Difference between revisions of "The Fate of Maldegen Dirz"
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== Chronology == | == Chronology == | ||
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*''853'' : Destruction of Shamir. Dirz is seriously wounded. Basileus Antykaïn is appointed head of the Empire. | *''853'' : Destruction of Shamir. Dirz is seriously wounded. Basileus Antykaïn is appointed head of the Empire. | ||
*''1000'' : Death of Dirz, sacrificed | *''1000'' : Death of Dirz, sacrificed | ||
| + | |||
| + | == Maldegen Dirz == | ||
| + | |||
| + | Maldegen Dirz was born in Carthag Fero, in Akkylannie, to the rich house of engineer Balfeden Dirz, in 643. The child soon revealed extraordinary intelligence and obviously possessed a gift for magic. Trained from a very young age in all scientific fields, he was able to correct his father’s plans before he was ten. Indifferent to any possible development of his mystic abilities, Maldegen Dirz favored his passion for science. | ||
| + | |||
| + | He quickly specialized in biology, a rather unexplored field at the time. At eleven, Maldegen Dirz discovered parasites in the water recycling systems of Carthag Fero. He offered to coat the city reservoirs with copper and to treat drinking water with selected bacteria. Within a few months these corrections had cleansed the city of a great number of major diseases. Being a voracious reader, Maldegen Dirz used his newfound glory to gain access to the best libraries of the city and to correspond | ||
| + | with some of the brightest minds on Aarklash. | ||
| + | |||
| + | Thus, he entertained some serious correspondence with mystics and scientists of the Kingdom of Alahan, including Rhea de Brisis. | ||
| + | It is she who told Maldegen that missionaries sent to the Syharhalna, on the other side of the Migol Sea, had discovered the ruins of an ancient and powerful civilization. | ||
| + | |||
| + | '''The Brisis expedition''' | ||
| + | |||
| + | With the financial support of Rhea de Brisis, Maldegen Dirz, then aged sixteen, managed to convince his father and several scholars from many countries of the interest of an archaeological expedition to the Syharhalna. | ||
| + | |||
| + | He who went by the name of “Dirz” left with an expedition and entered the desert with a map he had been able to draw by cross-referencing ancient tales and charts. It took him only a few months to unearth the ruins of a city. In 660, a research team discovered a building miraculously preserved under the desert sand. It also found dozens of artifacts. A few months were enough for Maldegen Dirz and his men to understand how these items worked and to list their fields of application. However, one particular item proved to be a challenge to Dirz’ genius. After hundreds of tests, Maldegen Dirz realized the machine could heal any living thing placed inside it, no matter the severity of the wound or illness. The young genius discovered what was to become his lifelong vocation: his science and this technology were going to allow him to unveil the secrets of life. What | ||
| + | the population of this fallen empire had achieved was barely the beginning. Maldegen Dirz would take their knowledge to the limit. | ||
| + | |||
| + | Dirz and his men investigated the dunes of the Syharhalna for five years, unearthing many wonders. At the end of this epic journey, the artifacts discovered had made Maldegen Dirz so famous that the order of the Alchemists of Merin off ered him membership. That this fellowship of illustrious scientists had asked him to join was a first in the history of the order. The | ||
| + | Alchemists of Merin, who dedicated their lives to improving the everyday life of the Akkylannians through science, had never accepted such a young member. Maldegen Dirz hesitated for a long time before returning to Akkylannie to accept the invitation. | ||
| + | He was convinced that he didn’t need to be in Akkylannie to accomplish great deeds; he could do it just as well from the Syharhalna. | ||
| + | |||
| + | It was Rhea de Brisis who persuaded him to accept on the day they finally met. Rhea de Brisis had already demonstrated her superior intelligence and the sincere interest she showed in Maldegen Dirz’ work, notably when she told him that the black gemstone he had found was a gem of Darkness. The pair of scholars soon became lovers. Leaving Rhea in charge of the expedition, | ||
| + | Maldegen Dirz returned to Akkylannie with the certainty that the excavation sites were in good hands. His discoveries earned him the admiration of the Alchemists of Merin and further supporters. | ||
| + | |||
| + | '''The Alchemist''' | ||
| + | |||
| + | Dirz the Alchemist soon prospered thanks to his genius and the knowledge brought back from the Syharhalna. He reached a peak in his reputation when he demonstrated that animals, and men, were immune to diseases they had already survived. Using a Syhar artifact, he managed to create a treatment against the most common disease of the time. | ||
| + | |||
| + | In 667, as a reward for his immense contribution to science, Maldegen Dirz was appointed Prime Alchemist, Head of the Order of the Alchemists of Merin, by the Emperor. His was so popular that the population was soon speaking of the “Alchemists of Dirz”. | ||
| + | The same year, Rhea de Brisis was forced to return to her homeland, the barony of Acheron in Alahan. She presented Maldegen Dirz with the assistance of the Black Togas, a community of mystics who offered to send scientists to the Syharhalna. Maldegen Dirz | ||
| + | accepted even more gladly because the Black Togas clearly had the means to dig out entire cities from under the sand. | ||
| + | |||
| + | The cities of Djaran and Tasith were brought back to life. The excavation workers and the scientists, as well as their families, all worked to free the cities. They were the first inhabitants. They were slowly joined by the nomads who were attracted by the sweeter life of the cities. The scientists offered their knowledge and technology. In contact with the nomads’ beliefs, their faith was gradually diverted from Merin in favor of Arh-Tolth. Within a few years, Merin was no longer worshipped. He was but a former tutelary fi gure given only lip service for the sake of appearances in front of some Akkylannian fanatics. | ||
| + | |||
| + | '''Meeting Incarnation''' | ||
| + | |||
| + | In 668, an enigmatic nomad going by the name of Djabril the Voyager traveled to Akkylannie to speak with Maldegen Dirz. This faithful of Arh-Tolth was a sage who knew the many secrets of the desert. He converted Dirz after demonstrating that both their gods were different faces of a same deity. Maldegen Dirz off ered his friendship to Djabril. Once the Alchemist converted, Djabril taught him his secrets, including the location of a lost city in the eastern parts of the Syharhalna: Shamir. | ||
| + | |||
| + | Maldegen Dirz and his disciples returned to the Syharhalna. They discovered a ravaged city at the location known as Shamir. As excavation workers removed the rubble, they made an astonishing discovery: a wild eyed man dressed in rags who seemed to have been living there “forever”. He spoke none of the known languages of the time. It is only after much eff ort that they managed to get his name: Arkeon Sanath. His saviors shrugged their shoulders and ignored his eccentricity. What could you expect of a man who spent years “living” alone among these ruins? While Arkeon Sanath made his return to human society and learned to speak Akkylannian, his knowledge of the city rocked the comfortable certainties of the explorers. He was brought before Maldegen Dirz, who discovered the truth after a long conversation: Arkeon Sanath had survived the cataclysm that had annihilated the Ishim’Re civilization hundreds of years before. | ||
| + | |||
| + | He had survived alone all this time. Confronted with the immortality of Incarnation, Maldegen Dirz understood that Death could be defeated and that Man was imperfect by nature. From this realization, he elaborated the idea of creating a being freed from time and death. This goal would haunt him for the rest of his existence. In the meantime, Arkeon Sanath had stepped into the unique position of favorite experimental subject and first lieutenant of Maldegen Dirz. The settlers had built prosperous cities and had their own cult. All they were missing to claim their independence and form a nation was a leader. Maldegen Dirz added the resources of the Alchemists of Merin to those of the disciples he already had. He made some major breakthroughs in the understanding and applications of more Ishim’Re artifacts. For the first time he got a glimpse of how to defeat death. There was a possibility he could even reach the level of Arh-Tolth by giving life to a being liberated of all “natural defects”. | ||
| + | |||
| + | These resources also allowed him to rebuild Shamir and find out more about the mysterious civilization that had left such treasures behind. | ||
| + | |||
| + | '''The Heretic''' | ||
| + | |||
| + | Maldegen Dirz was twenty-four when he set himself to furthering the discoveries of the Black Togas by combining their knowledge of mana with the science of the alchemists. | ||
| + | |||
| + | The work of Maldegen Dirz and his disciples went on for five years, traveling back and forth from Akkylannie to the Syharhalna. | ||
| + | In Akkylannie, the aura of the Prime Alchemist continued to grow. His collaborators and the population itself considered him a genius capable of feats that greatly surpassed the abilities of any normal scientist. His reputation reached another peak in 671 when Dirz stopped a cattle plague epidemic that threatened not only to destroy the livestock of Akkylannie, which would have caused a famine across the country, but also to spred to human populations. But this feat was a trifling compared to the real work of Maldegen Dirz. | ||
| + | |||
| + | Very early in his research, the Prime Alchemist had been forced to admit that his contemporaries were not prepared to comprehend | ||
| + | the extent of his research. Maldegen Dirz took the decision to build secret research laboratories under the excavation sites. At the height of his glory, supported by the Black Togas and financed by many Akkylannians, he had no problem getting hold of the necessary supplies and transferring them to the desert. He made sure one of his interlocutors could ever understand the greater picture of the project, not even Rhea de Brisis; his disciples were given orders to keep their discoveries secret. While aldegen Dirz shared his most orthodox inventions with Akkylannie, his closest assistants kept exploring the stems and codes their master had entrusted them. | ||
| + | |||
| + | Their work was focused on size and several colossal creatures were engineered in tanks. The Prime Alchemist was ruling a state | ||
| + | within the state, built in the heart of the Syharhalna. With its own cult, separated by weeks of seafaring from Imperial administrative centers, the Syharhalna was almost independent and attracted all the free thinkers of Akkylannie. The name | ||
| + | of the Alchemists of Dirz no longer designated a society of scholars but all the pioneers who followed the doctrine of the young visionary or those who left to live in the desert. The population of Djaran, Shamir and Tarsith soon grew beyond the ten-thousand residents mark. In addition, the reputation of the scientist soon challenged that of Pope Demetrius. Some people whispered that if the pope were to die, Maldegen Dirz ought to be next in line! The pope’s official successor, Cardinal Lazarus, | ||
| + | took these rumors very seriously. He commanded the Seat of Internal Affairs, the ecclesiastic court of justice, to find evidence to convict Dirz of heresy. | ||
| + | |||
| + | In 673, Maldegen Dirz and his closest disciples were arrested. The Black Togas quickly reacted and to defend Maldegen Dirz they sent Iandorias Lazarian, who was very much in the Akkylannian public eye. Renowned theologian and scholar, Iandorias Lazarian was a jurist specialized in canon law. He was also the adopted son of Cardinal Lazarus himself. By the end of the trial, the verdict was straight forward acquittal, which forced the Seat of Internal aff airs to present apologies to the Prime Alchemist. | ||
| + | |||
| + | == Dirz the Heresiarch == | ||
| + | |||
| + | The Emperor and the Pope grew worried of such excessive influence. Their worries came true in 675, when the Battle of Kaïber demonstrated that Light was under threat of being extinguished by Darkness. Following the Black Togas, Iandoras Lazarian betrayed his family and sided with the barony of Acheron. He fought alongside the forces of the Meanders of Darkness. Cardinal Lazarus’ suspicions became certainties. | ||
| + | |||
| + | As an answer to these terrible events, the Church of Merin created the Inquisition and gave it a wide range of discretionary | ||
| + | powers. Cardinal Lazarus was appointed to lead it. His first official decision was to arrest Dirz and his collaborators | ||
| + | to try them in secret. However, the Black Togas had warned their protégé. Dirz had clandestinely transferred Arkeon Sanath to Akkylannie, along with a pack of his famous “tigers”. On the day of the trial, supporters of the Black Togas caused uproar in the city, allowing the Incarnate to reach the tribunal. Arkeon Sanath unleashed his beasts and used the commotion to free the captives. No one was able to stop them. Chaos spread across Akkylannie. Civil war was setting the country ablaze. The artisans of the Black Togas were fighting openly with the Inquisition. Answering the rebellion, the inquisitors fell upon all those who had been in contact with the man who was now being called the Heresiarch. | ||
| + | |||
| + | The Order of the Alchemists of Merin was destroyed and many persecuted alchemists joined the fugitives, who had been traveling to the country to warn their partisans or to save them from the stakes of the Inquisition. Having prepared for such events, the Heresiarch hurried to Carthag Fero, a city he knew well and whose population he knew was behind him. He “stole” several ships from their consenting owners and left for the Syharhalna with several thousand people. | ||
| + | |||
| + | '''The Emperor and his faithful''' | ||
| + | |||
| + | When the Heresiarch landed in Djaran, he knew he was being pursued. He turned the whole of his laboratories’ resources toward building a resistance force. The coordination of the armed force required strong central power and the support of the whole population. In 677, the Heresiarch took a certain number of decisions that irrevocably cut him off from Akkylannie. First he chose the most influential priest of Arh-Tolth, Ikbaal Kazzaz, to become the supreme leader of the cult, Basileus of the Syharhalna. Ikbaal Kazzaz took the name of Antykaïn I and crowned Dirz as Emperor, thus federating the tribes of the desert and the population of the Syhar cities around the imperial power. The Akkylannian expedition in charge of capturing the Heresiarch and regaining control of the Syharhalna had prepared to meet some resistance. And it wasn’t disappointed. | ||
| + | |||
| + | The kraken the Heresiarch had let loose decimated the fleet that had already been weakened by diseases called by the faithful of Arh-Tolth. The troops that landed ran into several bloodhound packs and an army of the fi rst combat clones. The elite templars fought a long and deadly battle. Still, the clones were not perfectly finished yet and the bloodhounds, no matter how fierce they were, they were not enough to be called a real army. Quite predictably, Djaran fell. | ||
| + | |||
| + | The Heresiarch wished to test these first prototypes of fighters. He had foreseen and accepted the loss of the city, relying on the desert rather than brute force to defend his laboratories. The Akkylannians wandered in the Syharhalna for months, misled by local guides loyal to Dirz, by mirages summoned by the first technomancers, by rumors concerning mysterious fortresses… | ||
| + | |||
| + | The Heresiarch used the time won to send Danakil, his most talented disciple, to rebuild an ancient Ishim’Re fortress in the northern parts of the Syharhalna. The disciple was given an important mission: improving his mentor’s clones in order to create a | ||
| + | new generation of fi ghters capable of leading troops | ||
| + | and providing worthy generals. Danakil sought to shine and saw this mission as the opportunity to surpass his master. He used his | ||
| + | own stem rather than those provided by Dirz to create combat clones superior in every way possible to those of the Heresiarch. These new fighters were complex and required great quantities of resources but the result was sufficiently brilliant to justify the production of a limited number of them. However, the loyalty of Danakil was in doubt. The Heresiarch himself started working on the improvement of the clones and sent his unique result, Commodore Mezaian Genariah, to execute his disciple. Genariah slashed its way through the clones of Danakil to take care of their creator. | ||
| + | |||
| + | Once it was done, Genariah took command of the leaderless fortress as it had been ordered. The Battle of Dawn that was fought there against the Akkylannians later demonstrated Generiah’s qualities as commander (see Army Book: Clones of Dirz): This victory eliminated the threat of an attack on Shamir, where the Heresiarch had retreated. Dirz had every right to be satisfied with his work. | ||
| + | |||
| + | == The Quest of the Heresiarch == | ||
| + | |||
| + | His status as Emperor did not quell the ardor the Heresiarch put into his research. In 707, he put the final touches to the land | ||
| + | arhteths, the Tarascus. He was able to test these new creations when more templars tried to capture him, in Shamir this time. The creatures, assisted by a handful of combat clone units, quickly drove the Akkylannians back. Pleased with his success, the Emperor soon ordered the release of the Tarascus arhteths into the wild, in order to fight the periodic incursions of Akkylannian crusaders. | ||
| + | |||
| + | In the meantime, the genius of the Heresiarch kept producing amazing results. In 719, the Tarascus had become a nuisance to the Syhar as much as to the Akkylannians. The famished creatures attacked both sides indiscriminately. It did indeed prevent sporadic movements of crusade troops sent into the desert, but it also paralyzed Syhar commerce. The Emperor decided to design | ||
| + | creatures meant to neutralize the Tarascus. | ||
| + | |||
| + | Thus the isatephs were born from the tanks of Shamir. These fast and gregarious creatures travel in great herds, making them an | ||
| + | irresistible prey to the arhteths. Designed to develop an extremely peevish character, the reaction of an isateph herd faced with an arhteth is not fl ight: quite the contrary, | ||
| + | they stand up as a group to their aggressors. Their natural arsenal, long tusks and sharp teeth, takes care of the rest. A few carefully released isateph herds worked marvels: within months, the land arhteths were only a bad memory. In 725, the eresiarch, age 82, was reaching the end of his long existence and his projects were not complete. He modified a cloning tank to make it a statis tank that could slow down forever the vital functions of a living being. Technomancers engaged in long-running enterprises would have a refuge to wait until an emergency called for their attention or until their project was completed. | ||
| + | |||
| + | Dirz the Heresiarch took refuge inside it and spent nineteen years in artificial slumber. In 744 a clone patrol found a female wolfen named Karnyrax lost in the desert. The deprivation of water and food should have killed her long ago and yet she was still alive; alive enough to tear half of the patrol to pieces before being captured. Carried to Shamir to be experimented on, the wolfen proved incapable of dying. Arkeon Sanath took the decision to wake the Heresiarch. | ||
| + | |||
| + | The capture of a new Incarnate allowed the Emperor to further his research to understand the nature of these beings. | ||
| + | The previous work of the Heresiarch on Arkeon Sanath answered many questions that had in turn brought even more unanswerable queries. The capture of Karnyrax offered further elements that the father of technomancy could work on. Late 744, the first conclusions drawn by the Heresiarch allowed him to prepare the future cloning of Incarnates. Even better, there was reasonable hope that he could extract the code of Incarnation and therefore inject it in order to cause artificial Incarnation. Eternal life was within reach. | ||
| + | |||
| + | However, the project was prickly. Immortality was not for everyone and its discovery could throw Aarklash into chaos. Dirz elaborated a secret research plan supposed to unfold over several centuries and no one else was to know its goal. Only the Emperor knew its objective. The Heresiarch organized the laboratories and gave them the orders they are working on today. Some research centers were to provide clones ever more powerful and cheaper to create. | ||
| + | |||
| + | Others were to refine the cloning techniques in order to create the perfect human, called “clone alpha”, for Dirz’s return | ||
| + | into a younger and improved body. Another section bearing the seal of absolute secrecy was entrusted with exploring the first discoveries of the Heresiarch concerning Incarnates. So Project Hybrid was born and its countless secret laboratories scattered across Aarklash. The first Code Hybrid laboratories were built in 746. Their work soon showed great potential with the creation of the aberrations and later of the nemesis. After two years, the satisfi ed Emperor returned to his artificial slumber until some more significant progress was made. | ||
| + | |||
| + | '''The clone uprising''' | ||
| + | |||
| + | The technomancers dissected the emissaries of No-Dan-Kar who showed up in 808 to establish an embassy in Shamir. The Heresiarch was woken for the occasion. It would be the last time he authorized the use of a stem other than his own in order to create stronger, more obedient and more resilient clones by injecting fragments of isateph code into this new stem. This time, he chose Khorda, his most obedient disciple to lead the project. The Khorda clones proved as strong and enduring as foreseen but their character seriously deviated from the parameters expected of the experiment. Their stubborn temper made them diffi cult to dominate, but the use of drugs could largely compensate for this defect. Khorda was more worried by their lack of the | ||
| + | cruelty that made clones of Dirz such fierce fighters. | ||
| + | |||
| + | Yet their strength and dexterity was precious. So they were produced in limited numbers to become elite cavalry fighters. A variation of the isateph clones was engineered for the occasion. Three generations of Khorda clones ensued, improved each time, until 869. Khorda discovered that these creations had developed a language and an embryo of civilization outside of any parameter of the experiment. Fearing the reaction to the Emperor if he was to wake him to tell him of his failure, Khorda told Basileus Antykaïn III of the situation. The latter ordered the execution of all the Khorda clones. The clones proved far more intelligent and far more independent than feared. Instead of passively waiting for death, the clones threw themselves | ||
| + | at the Syhar, massacred their masters and fled. The Khorda clones vanished into the canyons of the Bran-Ô-Kor before renaming themselves “Orcs”. | ||
| + | |||
| + | Eventually Dirz was woken to inform him of the situation. Infuriated, the Heresiarch banned the use of new stems in the creation of sentient creatures. | ||
| + | |||
| + | '''The dawn of the Rag’narok''' | ||
| + | |||
| + | The Emperor’s sleep lasted more than two centuries. He was woken again on a clear night in 853 when five hundred invaders appeared out of nowhere to attack Shamir. They wielded unknown weapons, made from technologies far more advanced than that of the Syhar, and they used an extremely powerful form of magic. After only a few hours of fierce fighting, the aggressors unleashed such firepower that even the Ishim’Re fortification, which had resisted the destruction of their country and millennia of oblivion , were swept away. Nevertheless, the masses of clones of Shamir, supported by the Heresiarch himself, eventually defeated the invader. Unfortunately, the Emperor was seriously wounded in the fight. | ||
| + | |||
| + | The final hours of lucidity of the Emperor were dedicated to interrogating the only surviving aggressor. A handful of carefully selected biopsists, assisted by the Basileus himself, ripped the truth out of the prisoner; revelations that were immediately | ||
| + | concealed. A century and a half into the future, a total war between the peoples of Aarklash, called “Rag’narok”, would break out. Seizing the opportunity of this conflict, the hundreds of clones produced for battle would revolt against their masters | ||
| + | and massacre them to found their own people. The last of the surviving loyalists who had fallen back into the deepest levels of the alchemical tower of Shamir would call upon Arh-Tolth to help them. The god would then give them a machine designed to send them into the past to prevent the fall of the alchemical empire. | ||
| + | |||
| + | After the questioning, the Emperor felt his fi nal hour approaching. However, his mind was still working with the genius that had always characterized him. He ordered that Shamir should be abandoned and that a new city be built where the true-born would live at the top of the alchemical tower and not underground. Thus the circumstances in which the revolt was supposed to take places would be altered in favor of the true-born. He decreed that all male clones would be made sterile so that the goals of the revolt could not be achieved. He then transferred the regency of the Empire to the Baliseus who would be in charge of preparing the final assault of the Rag’narok. Finally, he gathered years of annotations, re-wrote some of them and reorganized | ||
| + | the rest, creating within a few hours one of the founding texts of the empire: the Traitise of Alchemy, halfway between religious scriptures and scientific reference book. The Heresiarch then sunk into a coma and was returned to the stasis tank, until the day Syhar science would be able to heal the terrible wounds of time. | ||
== The Return of the Heresiarch == | == The Return of the Heresiarch == | ||
| − | + | The epilogue of the life of the Heresiarch happened in 1000 during the Dawn ritual. Basileus Villa, head of the church of Arh-Tolth, and the Magon, grand priest of the cult, received from Djabril the Voyager the means of summoning Arh-Tolth to Aarklash for good. The ritual required inflicting unspeakable spiritual and physical suffering to the most fervent worshippers | |
of Arh-Tolth. Physical suffering would not be a problem. The proper injection would provide a satisfying result. | of Arh-Tolth. Physical suffering would not be a problem. The proper injection would provide a satisfying result. | ||
The real challenge was the moral part. No drug could help here. In an ordinary nation, they could have sacrificed the women and children of their faithful. Unfortunately, the Syhar felt no attachment for those they reproduced with, or their own progeny. | The real challenge was the moral part. No drug could help here. In an ordinary nation, they could have sacrificed the women and children of their faithful. Unfortunately, the Syhar felt no attachment for those they reproduced with, or their own progeny. | ||
Once again, Djabril had the solution. The only being they all adored and loved was their guide, their spiritual father: Emperor Dirz. The Basileus himself stabbed the sacrificial dagger into the heart of the founder of the Empire while the Magon began the ritual of Dawn… and Arh-Tolth appeared. The army of the Syharhalna marched out to sweep away the old world and sow the seeds of a new one. Victory would herald the dawn of a new alchemical era. | Once again, Djabril had the solution. The only being they all adored and loved was their guide, their spiritual father: Emperor Dirz. The Basileus himself stabbed the sacrificial dagger into the heart of the founder of the Empire while the Magon began the ritual of Dawn… and Arh-Tolth appeared. The army of the Syharhalna marched out to sweep away the old world and sow the seeds of a new one. Victory would herald the dawn of a new alchemical era. | ||
