History of Aethel

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***The Gate Keepers***Aethel, one of the biggest cities in The Astral, was one of the many civilisations created. Others were smaller, hidden towns that catered to the supernaturals specific desires. The mermaids, selkies and others took to the oceans, forming Alta's - kingdoms of water and sea - and the Elves, Dryads and more merged with the dense forests, living among the wild life, and others created smaller villages and towns.

But Aethel was the biggest collection of creatures, ranging from minor Gods, to aliens and cyborgs to regular humans and lower class species. It was built around a huge chasm in the center of the island, and as they developed and grew, tensions and division began to sprout from clashing thoughts and opinions, and soon threw Aethel into ruin...

## The Island of Death

Life was very difficult in the beginning, as it would be in new worlds. A Newborn God was not adept at guidance, and neither did it try. So underdeveloped they were, they did not know how to breathe life into the lands, did not know how to help the first birds fly, or how to lure life to the lakes and streams it had stolen, and thus - had ended with centuries of unintentional massacre.

Every life succumbed within the world within the first hundred years of The Astral's existence, and the spirits lay angry, unable to escape. Unbothered, the God held very little empathy, and turned the deceased to work - used as fuel to supply the island with artificial and forced life. The infertile lands bloomed with life, guided by the anguish of the dead who wanted no more deaths after them, and began to fill the drying ponds with water and fill the lungs of the dying with air.

The Newborn had unintentionally created a catalyst to bring life for it, and satisfied with the first blossoms, it quietly returned to watch as the first thousand people it'd stolen began to thrive. And the Island turned from a graveyard of corpses, into a survivable plane.

## Survival

Chaos began at first. It was very difficult to find trust in one another, in a world where no one knew anything, where life had only taken its first step - and many factions and groups were created. They turned the lands into farms, and hunted dry the forests, and every death was resupplied with a new life - summoning creatures and animals to replace it to keep them fed. The largest group - was a crowd named Aethel, filled with old folks who wanted nothing more than to return home.

Others focused on survival - with the cyborgs sculpting tall towers across The Astral to funnel the energy from the storms that used to scatter the darkened skies, and some took to the badly formed seas and oceans, and brewed a population of merfolk and leviathans, while the Dryads and nature based created their own colonies. Divided in everything but the same hope - people began to move into Aethel's campsite, and the tents slowly turned into houses, into buildings and infrastructure as the small survival group slowly evolved into a blooming city of variety.

For the first hundred years, Aethel served focusing on nothing but survival. They farmed and grew, developed health, learnt magic and aided those who could not survive on their own. They built homes, and plotted ways to research more about the island, and to find a way home. But every attempt failed - again, and again - until most had given up, had slowly accepted that they might never leave.

After all, a hundred years was a long time, and that hope could not survive forever.

And as the city grew bigger and bigger, and exploration began to become more commonplace - they eventually became curious of a chasm that'd been found long ago - a deep and endless abyss of darkness that never seemed to end - and at the bottom, lay a thousand glimmering stars, soft and small, and yet they illuminated it so enchantingly that they could not sense the death and despair that seeped into area around it.

It was so deep under that they could not fathom how to delve downwards, and magic and wings became their answer. Those with magic were sent down, and it was said that it took hours to descend by flight, and the scholars who studied magic their whole lives were told to inspect the stars. When the first news of their discovery came - the Stars were said to be soft, small crystals - beautiful and fragile, and it pulsed with a power beyond comprehension.

The discovery spread through Aethel rapidly, and from there, it reached the farthest cities and towns - to the deepest edges of the oceans, where it spilled over the cliff side and dissipated into the hollow void, and it reached the darkest parts of the forest where little people dared to enter. More and more people arrived, and theories were born.

Some believed the power was reserved for the island, that it might be the sole source of why the island was weaved together in the pocket dimension they'd learnt to call the Void. Others believed that it held the life of a deity that had died thousands of years ago, its powers left behind in the shape of Stars. But many heavily believed that it would be the answer to the question they'd asked for a hundred years.

A way to get home - a hope that they would see the faces of their families again - and a source of power that was beyond their comprehension.

## Hope

Experiments began to arrive, and curiosity bloomed, as did hunger for power. The stars were said to hold unimaginable power, unbeknownst to them, it was fueled by the souls of thousands of creatures that had arrived on this plane before. Mages and scholars studied them for years, a new, bubbling hope renewed and spread throughout the island with rapid pace.

Aethel began to fill with more people. Cyborgs from the mountains where they harvested electricity arrived, promising guidance with technology, as did hundreds of other species. From Dryads, to elves, and even the most isolated Gods arrived to observe and await news of a way home. And in the mean time, the city flourished with trade an expanded more and more until it was the largest city in The Astral.