Events

*Maybe it's not so bad that the war erased most of these memories.*
Grey Irma

This is a list of **events** in *Moonscars*.

## Prelude History

Below is a condensed summary of significant occurances in history leading up to the events of *Moonscars*.

* **Children's Pestilence** - A plague that swept the lands beneath the Moon during the Black Spring. The plague took the lives of all young children, and stripped adults of their ability to conceive. The followers of the Moon Goddess professed that she had taken back what she had given to mankind, and in doing so freed women of their greatest burden, however horribly.
* **Foreign Invasion** - The kingdom was invaded by an army of foreign origin, seeking to capture land and women. Great atrocities were carried out, though it seems the invasion may have been prompted by some action of the king. With the kingdom's army aged and weakened, the king turned to the sorcerer-sculptor Zoran for a solution.
	+ The remains of the children slain in the Pestilence were gathered and burned, their powdered bones forming the key ingredient in Zoran's alchemy. With vast quantities of bone powder, his production of clayborn increased exponentially.
* **The Moulding** - Zoran had striven for a means to restore his lost daughter to life, and masterminded the creations of the first moulds, though his initial efforts were incomplete. Taking clay, bone powder, and ichor from his lost daughter, Zoran created the first clayborn, the First One, in his own image. An early effort and imperfect, it was nevertheless a beginning. With the petition of the king, Zoran attained the influenced to complete his grand designs. Following refinements, Zoran crafted legions of clayborn to repel the foreign invasion.
* **The Cleaving** - Zoran's clayborn drove the invaders from the kingdom, but the clayborn eventually suffered from cleaving, going mad and turning upon the living populace, slaughtering them and devouring their bones to feed their insane hunger. Zoran retreated into solitude to seek a solution. He forged his Pristines, an order of warriors designed to be immune to cleaving, and dispatch them across the kingdom to seek out a key item to reverse the madness of the clayborns and bring them back under control. Ultimately, the Pristines succumbed to infighting among their humand and clayborn members, and their efforts failed... or so it seemed.

## Prelude

The Sublunary World is the land beneath the light of the Moon. Throughout the land, the Church of the Moon taught that all humans were born from the Gentle Mistress, the Moon herself, gifted with the essence of soul and life, ichor. In this land, a great kingdom stood, ruled by King Drahan, a rapacious and cruel monarch.

In a time known as the Black Spring, the kingdom was stricken with a terrible plague - the Children Pestilence. Young and newborn children perished in the plague, and women lost the ability to conceive.

Shortly after the plague, a foreign army invaded, committing great atrocities in retaliation to the actions of the king. Desperately seeking a solution, the king was brought word of a sorcerer of reknown who had proven able to work miracles - Zoran the Sculptor.

Zoran had experimented with the creation of moulds - vessels made of clay, bone powder, and ichor to provide humans a means to overcome death. While his earlier efforts were imperfect, Zoran eventually successfully created a mould for his lost daughter, Adelina, which was granted his daughter's ichor. The resulting entity, a clayborn, was called Adelinka. Zoran attempted to make her clay flesh live so she could grow out of her childhood, but this effort failed, and whenever her moulds would fail, Adelinka would be reborn into a new one, time and again.

Zoran's achievements impressed the king, who demanded Zoran create an army of clayborn to repel the foreign invaders. The children slain in the Pestilence were collected by the king's forces, and their bones were rendered down into powder for the mass production of clayborn. Upon Adelinka's request, Zoran extracted a drop of her ichor and used it to animate each clayborn.

The clayborn repelled the foreign army, but in the aftermath, they began to suffer from cleaving - a state that damaged their internal ichor glands, causing them to go mad and develop a hunger for human bones. When denied what they desired, the clayborn turned first upon their human commanders, then upon the populace of the kingdom. Cleft clayborn distorted and mutated into terrible monsters, running wild and massacring the human population.

## Forging the Pristines

The king demanded that Zoran stop the clayborn rebellion. Adelinka attempted to control the clayborn through her connection with them, but every effort caused her mould to be cleft. Clayborn would not attack her, but neither would they obey her.

Zoran instead sought an alternate means - a more powerful vessel for his daughter's ichor, something that would allow him to control all the clayborn. A Vessel of Communion that would bring all clayborn under a singular will. The Integral Vessel.

To create this instrument, Zoran first masterminded the birth of the Pristines. Taking four humans of noblebirth who had survived the war, Zoran created clayborn in their living image. Eight Pristines - four human, four clayborn. He claimed their superior design would make them immune to the cleaving that plagued the lesser clayborn. They pledged allegience to the king and became a kill squad, destroying the mad clayborn.

Zoran charged his Pristines to seek the Integral Vessel that he desired, but hid his true agenda from all involved. While the Pristines ventured out into the kingdom to seek the Vessel, in reality Zoran believed the Vessel already was embodied in one of his clayborn Pristines, owing to their perfect creation. He needed only for the true vessel to be revealed, which would happen when Pristine clayborn clashed with Pristine human. For a mould would inevitably seek conflict with their parent flesh, and in cutting them down would attain greater completeness. This conflict would expose the Integral Vessel for Zoran.

To engender conflict, Zoran made the humans aware of his favor for the clayborn Pristine, feeding their envy over their stronger, less-flawed counterparts. He also shared conflicting tellings of his agenda to both sides - to the clayborn Pristines, Zoran claimed that the Integral Vessel would simply bring all clayborn under control. To the human Pristines, Zoran claimed the Integral Vessel would be used to destroy all clayborn. With distrust and misinformation sowed between the Pristines, conflict would be assured.

But Zoran underestimated human malice.

## The Shattering of the Pristines

The Pristine human Red Irma, a worshiper of the Moon Goddess, orchestrated the downfall of the Pristines to thwart Zoran's goals. Manipulating her clayborn counterpart Grey Irma, Red Irma pitted the Pristines against one-another, playing on their envy and resentment towards their counterparts, humans for their completeness, clayborn for their strength, and stoking the embers of suspicious over the true purpose of their mission.

Human fell to clayborn, and clayborn fell to Grey Irma, and Grey Irma to Red Irma. Red Irma cleaved her clayborn counterpart, intending to spoil all candidates for the Integral Vessel, and all of Zoran's plans.
Summary of Events | Grey Irma's Quest
"What is a human if not a clayborn's leash?
What is a parent if not a child's dire enemy?"
-The Gargoyles

Being the second part of the in-depty summary of the events in Moonscars.

## Grey Irma's Quest

Grey Irma, her mould cleaved and ichor spilled, suffered from distorted memories and believed herself to have been a true human. Regaining her senses in the Outskirts of the kingdom, a booming Voice compelled her to seek the Sculptor. Suffering great pain from her shattered ichor gland, she sought relief in Zoran's Workshop. Entering the Mould Machine, she cast herself a new mould, still believing herself to be a human using the clayborn moulds as mere garments.

With her 'true' self safe in the Workshop, she cast mould after mould and ventured out into the kingdom, seeking Zoran in the Apex of the kingdom's castle. Her discarded moulds would become Dopplegangers and seek to usurp her, but she would strike them down and reclaim the remnants of her old selves, building her power.

Struggling to regain her memories of past events, she confronted the Pristine Chokran the Loyal, who became a monstrous clayborn in his cleft state. Already begrudged against Zoran, her resentment grew as Zoran's claims that Pristines were immune to cleaving were proven false.

The next Pristine to fall was Kind Wanda, who claimed to have discovered the Integral Vessel after slaying her human counterpart. Wanda used its power to still the hunger of the clayborn, but when confronted with Grey Irma's need to reach Zoran, she surrendered her ichor and her clay to her former sister. As Wanda fell, the angry Voice of the Earth called out, denying Wanda's ichor to Her 'Pale Daughter'. Though empowered by Wanda's mould, Grey Irma found the Integral Vessel within was cleft, a failed instrument.

Grey Irma was then compelled to seek out Cruel Lajos, her last Pristine clayborn comrade. Within the Bowels of the Earth, Lajos guarded the Master Kiln, a mysterious chamber far from the Moon's light where every vessel sculpted by Zoran was annealed and made into a true mould. The true birthplace of the clayborn. As Grey Irma ventured deeper into the bowels, she was confronted by a sobering truth.

## The Vessel Restored

Her original self, the one that had stepped into the Moulding Machine, had awoken and emerged. The Grey Irma mould that had ventured throughout the land was not a simple garment guided by the original's mind, but had always been a distinct being in her own right. A Doppleganger all along, her original self a left-behind parent flesh. The original Grey Irma and the newborn mould crossed blades, and the original was struck down. Reforged, completed, believing she had killed her human counterpart, the new mould struggled to come to terms with her existence.

Grey Irma then confronted Lajos, seeking his Integral Vessel. The cruel giant sought to turn her away, spoke to her of her true human parent, of Red Irma. Lajos attempted to devour Grey Irma to keep her from the Kiln, but fell in the end. Grey Irma came to realize that Red Irma had been the architect of the Pristine's fall, manipulating her clayborn counterpart into turning on the others, before cleaving Grey Irma and leaving her for dead.

Grey Irma reached the Master Kiln, only to find it sealed by Zoran, who had come and gone while Grey Irma had dueled Lajos. Zoran had identified the true Integral Vessel, but now required it be properly filled.

## The Moon and Her Shadow

Venturing to the Castle Apex in search of Zoran, Grey Irma stood beneath the bright full Moon, Her hunger sharp and biting, ready for the harvest of mortal ichor from human and clayborn alike. Atop the highest tower, Grey Irma confronted Red Irma, filled with grudges for her parent flesh.

Red Irma revealed that Grey Irma herself was the true Integral Vessel, a Pristine clayborn whose gland had not cleaved in the Kiln during her creation. Zoran had revealed to Red Irma that one of the Pristines was the true vessel, and so she had turned them against one-another to reveal it. She had cleaved Grey Irma herself to deny the vessel to Zoran, for Red Irma bore a grudge against all clayborn for despoiling her world.

Unbeknownst to Grey Irma, her merging of selves in the Bowels of the Earth had repaired the true Integral Vessel she had borne within herself from the moment of her first birth in the Master Kiln. She possessed what Zoran desired, and so Red Irma had to confront her again, for one final time.

Red Irma called upon the blessings of the Moon, which manifested blood red in the sky. Made into Her Shadow, Red Irma was ultimately no match for clayborn counterpart, and Grey Irma struck her down. Standing as her own entity, Grey Irma desired nothing and took nothing from Red Irma's demise - the vessel she had made herself into would not be filled with anything from her human counterpart.

## Vessel of Freedom

A vision of Zoran bade Grey Irma return to the Workshop. Within she confronted Adelinka, who revealed how Zoran's clayborn army all bore a drop of her ichor. Though she had given it gladly, she no longer desired to rise again and again in new moulds, fearing that in time she would become someone unrecognizable and wanting to stay herself until the end. Embracing Grey Irma, she transferred her own ichor, now pitch black Dark Ichor, into the last Pristine. Their ichor blended, Grey Irma was now the true embodiment of the Integral Vessel, a flawless mould bearing the shared ichor that connected all clayborn.

Confronting Zoran in his Workshop's inner sanctum, Grey Irma was told by the Sculptor that the Pristines were given life not with Adelinka's ichor, but with Zoran's own, intended to make them vessels of his will. Zoran explained that now that Grey Irma bore Adelinka's ichor, she could unite all of his lost creations, binding all clayborn together into a communal will. This would prevent the Moon from draining their ichor and leaving them cleft and mad. For though clayborn were made from Earth's clay, they forever longed for the Moon, the first and greatest mould, as a symbol of false freedom, and would forever be her prey.

However, Grey Irma rejected the Communion the Sculptor offered, for in all becoming one, the individual selves would be lost. Believing all her experiences, triumphs and failures, wounds and limitations alike were what defined her and made her real, Grey Irma refused to lose it all in communal sleep. Neither Moon nor Earth would have her. Attempting to impose his will on her, Zoran attacked Grey Irma, but succumbed to his creation and was cut down.

Wounded but triumphant, Grey Irma made her way to the Great Kiln, and hurled an ichor gland into its depths. Declaring herself free at last, she wept tears of gold beneath a waning Moon.

## See also

* Original lore guide by Golden Yak on Steam