The Chronicle of the Golden Orb: Prologue
Prologue:
There are many beginnings and there is one beginning. Once upon a time.
There are many truths and there is one truth. I love you.
There are many lies and there is one lie. I love you.
There are many endings and there is one end. Rest In Peace.
The world cycles, the world circles, the world chases its tail. The world chases its tale. A wheel unbroken. A snake consuming itself. A Golden Orb shining without end, perfect in circumference and diameter, unblemished, unmarked, pale in its luster and yet brighter than the eyes of men can seek to understand. Time is an illusion, a figment of a diseased mind, a specter that haunts the living and makes them believe they are alive. There is only now. And now is over before you can read these words.
Once upon a time, gods fought against giants. Immortal inhuman exemplars of perfection, wrought from hardier stuff than the common clay that makes up humanity, they fought and slew their forebears the Titans, the monsters of the great before. The reason for the conflict is lost in the dust of fable and legend. Was it the Oedipal struggle of father against son? Alpha male aggression against the usurper of the pack who sought to break off with the young succulent warmth of the females? Did Father Time, Chronos, really eat his progeny to keep them from doing the same to him? Each god born from his mother-wife swallowed down like so many delicious candies.
Was there fear in paradise?
It is said that the world was carried in a golden egg laid by a great beast, sometimes called a tortoise, sometimes an elephant, that it was placed in the arms of the great Void for protection and cracked open by a single tear which fell from some otherworldly height.
It is said that the navel of the world lies deep in the sea and that, if it should ever be disturbed, the great giant from which the world was hewn will awake and shake off the fragile life that has grown to live on his corpse. Who will survive when he arises brushing off cities like a raven picking maggots from a three-day rotted kill?
The gods are known by many names. They are called to, prayed to, and sacrificed to, but only God knows if they hear.
Gods of the morning.
Gods of the night.
Gods of the hearth.
Gods of the fight.
Gods that love and gods that hate.
Gods that create and gods that tamper with fate.
Gods that destroy and gods that tamper with faith.
Animal spirits made flesh, unconcerned creatures of pure thought and deed, magical chimeras of strange shape and even stranger demeanor. The fantastic made physical. Flying, crawling, burrowing, climbing, loping, shuddering, slithering, somersaulting, galloping, grinning gods and monsters known by many names yet unknown by the names that they call themselves.
The tale you hold in your hands is a tale of gods and monsters. It is a tale of the Golden Orb of Eternity that was many things to many peoples, yet nothing by itself.
And it came to pass in those days before the days were named that rumors of a golden hoard arose. Placed in a hidden cavern or beneath the sea, in an enchanted forest or a castle in the sky, the rumors could not agree. Compiled by giant, or gathered by dragon, saved by godling or magicked into existence by dark necromancy or proto-science? No one truly knew. But while legends walked the earth and gods still bred with erstwhile maids, few doubted that such a thing was true, and many left their homes and families to search and to fight for the treasure. It was the first great hunt for the treasure, though there would be many like it in the fullness of time.