Silence of the Ancients[]
Four years ago, I was given the rare opportunity to be one of the few living beings to have lain eyes on the Epic Subspace.
Certainly, as a well enough respected archaeologist and historian, I had always had far more leeway than most in visiting ancient sites. Just the year before, in fact, I had been party to the excavation that unearthed what remained of the survey ship Andromeda.
But the Epic Subspace was and still remains different from any other site on Prodigy Island. It is the only Temple Builder site with active magic still present.
You may scoff. What about Harmony Island, or the Stonefish Beach? Don’t they contain active magic from the Temple Builders?
And yes, many sites technically do. We have many artifacts from the Temple Builders containing enough traces of magic to still be usable, such as the Magi garb famously displayed in the Academy and later replicated by contemporary tailors. But these are just that. Magical artifacts.
The Harmony Island or Stonefish Beach sites are powerful collections of magical energy. But these are always found in magically animated objects such as the Stone Fish, or sometimes incredibly powerful talismans like antique Relic Rings. In contrast, the Epics Subspace itself is not only magically levitated into the sky, but also infused with massive amounts of elemental energy.
Long ago, however, this was not so. The Subspace was simply another patch of land on an an otherwise ordinary landscape. But the Temple Builders, seeking to claim the secrets of artificial life, collected extraordinary reservoirs of elemental power. In their efforts, they eventually created what we now know as the Epics.
When we study the Temple Builders, or the name we used to use for them, the Magi, we must remember these great deeds that they have accomplished and we have not. Even we, the civilization which brought low the last dragons and made weather itself, have no succeeded in building artificial life. Only its semblances in the Batterbots or preexisting life rebuilt like the Hotpots.
When we study history, we must remember that we are not the only civilization to have built monuments. Others have built ones larger, grander, taller, than our own. Yet these secrets are gone, missing, left only in the whispers of the dead, the shadows of great deeds we can’t imagine how to accomplish.
We can only hope what they left behind can teach us how.
Chapter 1: The First Prodigians[]
The year is 324 AD. A young archaeologist, Nadia Lightsprinter, is on vacation in the vastly unexplored northern Shipwreck Archipelago, specifically Verity Island. Local floatlings, descendants of tribes which had fought human incursions at every step, tell her that local taboos persist about a mysterious structure deep in the western jungle. Ever the explorer, Lightsprinter drags her recalcitrant sister Esther into the wilderness.
The building they find changes everything.
On the surface, the Lightsprinter Temple is a seemingly typical Temple Builder site. Indeed, it was not the first to be discovered, the honor going to Stonefish Beach in Firefly Forest. Scientists had known about the civilization for many years, but the Stonefish Beach site and its compatriots on Academy Island were dated at the earliest to have been built in 2200 BD. The Lightsprinter site was dated to 2700 BD.
The ensuing rush of publications from Nadia Lightsprinter herself, and eventually her younger sister, would solidify 2700 BD as the earliest known date of Prodigian civilization. Acceptance by mainstream scholars and textbook authors was immediate; all agreed that abiogenesis (well-understood as a reaction from natural magic reserves) began in 4000 BD, and that settled civilization began in the Shipwreck Archipelago just one thousand, three hundred years later.
It was commonly agreed that the floatling race built these temples utilizing the natural Astral reserves of the region. Their spread was through powerful flying vehicles, such as the Stone Fish, which spread across the continent in complex trade networks.
| A History of Prodigia Navigation |
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| A History of Prodigia * A History of Prodigia/Blessings from the Sea: 0 AD-112 AD * A History of Prodigia/Children of Magic: 2000 BD-0 AD * A History of Prodigia/Influence Wars: 289 AD-??? AD * A History of Prodigia/Lachrymation by Lamplight: 112 AD-289 AD * A History of Prodigia/The Temple Builders: ???-2000 BD
The Temple Builders * Children of Magic * Blessings from the Sea * Lachrymation by Lamplight * Influence Wars |