The Declaration

Volume 2 - The Declaration

Chapter 1: The Event

The event known as "The Declaration" marked a turning point in the history of Andolus and I mark it as the beginning of The Last Night. Those who recognize its significance do not try to pretend that it was a one-time occurrence; they regard it as the catalyst for the perpetual collapse of global stability. On the night of The Declaration, around 70 years ago, millions across the world simultaneously experienced a telepathic invasion, a message sent from somewhere beyond our mortal world.

The message was brief, but its impact immediate and catastrophic: "Your World Belongs to Us. We Killed your Gods. You are Next. Die Slowly. Die in Pain. This is Our Declaration of War."

This pronouncement warped the minds of those who would later be called Prophets, individuals who were driven to Madness by the overwhelming horror of the message. Their condition, marked by vivid hallucinations and violent behavior, spread like a contagion, affecting millions more. Entire communities fell under the weight of this psychic plague, and within weeks, vast stretches of populated areas were left in chaos. Governments were too slow to react, as this had never before occurred in Andolan history. Militaries alike had no defense against millions of their own populace attacking and destroying anything that moved. Worse still, many soldiers and would-protectors also succumbed to the Declaration and turned their weapons on their own commanders.

The Prophets, so named for their cryptic ramblings of apocalyptic visions, became the carriers of the Declaration’s madness. Their influence was not contained by geographical borders, and as they traveled, so did the spread of mass hysteria and societal collapse. Contemporary accounts describe the Prophets as having an unnatural aura of fear and dread, their very presence enough to induce panic in otherwise stable individuals. They never stayed in one place for long, roaming in hordes to every civilized area across the world.

Only ten years after The War of Gifts, the world was simply not prepared for The Declaration. Nations were still rebuilding their militaries, who had no targets other than their own civilians and comrades. The Declarants, as they are referred to now, were unseen, unable to be reached. They were alien invaders with no presence other than their mentally-afflicted minions. While their servants, the Prophets could be killed by normal means, other more malevolent and powerful beings crawled back into the light from millions of years of hiding, and while now the might of Andolus had a more enticing target, the entities we call Relics remain almost impossible to destroy.

The world turned inward now, focused on maintaining civilization in any way possible. All scholars agree that no one nation handled the infection well. It is important for readers to understand the events that lead to the near-total collapse of human civilization that occurred in the decades after The Declaration.

(As an author’s aside, the Solarium and Greynill were unaffected by The Declaration, yet neither did they attempt to stop it. The Greynil remained on Estebronn and killed any continental that tried to approach. On Solarium, the Golden Cadre was dispatched to the shores and massive charged cannons were built to turn back any approaching vessel. We Recusants remained on the continents and tried to help as best as we could, yet it was not enough.)

In The True Suns, The Revered declared that any sign of mental illness or divergence from The Doctrine was a precursor to the plague of The Declaration. Posters were lathered down streets and in every square, demanding that civilians turn in their neighbors for the slightest sign of “unnaturally distressing behavior.” From my extensive research into this matter, I believe that more people disappeared or were murdered by The Revered than the Prophets and Relics combined. This strategy of isolating their own population created “abandoned zones” where entire cities and regions were marked as forbidden, giving rise to border walls and kill-posts built to keep their own people contained.

North in Almasaari, their economy ground to a halt almost immediately as workers slipped into madness and became raving murderers who employed reckless violence throughout every city. Factories were slaughterhouses, ports burned, and trade simply ceased. While other nations had vast expanses of undeveloped land, the Almassari built “out”, their cities growing larger from the center until they were sprawling masses of concrete, metal, and glass, choked by industrial smoke. Their roads were well-paved and easy to travel, when the Prophets turned to slaughter, those same roads, designed for fast industrial expansion, turned into conduits for madness and death that spread faster than other nations.

Misanaari, who while they spurned the ideals of their former oppressors, built their nation much in the same way as Almasaari. Sprawling cities stretched out from their cores until much of the habitable land was occupied by industry and densely packed tenements full of people with little room to retreat. More conscientious of natural beauty and habits, they left dense wilderness areas intact and protected by law, but these retreats of nature simply gave the Relics places to congregate and strike from concealment. Once thought to bring stability and commerce to poorer areas, organized crime fractured immediately and did nothing to stem the tide of Prophets who were slaughtering their own families and friends by the thousands. Siegestrikers turned inward, firing on their own people, defending walls from the opposite direction they were trained to face. Calls for help to the True Suns went out every day, until the Volt network collapsed. None were answered.

Across the Andolan bridge in central Andolus, the Quantal first tried to treat the Prophets who arose in their towns, villages, and modest cities. No manner of medicine or Mysticism could cure the psychic grip that had formed on millions of their tribe-mates. The way of Quantal had always been focused on peace before violence, yet this ideal served as more of a hindrance to stop the plague than a wise approach. The University of Quantal now teaches that there is no reasoning with Prophets, Relics, or any Delcarant-touched entity. In those early days, however, kindness was met with wanton slaughter. Entire tribes were left defenseless against The Declaration and many no longer exist, their entire bloodlines wiped out within years. We Recusants came to their aid, and tried to convince the Elders to take more directly aggressive approaches to containing the spread of The Declaration, and only those who heeded our words kept their holdings safe.

Accounts from Mayar are contradictory and scarce, as they are kept sealed within Royal repositories, guarded by Arcanists and Sentinels. They shared none of their stories without outsiders, and when I visited in 4972 to gather firsthand accounts, only the very brave would speak with me. Even still, I gathered only half-truths and speculation of what transpired on that self-isolating continent. Suffice to say, it was chaos and blood like everywhere else, yet not on a grand scale like in Quantal, Almasaari, and other similarly developed nations. Whatever the Arcanist Society did to stop the spread of madness worked, and they refuse without question to share this knowledge with the world. However, I have no doubt that it was mystical in nature and fewer doubts that it spared no one, infected and sane alike. Yet, it is a fact, their death count was lower than any other nation that saw the horrors of The Declaration.

I speak of what happened in Celenostre with some pause. Not all of the accounts and documents that I gathered will be shared in these volumes, for they are barberous and too disturbing to report to you, readers. It will suffice to say that the jungles of Celenostre were the perfect breeding grounds for madness and growth of cults who used Prophets for their own means. Noble Houses intentionally allowed Prophets to tear through their neighbors' holds while keeping theirs secure. The Echelon baited Prophets into the poorer areas of their nation, leaving their own people to die while they stayed safe in their castles. The Echelon survived, but very few others were that fortunate. Out of all nations who were plagued by Relics and Prophets, Celenostre lost the most life and settlements. I heard the same justification from poor and rich alike, the weak were sacrificed to keep the strong alive.

Finally, in the Broken Crescent, Prophets stayed near Origin Vaults that had not been excavated by the Crescent people, for they found The Origin to be one of the greatest threats to Humanity and refused to open another vault after the disaster of Domus. This may have saved a great number of people, who were already scarce in the Crescent. For unknown reasons, for none can gather accounts from dead Prophets, or living ones for that matter, they spent their time trying to claw into the Vaults and eventually died of heat stroke, thirst, or starvation. The Clans of the Crescent rallied together, abandoning their settlements to join the nomads, staying clear of Vaults. Few Relics roamed the Crescent during this time, another unexplained mystery.

It is a wonder to scholars that civilization survived at all. What is true and clear is that it is nothing like it was before the War of Gifts. Governments today are harsh, unrelenting, and paranoid. People trust less, focused more on themselves than others, even in places like Quantal and the Broken Crescent where community is prized above all.

Chapter 2: The Return of Relics

In the wake of the Declaration, more death and destruction was caused by ancient creatures that the Origin named “Relics”. These entities, previously known only in myth and obscure Origin texts, were thought to have re-emerged as a direct consequence of the psychic upheaval, more likely they are commanded by the Declarants. Relics were described by the Origin as grotesque amalgamations of rubbery flesh and mechanical structures, their forms both monstrous and alien. The fact that the Origin referred to them as Relics, millions of years ago, weaves an even greater mystery as to their purpose and source.

However, they added to the madness and devastation wrought by the Declaration and worked in tandem with the Prophets, and later the Apologist cults. They also share many of the same qualities as other Declarant minions, such as spreading madness, fueled by Aether, and a frustrating amount of physical resistance and ability to rebuild the form after suffering damage.

During the decade-long period of the first Declaration, they fed on the fear and suffering of survivors, growing stronger with each new disaster. Relics appeared in areas where the Declaration’s effects were most profound, particularly in regions where madness and death had reached their peak.

Their behavior was erratic, hard to predict, and their attacks were swift yet devastating. Scholars who later studied Relics attacks hypothesized that these creatures were not meant to annihilate Humanity, but seemed to be engaging in experiments on human resilience and psychology during periods of intense fear and chaos.

Future volumes will delve deeper into Relics and their nature, behavior, and events involving their presence. For the purpose of explaining their role in The Declaration, they seemed to be adding to the chaos or benefiting from it to operate outside of reach, to whatever end, is unknown.

Chapter 3: Demonic Incursions

Demon is a term fabricated by The Revered to describe an entity of humanoid appearance, a skin-suit, as they're called by many, yet inhabited by an Aether-formed extra-dimensional being of pure evil.

More insidious and subtle than Relics, Demons took on the form of ordinary people and walked freely among the frantic population, performing their own experiments on societal order and spreading madness and disease with their very existence.

There was little to distinguish them from a neighbor or loved one, until they struck. While Relics were driven by primal hatred or a deranged curiosity, Demons were creatures of malevolent intelligence, their motivations less understood. They did not appear in vast numbers, but their infiltration into society was deeply disruptive.

Demons were attributed to the near collapse of the True Suns government as four Revered were later accused of being alien infiltrators and vanished without a trace. They were suspected of turning Noble Houses of Celenostre against each other (yet I believe that was a cover for actual espionage), one Demon set back the Almasaari's aether research industry by decades, and started dark mystical cults in the Far Academy of Quantal. They continue to operate around the world to this day.

The few who survived encounters with these entities described their personalities as deeply manipulative, capable of breaking down the psyche of their victims before finally destroying them. Demons thrived in environments saturated by distrust and fear, and fed on the psychological chaos wrought by the Declaration. As with the Relics, it is unclear whether Demons were ancient entities now awakened or have an origin outside of our mortal realm. While not fully embraced by the scholastic world, it is my theory, that I will elaborate on in a future volume, that Demons are the Declarants themselves.

Chapter 4: The Second Declaration

Roughly a decade after the initial event, a second invasion began and the first ended. The psychic plague of the First Declaration subsided, the Prophets who survived returned to their original mental state, completely unaware of what they had done.

This time, the second psychic message affected a smaller but more concentrated group of individuals who had already been touched by the first wave of madness. This new message, though less widespread, cemented the tenets of the Apologist groups, while not called such at the time, that were already on the rise:

"Those Who Seek Forgiveness. Apologize. Tear. Rend. Pain. Bring Fear, Bring Sorrow, Bring Death. In Our Arms, Seek Atonement."

Unlike the First Declaration, which caused mass hysteria and insanity, this second pronouncement galvanized existing cults and former Prophets, reinforcing their beliefs and their violent practices. It did not spread as widely, but it was enough to solidify the Apologists’ place in society. From this point forward, Apologists became permanent fixtures in many regions, infiltrating political and military organizations, manipulating governments, and fueling civil unrest.

These cults rallied around the new belief that the only way to survive the coming end of the world was to appease the forces behind the Declaration. The first of these groups were organized around the Prophets, who were often viewed as conduits to the entities responsible for the event. However, the cults quickly took on a darker, more violent nature.

Apologists committed acts of self-mutilation, murder, and ritualistic destruction in a misguided attempt to placate what they believed to be cosmic rulers. The most fervent among them believed that only through immense suffering, both self-inflicted and inflicted on others, could they earn the forgiveness of these unknowable powers. This doctrine of violence became the foundation of many of the larger Apologist sects, which spread throughout both urban and rural areas.

Historical records indicate that many cities fell to internal strife as Apologist groups gained power, their influence often spreading through key political or military figures. As the initial madness of the Declaration receded in the years following the second iteration, the cults remained, and continued to sow terror and destabilization in almost every nation.

On Solarium and Estebronn, like the first invasion, the second bypassed these cultures. Once the Prophets ceased their widespread apocalyptic destruction, Estebronn and Solarium stopped destroying continental ships at will, yet increased restrictions on foreign arrivals. Solarium assigns a Minder to all foreigners who are vigilant and unwavering in their control over what an outsider does and sees. Any who show the slightest sign of being an Apologist or Demon are imprisoned and subsequently thrown off of the island, boat not included

Chapter 5: The Declaration Today

The Declaration, along with the emergence of Relics, Demons, and Apologist cults, began the continual but languid collapse of human civilization. While nations were able to regain a great deal of control and stability, control always comes with a cost and we Recusants believe that any peace or order is a façade that will soon disappear.

A scant 70 years ago, governments turned on themselves, entire regions became uninhabitable, and global populations plummeted as cities and vast expanses of territories were consumed by the madness. Efforts to organize against the growing chaos were met with limited success, as the very nature of the threat was elusive and ever-changing.

Even now in 4978, the effects of the Declaration can still be felt. The ruins of cities once vibrant with life now stand as haunted reminders of this dark period, while Apologist cults remain active in the shadows, awaiting the return of the forces they seek to appease. Relics have retreated into dark places, but they have never stopped their acts of terror on the most vulnerable populations, continuing their alien experiments on Humankind. Demons continue to be found and vanish well before they can be caught, a few exceptions aside which I will cover in the volume on the signs of The Last Night.

While only a few governments acknowledge The Last Night, which is my theory of impending apocalypse, some refuse to publicly acknowledge that the enemy is still plotting and executing our destruction.

Almasaari, Misanaari, Celenostre, and Mayar will not acknowledge The Last Night, keeping their citizens in a state of constant ideological fervor or under illusions that they drove back the darkness. They explain the presence of Relics as isolated incidents that will dwindle with time. Apologists are not as insipid and powerful as they are purported to be and will soon lose appeal. They show their citizens and the rest of the world a picture of great tragedy but even greater human resolve, and completely ignore all evidence to the contrary. Only elite groups in those nations have been found to be actively working against the Declarants.

The True Suns and Quantal are actively working against the Declarants in both public messages and obvious operations. However, both nations have a severely different approach to stopping the end of the world. The True Suns seek to weaponize Declarant biotechnology to be used against them, while Quantal has become more invested in mystical research to fight the enemy. Different approaches, yes, yet, at least both nations have made it public that they believe in The Last Night and will do whatever they must to stop it.

My time in Estebronn was brief, to say the least, and they seemed entirely uninterested in the affairs and destruction happening in the wider world. They neither acknowledge or deny the Declaration and the decline of human civilization. My final opinion on their involvement is that they have none. Of course, readers would now expect me to elaborate on the opinions of my own people, the Solarium, yet disappointment is all that I can offer in this regard. I am forbidden from discussing or affixing to word the opinions of the High Justice.

Chapter 6: The Doom Defiant

From the most broken lands on Andolus, a rare few arose to fight the Declarants and their agenda of doom. The warriors, scholars, mystics, and wealthy or influential who were unwilling to surrender to despair are now known as The Doom Defiant. They became Andolus' last line of resistance, standing defiantly against the monsters, cults, and darkness that almost ended the world.

While this author knows of their true origin, I have been sworn to secrecy and advise readers not to seek the truth of this mystery, for the good of Andolus. Regardless, the Doom Defiant stands against a world gone mad and going toward insanity, weapons ready, while others try to hide from it.

The Doom Defiant are not an army, nor an organized order of monster hunters. They are a coalition of survivalists, bound only by purpose. Each has their own scars, their own reasons to fight, whether vengeance, duty, or a raw, unbreakable will to protect. Their skills vary; some wield spells, some swords, and some words, but all share one goal: to hunt and eradicate the unnatural evils haunting Andolus.

None claim to be their leader and they have no ranks or titles. If any claim to be their founder, a leader, or use a title, they are false. They have one founder and they will most likely only be found when they wish to be. The Defiants exist to serve code, an unspoken set of rules each Defiant keeps close, passed down to them from the original Doom Defiant.

• They will not take innocent lives.
  

• They honor the laws of the land, though they may bend them as needed.
  

• They never betray a fellow Defiant.
  

• Destroy evil or die trying.

These principles separate the Defiant from the twisted cultists and Relics they pursue. In a world sinking into darkness, their code is a thin, flickering flame, a reminder that even amid horror, there is a line that must not be crossed.

Each Defiant carries a journal, meticulously recording every encounter with Relics, Apologists, and the entities whispered of in the dark. These journals do not gather dust. They are copied by hand and spread across Andolus, carried by trusted couriers to hidden sanctuaries called Scribes’ Shrines.

Within these shrines, dedicated scribes labor to copy each record, ensuring that the lore of the Defiant does not perish with any single shrine. They hide their knowledge across many shrines, guarding against the relentless threats they face. Here, the Defiant find resilience, not in numbers, but in the secrets they share, scattered yet united.

Isolation defines them. The Doom Defiant move on the fringes, often forsaking any homeland. Versatile and elusive, each Defiant survives by mastering their craft, blending into any society or vanishing into shadow until the time comes to strike. They are warriors, mystics, and survivalists, honing skills that allow them to survive where others would fall.

Though they seldom work together, each battle is a solitary war, they form small, trusted networks of allies, mercenaries, and informants. With these contacts, they track cults, hunt down relics, and seize artifacts that might give them an edge. A Defiant’s power lies not in companionship but in their web of contacts, each a thread leading to some hidden knowledge or whisper of evil that must be hunted down.

Conclusion

The Last Night has not been stopped and has only slowed due to the malevolent and alien will of the Declarants. Their abilities to manipulate reality are far beyond our reach, even that of the Origin, and if they wanted every living thing on Andolus to simply be erased, they could have done it.

We rebuild because they allow it. They want us to have hope, because then despair can exist. No military or government will stop The Last Night. If it can be stopped, which I have found no evidence to suggest it can, it will be at the hands of heroes, such as the Doom Defiant, or others who look into Madness and refuse to falter.

New inventions arise daily, children are born, cities glisten in the sun, trade prospers. It is a ruse, and those who believe in it, will be the most shocked when it becomes impossible to reverse the damage dealt by the Declarants.