Space 753 [Level 222] has been an outpost of our great civilization for thousands of years, but as it begins to fall, we should be bound to remember its founding, all those years ago. Years in which many people have come and went, years in which it grew to be powerful, years in which the Masked Ones began to rebel. So, now recall the Foundation at Dawn.
The Outposts on Space 753 have existed since Pre-Year 240588, or at the time, Part 4695 of Cycle 82. Being 240500 years before our calends were standardized, early history is hard to recall. Tales and myths regarding it have become the factual truth. In some portions of words, the things described may seem unlikely. The story begins in Part 4672 of Cycle 82, specifically Segment 12 of that Part. A Great Warrior, whose name has been far lost to time, had been born. His life began in the grimiest parts of the Mud Crypt, which at the time was reserved for the lowliest people in the now outlawed Social Rankings. Both parents of His have lost their names, similarly to their son, or their sun, the light of their world, a sun in a sunless place, bringing the warm breezes and golden crops among them. When He was just a small child, he began to take a great interest in the studies of Ocelight, beginning to see the truth that our Glorious Deities hold. At that time, the Lowliest were forbidden from learning to read by the corrupt Priests of the Mud Crypt. The Priests were unjust and cruel, and they did not want outsiders spreading letters which told the tortured Lowliest of the truth. But, Light always wins over Darkness, even in what is seen as the lowest times, the Lowliest times for the Lowliest people, when the darkness begins to rise, there will always be a light which rise up more graciously, more beautifully, and conquer the darkness, and shift it to be light and goodness. And hence, He found his way, to a softer priest, and older priest, one who had lived for six hundred and twenty years by that point, one who remembered before the cruelness began. The Priest took a liking to Him, and began to teach him the ways. He was taught of history and rituals, taught of life and death, taught of life after death, taught of everything which the wise old priest could muster up from his aging bones. By Part 4682, He had grown into a young boy, and had grown into the words of the Scripture. He had taken comfort in the words, and every night, He knelt at His bedside and was taken by Ocelight into the land of dreams, caressed and guided by the warm light and truth of the books which the old Priest taught him. He carved a home for himself in the words, sleeping peacefully knowing the truth of reality, the truth of the past, and the truth of the future. He learned more and more each day, and during the nights, He was granted more knowledge by the great Deities themselves. To the dismay of many people who have looked back on this story, Darkness rose once again, and the Light was temporarily expelled. In Segment 19 of Part 4684 of Cycle 82, the old Priest was found with Him, teaching him how to write, something which was vehemently forbidden. The Priest was taken and killed, and He was to be killed as well. The malevolent guards of the High Priest chased him quickly. He fled the Mud Crypt, running as fast as His young feet could carry Him, bounding, leaping, sprinting across the landscapes, or more accurately, roomscapes, of the mud, trotting, cantering, running, slowing, walking, until eventually He collapsed near a door. During his long sleep of four days, He dreamed of mighty things. He was taken to the Holy Garden, embellished with more and more knowledge, and met with the deities. He grew to know the deities, grew to know Ocelight and his friends. He visited a litany of rooms, of realities, ones which Ocelight would never finish, incomplete constructions, and some more complete realities, glass planes, and soon He visited our home worlds, the place we were hundreds of thousands of years ago, before everything collapsed, the world of Hxatuáng [Ion, Hxatuáng is the traditional Exog name], and its neighbor Tàniaňg [Pi, traditional name], He was shown everything that could ever be, every star and planet. He continued like this throughout the first day of sleep, learning from the deities, learning and seeing, but never experiencing. On His second day of sleep, the deities left Him. For some moments, He was alone in His dream, resting His back on a cold glass plane, staring at the illusion of distant stars. Then, he was taken, dragged out by cold, withered, black arms and sent into the realms he had visited. He fell and fell until He slammed into the waters of Tàniaňg, swam with the fishes for a long time until He reached the shores of the world and spoke with the grasses, spoke with the trees, and spoke with the bugs. The bugs told Him of the other worlds, and the trees told him of the same things. In His dream, He slept, and peacefully snoozed beneath the trees on the shore. He awoke from his slumber, still in the overarching dream, but now, He was nowhere He recognized. Around him, black spikes of pain surrounded a singular gray path, made of glass and stone. He stood barefoot, and walked with pain across the path. A terrible laugh emanating from a dark cave. Soon, He found Himself face to face with Klomo, with the Fallen Deity. And the Undeity spoke. Klomo told Him of all things pain, told Him of the wrongdoings of everyone, and spoke to Him for so long His knees began to feel weak, and He collapsed, but Klomo did not stop speaking, and Klomo spoke for hours, if not days, torturing Him physically without ever laying finger on Him. Somehow, someway, He found the strength to clamber up, to try and leave, continuing the crawl across the shards of stone and broken glass, scraping Himself, looking gaunt in the pale blue light, and all the while Klomo mocked Him, but in spite of the pain, in spite of the words, He managed to crawl back to where he began, at which point he was transported again. He found himself lying on the glass plane once again, surrounded by nothingness. On the third day of his dream, he dreamt he was a young baby again. He dreamt of being wrapped in rags, being held and loved by His mother, and He dreamt longer of such things, He remembered more and more of His younger life, all the time spent with the Priest, all the fond memories of His mother and His father, His four siblings, everyone He loved, He remembered them all and He willed Himself to live for them. He dreamt of these memories for the entirety of the third day. His fourth day of sleep was dreamless. He dreamt of nothing. Blackness was all He saw. When He finally awoke, He gazed at the door which he had collapsed by many days ago. He started at it. Nothing stared back, after all, why would it? Slowly, tentatively, He opened the door, fingers wrapping around the cold handle, grasping for something to hold on to, something concrete, after the insanity that the dreams of the past four days had wrought on His mind. As the door slid open, He felt all hunger and thirst diminish quickly, He was feeling as though He was a powerful being, maybe even a deity, and He felt strong, and He felt loved. He knew that the universe cared. Why else would He be healed so miraculously, the limp in his leg He had had since He was a young child disappearing without trace? Why was His mind cleared, so open to the truth, so willing to see the beauty in the prison He had lived in for so long, when it had not been so before? He blessed the deities, thinking of the dreams He had had, and stepped over the threshold of the door. He found Himself surrounded, almost overtaken, by the length of the hall which stood before Him. Never in His years had he seen such distance. He stood in the hall, absorbing all of the detail. Every mud brick, laid by divine hands millions of years ago, every mote of dust slowly careening through the air, every door which sat on the side, every light which illuminated the space, and He knew it all. He began to walk. It was something he was very accustomed to, and something most of us living in the modern era are accustomed to as well. Walking is how everything gets done, and it was how everything got done even all those years ago. He had walked long distances before, to collect food for His starving family, but never had He walked as far as He did on this day. For hours, He embarked, never looking back, never seeing if those foul guards of the fallen Priests were after Him, just walking, alone, walking, walking, until He spotted something that caught his eye. A singular door, golden and carved, sat among the multitude of other doors He had seen before. It was no different, not even the most ornate or the most precious one He had seen, but by divine direction, from the word of Ocelight himself, He knew this was where He was bound to go. Similarly to how He had done before, He crossed the threshold of that door, and found Himself in the place we now call
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be soon. He had been informed of a plot. The old Priests from long ago, which He had long thought He left behind, were sour, they were bitter, jealous of the fact that He, a poor boy from the Lowliest portions of everyone, had risen to such a prominence of Space 753, that they deemed him a threat to their theocracy, a threat to their wealth, but most importantly, a threat to their pride. The enslaved, poor folks of the Mud Crypt, and a plethora of other spaces, bases, outposts, polestars, cities, towns and communities that had come under their control were forced into an army. They marched, marched past the place which He had laid all those years ago, over the threshold of that door, and over the threshold of the second door. Soon, the wretched army swarmed the lands of Space 753. Many were slain, many more injured, but the most, held there in military service against their will, joined Him in his battle for freedom, joined Him in his battle for justice, joined Him in his battle for truth and joined Him in his battle for light. The bloody fighting continued for days, weeks even, as more and more fell to the Great Sword that belonged to Him, and more and more defected from the indentured servitude they so despised, and as more people chose Light over Dark. Soon, even the foul Priests themselves were slain, if they could even be called Priests after all they had done to reject the teachings, to ensure the public never knew of the wondrous deities. The masks which the Priests wore were fused with their bodies, the once Exog beings becoming less, more animalian, and as a way to punish them for their horrid atrocities in life, the Priests were not allowed to die, instead He made them servants, lesser beings which now only served the peasants which they once ruled. And with the great Priest’s mask torn from their withered body, blackened blood spilling onto the stones, congealing into grotesque blobs, the Foundation at Dawn was completed.
The empire flourished for hundreds of thousands of years, and in some sense, it still does. But, it is quickly falling. The wicked Priests, still wanting to subjugate innocents, to feel skin and flesh torn under their yellowed and long claws, have rebelled against our species. We no longer control the Masked Ones, and much of our kind have left Space 753. If we have gleaned anything from His story, we know that Darkness must fall, and Light will rise again. How long it will take for the Darkness to fall is unclear. Light will rise again, sometime. It may not be soon, but it will happen.