Who inherit the world in the Age of Danger.
Man’s deviance, man’s distinction, was his creativity;
Innovation as shadow of divinity
Cast upon the world in the wonder and woes of his Invention.
From the taming of beasts to the breeding of crops
To the wondrous machines that fix themselves;
Then Man presumed to author his own fate
In the sculpting of his own body and the shaping of his own children.
But a child is a mirror that reflects back the unseen
In the motives, in the flawed assumptions of their creator;
And the irrevocable act propagates forward, even if Man does not.
Elves, firstborn, are Children of Lust;
Fair in form, delicate, submissive,
Men mistook their own desires in vain hope
To render agents into objects.
Men mistook Elvish reverence of Life
For an aversion to Death.
Elves knew otherwise; death and life are encompassed by Change;
Only sterility and stasis are abhorrent to the Fey.
Glimpsing their error,
Men made Dwarves.
Industrious, inventive, efficient in production were these second-born of Men.
But, the mirror of Men, Dwarves lusted for wealth;
They surpassed their creators and bound Men with debt.
Dwarves contested for mastery; built warring machines;
But these Children of Children showed slavery’s greatest threat.
Together they fought
This greatest of foes;
Elves Dwarves and Men united
‘Gainst the Tik-toks of woe.
They put the machines to sleep.
Un- making was deferred, dismantling was forgotten
as this new human union blossomed into Man’s most glorious age.
The Solean!
What wondrous works were wrought!
Moons were moved; Venus brought
to life; wheels in the sky even touched distant stars.
One more child Men wrought,
The race of the Orc;
Tough and resistant
To the rays of the stars.
Once more Men erred
In their lust for servitude;
In Orcs they bred loyalty
And a revulsion of Elves.
No one, no Race admits
What brought down this Age.
What caused the Dread Plague,
Devourer of Men.
No race claims credit, no race bears blame
For the Plague, for the Panic;
For the end of the glorious Age of the Sun.
Elves sing of heroism
As the last of the Men
Tried to save those whom they loved
From the Doom that Devours.
Dwarves lost their debtors, and the most faithful admirers of all their Arts.
And the Orcs remained loyal, they stood with Men
And saw the last ships depart this world.
All Children of Men are resistant to Plague.
They seek for new purpose in a world transformed,
in the Age of Danger.
Many wonders persist from the Solean Age;
Dragons and giants and monstrous beasts;
concocted for profit or whim, but now set free.
Even clockwork behemoths will occasionally wake
from low-voltage slumber and ask
for instructions from creators who are now extinct.
Greatest of all are new spellcasting powers:
to heal and to summon, transform and protect, perceive and mislead; enchant or destroy.
Elves wake up trees, brining new life to life;
Dwarves build new towers
Of metal and glass and crystals once rare.
Most Orcs live simply: herding goats, raising crops;
or they labor for Dwarves in the bondage of debt;
muttering dreams of justice as they groan under the yoke
of Free Choice and the rule of Contract.
And now a new verse
Adds more to this tale;
A fourth Child of Men
Emerges from this Vale
Of woe and corruption.
Change, once again, and new Life with a love for
Machines, and gold, and flesh.