhynia Mountains, a green grassland spread for hundreds of miles. Exploding out of the ground, a great cloud of ash, smoke and lava climbed miles into the sky. Fire and rock was carried by the winds, raining down and decimating everything in its path. In the heart of the pyroclastic cloud, the most magnificent embodiment of elemental flame unfurled its great wings, the Great Firebird itself, the Phoenix. Everywhere it went, the world was scoured by fire and ash, seared clean in a grand display.
The volcano roared for days, weeks, months, spewing its wrath across the landscape, led by its blazing guide. The cities burned and were buried, none within reach were spared. The sea was filled with ash, turning into a thick grey sludge. The sky blotted out the sun, and fire was followed by ash and snow, freezing the remains. Many fled into the caves and mountains, away from the wrath of the Phoenix, scrawling on dark cave walls the hope their apocalypse wouldn't be forgotten.
One day, the fires went out, and the Phoenix died in the caldera it was born, awaiting the time when the World would need to be scoured clean once more. The World choked for decades, with ash covering the ground and summer never coming. The World had ended.
And yet it did not. Some life did survive the apocalypse, and crawling from their caves to find what had once been a beautiful and bountiful land was an icy grey. But the winds did blow away the ash, the tides devoured the black sludge. Grass grew again, so too did the trees and flowers and crops. The World slowly healed, revitalized in a new spring, one with the rich volcanic soils to bring it back to life. And so the World recovered, it lived on in a new form, with what came before buried deep and forgotten.
To this day, the Black Ash Plains serve as a permanent mark, a bruise made of ash, sand, and glass that remains the epicenter of where the cataclysm once spawned. The pit that was the volcano's mouth filled with water, known today as Crater Lake. The Phoenix still sleeps below the lake, bringing the water to an eternal boil, awakening only when the time is right.
Date of Setting
1300 BC
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