Legends of the Lords
For every aspect of our world there is a realm. In every realm there is a Lord. For every Lord there are seven Disciples. They all must work in harmony to maintain our world. If they do not – then our world begins to fail.
- Legends of the Lords

In the middle of the night two men stood on a long forgotten battlefield. They remembered the war that had ended here , even if no one else did. They stood for a long time in silence, and then one of them spoke. “You know that it must begin again. It always will, and there is nothing that any of us can do to stop it. They control our destinies, and we must obey. Truly, I will miss you; – but I have no choice.” With those words, he grabbed a spear that had not been there before and stabbed the other man in the chest. Fire ran along the length of the spear, starting at the handle, and running all the way into the other man’s body. The man looked at the spear and said with his dying breath “There is always a choice. You just have to look a little harder for some of them.” His body slowly turned to steam, which drifted off into the night. The man who was still holding his spear, looked where the body should have lain, and sighed, almost in disappointment. He then turned quickly, walked into the night and disappeared in a flash of fire.
On that same night, not far from the forgotten battlefield there was a small boy sitting by a lake. He came to this lake often, and sat on the small pier that had been built there. As he was sitting there, he noticed something strange. The water level in the lake was slowly going down. As he watched it, over the next hour, the amount of water had dropped by almost thirty percent. He stood up and ran back to his house in fright, where he slept fitfully for the rest of the night.


At the town meeting ARREN stood worried. He had noticed that over the past week, things had started to go wrong. Water supplies had been impure, and they were shrinking. Even the lake that was their reserve had started to lost water. Every water source and stockpile in the town looked as if it was flowing, very slowly, through an invisible drain. Fire had also started to change. It no longer sat still and warmed houses, ovens, or anything else. Any fire that they made would begin to dance, shrink, grow, shrink and flicker, things that fire was not supposed to do. He hoped the meeting was about these changes and what to do to fix them, or he would have to propose talking about it. Arren was not a bold young man, he was merely observant. He was known in the town for being efficient, strong, and very quiet. If anything was asked of him, he would do it with a smile, but any attempt to engage him in conversation would fail.

The council called the meeting to order. They proceeded to outline all that Arren had already noticed, and gone over and over in his head. To his regret, they proposed no solution. Instead, they called upon Torce, the town mystic, to say a few words. Torce walked up the crude steps to the place designated for the speakers. He looked at the crowd for almost a full minute, and then began.“You have all heard of, if not read parts of, the book called Legends of the Lords.” The name of this book sent shivers through the townsfolk. It was the book that supposedly contained knowledge about how the world was created, maintained and would eventually be destroyed. It was said that the book had not been meant to be written down, only contained in the minds of those who could implement what it said. it had, however, been written down , and so it had been read, but it was written in an old and ancient language, and had never been translated. Most people were not able to read it and were ignorant of the knowledge that it contained. “It speaks of many things that we were better off not knowing. When we learned of the mysteries it contains, we wrote them off as impossible. We were wrong. The things that it says will happen are beginning to happen. The problems we have been facing are detailed in the end of the book. This is the beginning of the end.” His words were greeted by complete and utter silence. Even nature itself stood silently in awe of what the mystic had just said. “We were affected first because we were the closest to the event that begins the Armageddon, the killing of one Disciple by another of a different Realm. The effects will spread until they cover all of the world. “

“And what can we do?” This came from Arren who had surprised himself by even thinking of asking the question. After another several moments of heavy silence, the mystic answered “There is nothing that we as a group can do. However, as you asked the question, there is something that you can do. It is written in the book that only the man who asks to stop the end, will be able to save everything else from it. We must meet. Immediately.” Torce dismissed the crowd with a wave of his hand, and then motioned for Arren to follow him. He then began walking toward his house, with ARREN following cautiously behind.
















When the end comes, there is only one way to stop it. One man will be able to avert the catastrophe by uniting Disciples in the Heart. Only then and there can they work together to rewind what has gone wrong, and fix the dying world.
-Legends of the Lords

The man that asks for a method to save the world will be the only one to know it. He will know it because he has asked. There is a condition. When one person knows the path to salvation, nobody else will be able to learn it until the next catastrophe. He will know it beneath his thought, and he will be guided by it until he has either succeeded or failed. When he asks the question, he has no choice.
“Don’t you see? You asked the question. According to the interpretation of the book you are the one that must save us. Will you embark on the journey?” Arren absorbed what Torce was telling him, but he could varely believe it. How could he be the one to save the world? As his thoughts raced around inside his head, Torce was scrambling around his little house, gathering devices and supplies. ARREN interrupted him by saying “I will go- but I must know where, and I must have a companion.” Torce grinned and replied “It shall be done.”

In a daze Arren watched what was going on around him . He saw people making preparations for his journey, but it did not register on him why they were doing it. After he unthinkingly watched for a few minutes, he saw his good friend Kiru approach. “I’m coming with you,” said Kiru. ARREN just nodded blankly and allowed himself to be led out around the town by Kiru. He was still thinking about his town, the small but cozy wooden houses, and the people that made the town his home. He wondered whether or not he would ever see them again, and whether if he came back the town would be the same. As they continued to walk, the townspeople congratulated him on his destiny. He could see why his destiny was the one they all preferred. He would rather stay in his town and help them with solving the problems here. People were saying other things, “Good luck” and “Be careful.” ARREN liked these comments better, as they implied that he was choosing to go instead of being forced.

Arren and Kiru walked to the edge of the town. Kiru, who had always wanted to leave the town, did not look back. Arren left slowly, and gazed at all the people gathered there. As he stood watching, the crowd gradually dispersed, the wooden gates closed, and they were on their way.





And when the journey begins, the process accelerates. All the participants begin their frenzied dance, to bring about the cataclysm, to replace our world, or to save it. When all the roles have been filled, all players are locked into the game. This deadly game will determine their fate, and the fate of the world.
-Legends of the Lords
Arren was looking through the sections of the book that Torce had given him. The entire book was strangely archaic, as if it were meant to be read but not understood. The book seemed to mock them for their efforts to save mankind, saying it was impossible, and that they were doomed to fail. His broodings were interrupted by Kiru, who said, “Why so grim? You’ve been reading that book, brooding about it, reading some more, and then more brooding for hours! The entire time we have been walking in fact!” ARREN just plodded along for a few more moments and then responded, “This book is the only thing that actually knows what we are supposed to do to complete our so-called task. We need to read it if we are going to actually understand what do.” Kiru thought about this for a little bit and then said, almost to himself, “You know, that’s a very good point,” and continued to walk.

For several days and nights their walking that went relatively normally, though the strange events were expanding. Water was no longer obeying the laws of gravity, and fire was flattening out along the ground, obeying all the rules that by rights belonged to water. The ground itself seemed to ripple as they walked. The longer they walked, the stranger the laws of physics became. The waves in the earth steadily got bigger, and soon the air began to thicken. It became harder and harder to move at all.

After a week of travel, they came to a strange stone sigil embedded in the ground. It was a rough circle. Along the edges, there were symbols that seemed to be evenly distributed. There was a smaller circle in the center that was slightly raised, almost as if it were a platform to stand on and address a crowd. Arren stepped onto the sigil and then onto the raised podium. Suddenly, he had a bird’s-eye view of the entire area, inside a symbol representing the world. These sigils were distributed throughout the area, and some of them looked as if they were growing out of the ground. There was a square highlighted around the area, and Arren could not tell whether it was actually imprinted in the terrain, or whether it was just there to show something from the sigil. In the each corner of the square, there was a smaller highlighted circle. In the middle of the square, there was a bigger circle that was shaded red. Arren began to have some idea about what this was about; he just had to figure out how to get out of this enhanced map. As soon as he thought about the fact that he had to get out, he suddenly zoomed in on the sigils, and suddenly fell out of the map, back into the real world.



And when the game begins the way to salvation shall begin to show itself. The sigils will appear and show the locations of the Realms. The Realms in their current locations must be visited and the Lords addressed. When all the Lords have been addressed, their disciples must gather in the Heart, and be united by the Mortal Savior. Only after this can the world begin to heal. However, unifying the Disciples will be difficult, as one of the Lords must have initiated the cataclysm.
-Legends of the Lords

Arren took about half an hour to explain what he had seen to Kiru, and then another hour to explain what the book had said about it and what it meant. After a little more debate, they set out in the general direction of what was supposedly the Realm of the Lord of the Air. They traveled for about another week, until arriving at a cave. After attempting to remember exactly what the gateway to the Realm was supposed to look like, he gave up. The map’s point of view had simply been too high. After examining the area, they came across a rather puzzling phenomenon, one that did not seem like the other difficulties they had been encountering. The instabilities, as they were called by the book, were getting worse. Mountains were now popping up and descending back into the ground with startling speeds, but they never seemed to hit anybody or anything. They just popped up about a mile ahead or a mile behind anything or anyone. Fire however was completely different. Arren and Kiru had stopped making campfires, as the flames were jumping towards them as soon as they were lit. Arren and kiru had trouble putting them out before they strangled or burnt them. Water was acting just as strangely odd as the earth, and the air had not done anything since it had become thicker and harder to travel through. The strangest phenomenon was a cave entrance, but the actual floor of the cave was nonexistent; it was just a tunnel going straight into the ground. They looked at each other and jumped straight into the mouth of the tunnel. They had no idea what to expect, no idea what they were going to encounter, or even if anything besides crashing into the bottom of the tunnel was going to happen. When they reached about an inch before the bottom of the tunnel, the world flashed before both their eyes, and then the world was gone.
When they awoke, they were lying on what seemed like a stone slab, about five feet by ten feet. The two really strange things were that the slab was not stone, just looked like it stone; it was completely smooth, but it was not cold. The other strange thing was that it was floating by itself in the air, with nothing else within sight . No walls, ground, ceiling were visible, just empty whiteness. Then a voice sounded from no where and said “The games will begin in 5 minutes. Gravity will be subjective. The goal is to save the guests from the cages that will appear. There are some unusual ground rules. Rule one: When the guests are in the cages, if they are shot, the injuring team loses. Rule two: When the cages are released and one team takes possession, that team is now responsible for their safety, and if the guests are shot during possession the game is a draw because one team was able to take control. The game begins in two minutes. Begin on the bell, and good luck.” With the end of the speech, the air thickened and solidified into cages. Then the bell rang, and groups of people came out from either side of the nothingness. More of the stone slabs were appearing, as well as stone cubes, pyramids, and all other kinds of bizarre shapes. The players seemed to know what to do with them, and each shape seemed to generate their own gravity. The players could change their direction of gravity at will and were steadily coming closer Arren and Kiru.

The Lords, and their Realms which are created by their personalities, are all unique to themselves, and they are always different from their counterparts from previous worlds. The Lords usually have an unhealthy fascination with games and wagers of all kinds. It is the only thing that provides them with fascination, as they find the existence of mortals without structure very tedious and extremely boring. If anybody is ever unfortunate enough to get involved in one of their games, hope that the game will be over quickly. The longer the games get, the more dangerous they become. These games reflect the real (whatever you consider real) world. The players begin their dance. The longer the dance goes, the more the violence escalates. The frenzied dance turns into the deadly dance, and the deadly dance reflects the deadly game in which every mortal is a pawn . Every mortal, immortal and Lord is a pawn in the deadly game that we call life.
-Legends of the Lords

ARREN and Kiru watched as the players approached them. By shouting questions at the players around them, they discovered that they were in the Realm of the Lord of the Air, and that each team of 100 people had been handpicked by one of the seven disciples. The teams that were playing now were the teams of Seven, who was ruler of lightning, and One, who controlled the winds of the East and the West. That was all the information they could glean from the players. Eventually the team of Seven freed them and brought them back to their side of the room. They still did not know all the rules of the game, but players were shooting some kind of colored light, and players were winking in and out of existence as the light hit them. Eventually the game ended, and a man in clothes covered in lightning bolts met them in a corridor outside what they called the game room. He congratulated his team on the win and then said, “Let’s talk,” and began to walk down the corridor. They followed and he said, “I am taking you to the Lords of Water, Earth, and Air. They are forming an alliance in order to combat Fire, who is the one that started this round of the apocalypse. The good news is that most of his disciples disagree, and say that the Fire has driven the Lord crazy. I am not sure what this means exactly, but it means that you have several Disciples of Fire to help you save the world as it were. I have seen this happen six times already, and it is way overrated. It happens, and everything continues. Here it does. Anyway, the Lords of Water and Air are trying to persuade the Lord of the Earth to help save the world. You may be able to help there. Oh, and when you get into the throne room remember that you can choose which way gravity is. So don’t make the Lord of the Air look stupid for letting you in.

The corridors were all very plain and seemed to go on endlessly. The travellers finally arrived at a large, embossed door that opened at their approach. The room was filled with floating pieces of floor and walls. Arren redirected his gravity towards the piece of something that had people standing on it, while Kiru just drifted. Kiru had no idea how to do it, so he asked. Arren had no idea how he had done it, just that he was standing next to three giant men, all dressed flamboyantly. They were arguing loudly, but then they all stopped and looked down (sideways, up, whatever it was) at ARREN. Then the Lord of the Earth said, “What is a MORTAL doing here? Dispose of it at once,” and the silent servants flew forward.

The Lord of the Air is the most rational of the Lords, by his nature. Earth rages against any bonds. Water is calm, but too calm, and is passive in almost any conflict. Fire is aggressive, and never seeks to resolve. Air is the realm that you must seek, for it shall be your savior. It shall aid you in your quest for allies.
-Legends of the Lords

The Lord of the Air quickly dismissed the servants and then turned to his fellow Lords. “This mortal is planning to save this world, and by extent us. We need to provide him with the necessary disciples so that he has the ability to travel to the Heart, and save us…… the world. He should leave his friend here. Too many people will upset the ceremony.” The way that the Lord had corrected himself was odd, but understandable. The Lords were linked to their worlds, and the next world would be built by their highest ranking disciple, who would then become the Lord of their Realm. The Lord of the Earth seemed most opposed to the idea, and the Lord of the Fire was still nowhere to be seen, although one of his Disciples was present. The Lords continued to argue, while Arren began to look around at the room he was in. He did not want to get involved in an argument with three beings that could kill him with a single thought. The room has one throne, floating at about head height against the far wall. All around the room, again floating, were weapons, scrolls, and unidentifiable objects that seemed to come from a different age. Seven noticed him looking around and said to him softly, “When the world ends, the Realms continue. This is how artifacts from previous worlds can be saved. They are brought here or to other realms and kept until they are needed.” The Lords then came to their decision. “We will supply you with the required Disciples and transportation, but it is up to you to carry out the ritual. We will keep the denaturing process away from the Heart for as long as we can. Good luck.” And suddenly they were flying across the landscape, and landing on a stone platform. The platform was similar to the map sigils ARREN and Kiru had encountered earlier, but the symbols were different. Aron examined the runes carefully. The symbols surrounding the center circle were straightforward enough, it was clear that the disciples were supposed to stand on them and do something, but what? He bent down to study the center circle. The patterns looked somewhat familiar, but he could not remember where he had seen them before. It was sometime in his childhood. He turned to Seven and asked "What are these runes?" Seven answered "It is a script from the original cycle, nobody alive knows how to read it anymore." Aron still thought that he had seen the script before. All of the disciples were looking at him from their respective runes, and all of them had the same look of annoyance on their faces. Aron held up one finger to them, telling them to wait as he thought. Suddenly the memory came back to him.


A young Aron was walking along the coastline of the ocean that was a mile away from their village. When he arrived where the coastline turned, he spotted a cave that he had not seen before. He entered it, and etched on the floor was a message "This cave, along with others scattered throughout the region are remnants of ALL the cycles. This sentence matchesthe characters in the original language, and this can be used to complete the game. This section changes with the cycles, but the rest remains. Good Luck"

"Thats it! I remember how to decipher this!" Declared Aron. He wrote down the message and the symbols that had been above the message, and then got all the disciples to help him decipher it. Eventually the disciples were able to read the message that was inscribed in the center circle. The message read "Congratulations on making it this far. Most players do not reach this point of the game. Here each disciple must recite his personal code of honor, and his oath to his lord. The traitor to his lord must swear to another Lord in order to save his immortal soul. Proceed with caution. Any mistake here will be your last."Aron turned to face the assembled disciples. "I assume that each of you knows your code of honor and oath. But who is the traitor?" Seven said "Because the Fire Lord is the one that started this, I must assume that the Fire disciple who is trying to stop it is the traitor."

"Fine. Lets get to it then. Everybody get on your plates and follow the instructions. The world is already starting to fall apart." It was. Cracks were spreading out from the area around them as the world began to crumble into separate chunks. The disciples said their lines, although to Aron listening to all of them at once they made no sense. When the last disciple had finished a fire started in the middle of the center circle. It grew slowly, spinning out from the center to fill th entire circle and make a cylinder of fire that stood about five feet tall. From the fire a face grew out, still made of the writhing cylinder of fire. The face looked around at all of them, and then the mouth opened in a noiseless scream, but Aron felt the scream reverberating in his skull. Then slowly, the fire face dissolved, but Aron seemed to feel the fire in his head. As the last of the fire column disappeared, Aron passed out from the searing pain in his head -- brough on by the face in
the fire.


And when the Apocalypse begins, the world will begin to break. It will be possible to live on chunks of floating debris for long stretches of time. Be warned that when everything begins to crumble, it is only a matter of time before nothing is able to support life. Also, when that has been attained, there is no turning back. The Savior can no longer fulfill his function, and the Game is over. You have all lost.
-Legends of the Lords


He woke up in the palace of the Lord of the Air. There was nobody in his room, just a note – “Thanks.” He stood up and moved toward the door, but when he opened the door he saw his home town. Kiru was walking around, looking slightly dazed but talking to everybody, probably bragging. Arren was not sure he wanted to go back to his ordinary life, but as there was nobody in the room with him, he did not see that he had a choice. He stepped through the door and, ignoring the startled faces around him, went straight to Kiru and Torce and told them about what had happened when Kiru had not been there. Arren had a feeling he would be telling the story for a long time.
When the game ends, it will be known. Everything will either go back to the way it was destined to be, but if the Savior failed it will be obvious to everyone.
This is the end of the book and cannot be read until the game is complete. Either way this book, the Legends of the Lords, will be sustained through the void to guide the next team that attempts to play the game. There will be no memory among mortals of the previous round, as that would give them an advantage against nature in the next round. Good luck, and may you, the reader and holder of this book, be victorious in every round of the tragedy you are forced to play.
-Legends of the Lords
And after Arren read the final sentence, a sense of completion came over him, and the world began to spin. As everything slowly went back to the way it was before the game had started, all of the players felt that they had just been part of something big, they just could not remember what it was. Life settled, and they all lived on.