2. A BRIEF HISTORY

Of the æons before the rise of the Hyperboreans little is known. Rare and oft-forbidden tomes suggest the elder things, Great Race, and mi-go each arrived from other dimensions to Old Earth shortly after the dawn of time, when the oceans roiled and meteor showers pounded the young planet. Evidence shews that these otherworldly races engaged in countless wars over untold ages.

More evident, as demonstrated by ruins scattered about the realm, is the ascendancy of the snake-men. For unrecounted ages before man rose from the lowly depths of apedom, these reptilian humanoids ruled the Hyperborean continent and beyond. Extant carvings suggest a prevailing tropical climate during the epoch of the snake-men, and sages deduce that these super-intelligent creatures commanded sorceries and sciences scarcely since achieved. The reason for the fall of the snake-man empire has yet to be deciphered, though some evidence suggests lengthy conflicts with the fish-men.

The vhuurmis or “beast-men”, a race of quasi-men whose origins are traced to the Spiral Mountain Array, were next to rise to prominence. Some suggest that an otherworldly race catalyzed the vhuurmis from bestial obscurity to semi-intelligence and technological proficiency. Regardless, for an unaccountable period these apish humanoids dominated the realm, but ultimately they regressed to their savage roots and betook themselves to the hoary depths of the Spiral Mountain Array.

The rise of the Hyperboreans is mired in the embellished myths and legends of its people. Allegedly this race of gaunt, pale-skinned sorcerer-kings and witch-queens are the progeny of the Boreads, a trio of supernaturally gifted giants who engendered a paradisal land of eternal spring and sunshine beyond the North Wind. The Boreads are held to have taken mortal wives and so begot the Hyperboreans, a precocious race esteemed for their preternatural aptitudes and uncanny longevity.

Some sages discount tales of the Boreads; indeed, they posit that the Hyperboreans, much like the vhuurmis before them, may have been impelled by unearthly sponsors. Most Hyperboreans vehemently reject this notion. Regardless, the realm of Hyperborea became the most powerful of the antediluvian kingdoms, accepting tributes from coevals such as Atlantis, Lemuria, and Mu.

The Hyperboreans knew not war, famine, disease, hard toil, or the ravages of age, and they venerated Apollo, who was said to walk amongst them. Their empire was peerless, and they disparaged and trivialized the “lesser” races of mankind, for whilst the Hyperboreans perfected their arts, sciences, and sorceries, most other men floundered in various states of savage primitivism. Over time the most puissant Hyperborean sorcerers were shewn the eldritch secrets of Xathoqqua, an otherworldly émigré dwelling within the heart of the Spiral Mountain Array.

Xathoqqua sent select Hyperboreans on sojourns to Saturn and beyond, and in due course his glorification prevailed throughout the realm. The sibyls of Hyperborea had long presaged the advent of the Ashen Worm, so when all the portents of its arrival (derived through geomancy, hydromancy, and haruspicy) were satisfied, and when at length the Worm rose from the sea in its citadel of ice, the race of sorcerer-kings and witch-queens fled to their fastnesses sequestered beneath the Spiral Mountain Array. Soon the Worm effected thaumaturgy that mantled the once winterless realm in glacial ice. Hyperborea was swallowed, a lost continent soon joined by its contemporaries Atlantis, Lemuria, and Mu.

Æons later, when the ice thawed and the mists parted, Hyperborea’s connexion to Old Earth was no more than a mystical abstraction. Hyperborea found itself an isolated realm, its icy sea terminating in waterfalls that cascaded to infinity. Beyond the world’s rim lay the North Wind, and beyond the North Wind, the Black Gulf: airless, black as pitch, and colder than any winter.

A bloated red sun that shed little warmth wheeled around the horizon in a 13-year circuit. Also, Hyperborea was now attended by two ellipsoid moons, one large and aquamarine, and the other small and ruddy brown. Saturn was discernibly larger than any of the stars in the firmament, all of which shone dimmer, as though glimpsed through a smoky lens.

After the ice thawed, seeds took root, and newly released pollens floated on the wind. Soon forests bristled and poppy fields swelled. Then stirred the beasts and monsters; some materialized from the ice or emerged from subterranean depths, whilst others arrived via mystical portals. Hither came the savage races of mankind, non-Hyperboreans originating from Old Earth. They crossed the veil and colonized the pristine continent, their respective arrivals oft associated with the manifestation of the aurora borealis or the blowing of the boreas.

When at length the Hyperboreans emerged from their sanctuaries below the Spiral Mountain Array, they beheld the astonishing changes to the world they once had known: the giant red sun, two ellipsoid moons, and an expanded mountain range. The race of sorcerers and witches descended to reclaim the jewel of their empire of old: Khromarium. Along the way they noted the advent of terrible beasts and fearsome monsters, as well as the infiltration of savage men, but these were paid no more heed than apes or dogs to be slaughtered or enslaved as whims dictated.

In the spiral towers of Khromarium the Hyperboreans reassumed their power and station, and they languished in their superiority. No effort to expand the old Hyperborean kingdom was engendered; for sooth, the sorcerous race seemed content to remain in Khromarium, unconcerned and unheeding of what transpired without. They entered an age of incalculable decadence and hedonism; they took to chewing lotus leaves and indulged in pleasures unspeakably perverse. To wit, the Hyperboreans stagnated as the “savages” beyond the gates progressed.

Many generations later there came to pass a phenomenon that was presaged, albeit ignored (or forgotten), by the lotus-chewing Hyperboreans. From the dimly lit heavens descended a silvery-green comet that burned across the Hyperborean sky for two score days and nights. In its wake fell showers of dust and particles that blanketed the whole of the realm in a putrid greenish hue; on trees and earth, hills and mountains, plains and tundra, and even on the surface of the water, the eldritch dust was omnipresent.

At length the dust faded, but soon after arose the plague known as the Green Death. It swept across the realm, extinguishing savage and civilized men alike. Khromarium, for instance, was left a lifeless husk, and few amongst the ancient race of lotus-chewing sorcerers escaped to their old shelters in the Spiral Mountain Array.

Countless ruins were left in the plague’s wake: Pictish fortresses, Viking colonies, Keltic towns, Esquimaux f ishing villages, and more. Nomadic tribes such as the Kimmerians carried the disease with them across the Hyperborean plains, and Amazon trading ships brought it back to their island nation. Sages suggest that up to ninety percent of mankind was wiped out by the Green Death. Centuries later, barbarian refugees were amongst the first to rebound; they claimed Khromarium, and presently their descendants rule it as a city-state.

The Green Death, having taken its toll a millennium ago, is the measuring stick by which modern Hyperborean history is traced; the bulk of pre–Green Death history, as illustrated by the brevity of this treatise, is a casualty to a bygone age. Furthermore, the intervening centuries betwixt the plague years and recovery are widely regarded as a Dark Age. The plague’s impact on the bestial and otherworldly races of Hyperborea is nebulous; nonetheless, little doubt exists that these creatures have proliferated about the realm, perhaps emboldened by mankind’s regression, or (more frighteningly) wholly irrespective of mankind’s position.

After mankind endured the plague years of the Green Death and the ensuing Dark Age, a new age of enlightenment commenced, and the Common Æra (CÆ) calendar was adopted by the most distinguished men of learning, who esteemed the work of Old Earth’s Dionysius Exiguus. The first year was reckoned as Genesis (Bear, Year One), and so began the rebirth of learning and civilization; in sooth, it is no coincidence that Common Æra Chronology was first reckoned upon the formation of the Sages’ Guild of Khromarium, when men of learning came together to collate and preserve the erudition of the ancients. Years prior to CÆ years are accounted as BCÆ (Before Common Æra).

The current year is 583 CÆ (Day: 1st (Sun); Month: 1st; Year: 9th Whale (Tranquillity)). The season has just turned from summer to fall. The daylight hours are getting shorter with 17 hours and 20 minutes that Helios (the Sun) graces the horizon. Gradually (loosing 5 minutes per week) getting shorter until............585 CÆ (Nightfall) will be the end of this 13 year cycle.......and a year of darkness will come again.