Lore of the Waxing World - How the Wanderers Came to Be

Map of the Waxing World (Modern Day)

In the earliest days of the Waxing World, a time referred to by those who remember it as the Era of Unity, the first men rose out of a great river. They sheltered in forests on scattered islands, and only exposed themselves at night, when the Gods (who would be hostile to them had they known of their existence) weren't watching. They lived under the protection of spirits of the land (of waterways, and forests, hills and mountains, rolling plains and caves, and enjoyed a quiet existence. But the Gods would inevitably find them, and it is only by happenstance the first of them who did saw in them a source of curiosity, and not an affront to their order.

The God of Luck came first, and fell for a human woman in a tiny village on the back of an island called Ul Sadh, and he produced two children with her. The elder of them, Hanuman, was born with his power to alter probabilities to make negative outcomes for those around him more likely. The younger, Heiman, was born with the ability to unconsciously alter probabilities in his favor, yet it was not until these two were separated that their powers began to express themselves. Together, their natures nullified each other, rendering each of them entirely human. Separate, they each possessed power, so like their father, to accomplish great things.

But Hanuman did not feel he belonged in their village. He had difficulty controlling his godly talents, and though his people did not hate him, he often brought misfortune to them. Guilt drove him to spend much of his time wandering the forests surrounding his home, and he eventually discovered a pair of spirits there, who became friends to him. One of those spirits taught him his arts, a magic derived from the chain of mountains under the sea which he was bound to, and the other taught him to contain his powers, to express them at will so that he would not unintentionally hurt those around him.

Heiman had a much easier time of things. His every action seemed to produce immediate success, and he brought many boons to his people. Yet, his ventures into the outside world became too brazen as time went on, and he eventually traveled too far, leaving the forest to look upon the vast oceans at night. It was then he and his people were discovered by other gods. As dawn's blush crossed the horizon, the moon and sun both laid their sights on him, and man's peaceful existence was cast into ruin.

God of the Moon, Ao Nii

The Moon God fell in love with Heiman, but the Sun God was furious. He believed that what Heiman represented was an abomination, that gods ought never to interbreed with lesser beings, and brought his terrible knowledge to his elders. The God of Luck and the God of the Moon conspired together with other like minds in the pantheon to hide the earliest humans from their kin, but they were unsuccessful. War broke out between two factions of gods, and the spirits of the lands and sea, the sky and fire were divided. Those who sided with the humans believed they had a right to exist. That they shared with the gods and the spirits their ancestral mother, even if their ancestral father had not sanctioned their creation, and they had a right to determine their own fates. Their detractors saw their ancestral mother's creation of life without the consent of their ancestral father as a great act of defiance, and God Katcya's actions in first breeding with them and then hiding them as crimes in need of harsh punishment.

In the end, peace won out. Those early humans were allowed to live; their great ancestors, the creators who birthed all that was in the world were sealed away, and the gods and spirits claimed dominion over those short-lived mortals. But concessions need be made in maintaining such an unstable peace, and Hanuman and Heiman had not been idle in this conflict. Among the mortal races, they had quickly become a thorn in the side of their enemies, and those enemies (grudging parties to the peace accords that would follow) wanted nothing as much as their blood.

The Sun God killed Heiman as a revenge against the Moon God for siding against him, and the Moon God grieved eternally. The Elder Gods then established a sprawling, endless labyrinth wherein the memories of all those who knew the brothers, Hanuman and Heiman, were sealed, and compelled the now weakened mother of them all to rewrite the histories so that Hanuman was never born. They sealed him in this new labyrinth, a prison constructed for the katcyakin who were both human and god, and left him there to descend into madness; as time flowed on unending, and he walked those halls alone.

Sao Njack contemplates his life in the Halls of Time

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Peter, A Sous Chef in the palace kitchens. A character prominently featured in Spirit of Shadow.