🤷‍♀️The Story

No-one knows where they came from, whether God sent them or Terra provided them, but they have been here since the beginning. Each Ancient was responsible for a unique biological zone (bion) reflecting its own serpent-like features and attributes. Flora and fauna specific to each zone flourished and evolved under the watchful eye of its Ancient. A symbiotic relationship was formed between the bion an Ancient guided and all life on Earth. They were interweaved with one another – a healthy bion equated to a healthy Ancient and a healthy Ancient equated to a healthy landscape. Over millions of years life became more complex and the Ancients began to find higher cognitive levels with every millennium.

Ancients first noticed this increased cognitive function when Homo Sapiens came into being. They were unlike the previous organisms and were smart enough to have memories, communicate with dialogue, and learn. The Ancients took them under their wing and treated them like a nurturing mother. The Ancients gifted these early humans with an ability known as the “Speaker’s Gift”. It imbued humans with the ability to summon elemental creatures made up of the land in which they resided. These creatures became known as elems and would take on the same appearance of flora and fauna native to the landscape. These creatures’ forms would be held together by an energetic glue known as mena.

The purpose of the gift was to help humans labor their lands in harsh environments and make living easier. In the Arctic, polar bears made of ice were summoned to help dig through the ice for food and construct ice blocks to build shelters. In the Salis bion, aquatic elems helped to propel rafts and navigate through treacherous storms. Nature was nurture, life was simple, and the world flourished with the connectivity between all its landscapes. It was a balance that brought fresh oxygen and life to every reach of the planet. Earth was the healthiest it has ever been, and humans were at their highest level of Enlightenment.

The” Speaker’s Gift” was not given to all humans. It was passed down as a blood gene through generations – in a pair of twins, one may have the ability and one might be without. Where there is good, there is evil and the gap between those with the ability and those without formed seeds of jealousy. This would lead to the demise of human’s early Enlightenment and reset society into a world of hunters and gatherers.

Jealously is what led an Arctic man of the forge to commit the first murder. He was tired of not having the same ability and leg up on life as those that had the ability. The Arctic climate was a brutal one to endure without the help of an elem and the emotions of this man were just as enflamed as the fires of his forge. When he saw a Speaker toiling his flames in the early morning without any permission - he blew. The man had never killed before yet he was surprised at how quickly he committed the murder. The Speaker’s walrus shaped elem crumbled into a pile of rock and ice at his side. He knew he would never be able to get away with what he had done – so he ran to town with the speaker’s body and accused the speaker’s elem as the murderer.

A crowd gathered and the accusation of an elem killing a human threw the assembly of people into a frenzy – bent up feelings of anger and jealousy were unbottled. The crowd turned on the closest elems and began ripping them apart. One human broke off an ice tusk of another walrus elem and stabbed it’s core to completely crumble the whole creature. In all the commotion, the crowd determined the Speaker’s are the ones truly responsible, for they are the one’s that summon these creatures. So – they targeted the Speaker’s themselves, attacking them for creating these untrustworthy, violent creatures into existence. Chaos inevitably ensued and the lies began to cross into neighboring bions - causing similar ripples of crowds overturning elems and Speakers.

There was no formal jury back then, one accusation was all it took to set it all in motion. A Civil War broke out with humans against humans. Speakers ended up having to train their elems to fight or else be killed. Specific elem weapons were created by the waves of anger, cairns; which were detrimental to generating mena so elems could be summoned - were toppled, and a rising tide of Speakers took vows to never summon elems again. Some landscapes fought back and rallied as one movement to protect their families and way of life, but it was too late, for the surge of jealousy sprouted, and the lies become more and more real with each disaster. The Speakers lost.

If Ancients provide this power to Speakers and if Speakers are bad, then subsequently, Ancients are the real evil. Thus, a Crusade was set in motion to kill all Ancients. Armies of humans set out to find these great beings and bring them down – they succeeded. Dozens of Ancients were killed, their landscape, flora, and fauna all decaying with their death and lost from human history. Some bions put together a strong enough defensive to save their families and their Ancient, but it was at a great loss. Lands destroyed were enveloped by neighboring bions as Earth tried to heal itself with the Ancients that were left.

All surviving Ancients went into hiding and remained there for many more years. They were betrayed and could no longer trust the humans they once raised as their own. The strength of the humans was beyond the strength of themselves. They could survive time, but not the piercing tip of a blade, so they played to their strengths and waited.

The war ended once all remaining humans realized there was no one else to fight. The distance between surviving humans was too great and the technology to continue the fight didn’t exist in that time. It was believed all the Speakers were killed and so humanity moved on. It left the world without villages and towns - most of them were burned and destroyed. Life was essentially reset, and humans had to adjust to living in bions without the help of elems. It would kill off humans who were not prepared for the harshest of these environments.

They became hunters and gatherers once again, wandering to find areas where they could live. All their energy was spent on finding food and remaining mobile to find their next meal. This became the way of life for a number of generations. Stories were the only remaining evidence of elems, Speakers, and Ancients. Humans would ask about their origins and so variations of the story were told, but in time the tales no longer carried the truth. Eventually these nomads settled near large supplies of water and built up the Ancient Civilizations we remember today.

Albeit the Ancients were never truly forgotten. There remains an unspeakable bond that every human feels with nature and the Ancients are still responsible for building that bond. Early civilizations in different parts of the world had symbols for snake-like creatures in their architecture, some called them dragons, and others gave them names like Apollo and Quetzalcoatl, but all of it was still referencing the origins of human relationship with Ancients. The Ancients alive today are in trouble, and they risk disappearing forever.

The Crusade that started to rid the world of the Ancients never ended. An organization formed by some of the most violent humans from the Great War, stayed committed to finding the Ancients. They learned the Ancients were needed for Earth to provide them resources for human life and so they studied life over the preceding millennia. Science would ultimately show them a path forward where they could live without the Ancients and that if the landscapes all went barren; humans could still thrive. A plan was set in motion to attack the remaining bions through subtle innovations under the guise of ‘advancement’. Urban cities became filled with pollution, factories went up to cloud the fresh air, and waters filled with plastics was just the beginning. The goal was to create a dependency on other humans and not require the natural bonds of life that the Ancient’s provided - keep humans indoors and away from exploring their natural bonds.

This organization grew into overtaking some of the most powerful positions in the world government. They enacted policies specifically created to further damage the bions and weaken the Ancients. Continued advances in science gave them new technologies that could pinpoint where the final Ancients were hiding. The Ancients sensed these developments but couldn’t do much to stop the momentum. The damage to their bions greatly affected their strength. The Ancient’s believed they would be able to outlive the humans, but it was clear the humans were committed to their elimination. Their only defense would be to awaken the blood lines of those that defended them in the final years of the Great War, awake them, and ask they make a final stand.

The Ancients saw glimpses of hope within populations of humans that expressed love, bravery, gratitude, and a natural spirit to better their world. The Ancients believed these populations contained a link to the blood gene from their descendants thousands and thousands of years ago. These humans were the only hope. The Ancients built cairns across bions to provide a natural attraction to those with the speaker’s blood. The cairns would give off a natural energy that any speaker with the gene would naturally gravitate towards. It worked.

Over several years, pockets of the world discovered the truth and began to bring elems back to life. Several Ancients came out of hiding and made direct contact with these speakers, weary of them, but shared stories of the times before and the old ways. Humans began feeling euphoric bonds unlike anything they previously experienced. The modern Speakers became stronger and grew in numbers, more Cairns were set up across the lands, and new the awakening started to rumor amongst populations. The elems of the old were focused on aiding the labors of their speakers. The new wave of elems were trained to be fighters in a modern world with guns, tanks, boats, and planes. The resistance was building.

The Crusade has seen the rise of this new wave of speakers and is ready to act. They have narrowed in on the location of the remaining Ancients and have armies at their disposal to carry out the job, ready to eliminate any other humans that get in their way.

If the Ancients are defeated than the natural world dies with it and Earth will convert to a dystopian future full of false oxygen and a loss of what it means to be human.

Are you ready to fight?