Races

(For best display, view the book on a computer.)

Races

Chapter 1. Ithacan The Exiled

Ithacus, the alleged son of Poseidon, lacking a legal claim by which to rule, substituted a divine one, thus uniting himself forever with both the island and its populace; nor did the Ithacans protest, secure upon their rugged coast, content to base their dignity upon a parentage however fabulous in its origin, and from which soon arose a successor whose renown aspired to eclipse the splendor of the gods themselves.

The house of Odysseus, whether through feigned reluctance or martial inclination, answered the call to arms, leading the Ithacans to the remote and hostile shores of Troy, where they endured the protracted trials and tribulations of that grand old expedition; until their monarch, said to have been animated by a spirit of fantastical ingenuity, contrived the stratagem of a great wooden horse; which, as the bards so fancifully recount, pried apart the gates of Ilium and precipitated a massacre of unparalleled ferocity, affording Eris, the goddess of discord, her most exquisite and unmitigated satisfaction.

On the return voyage, Odysseus and his crew passed through the lands of the Laestrygonians, a place of seeming respite, but upon meeting Antiphates, king of the cannibal giants, the ceremonies of hospitality were at once dispensed with as the new guest was seized and devoured; not yet satiated that man-eating giant marshalled his kin upon the cliffs to execute their fatal barrage, hurling from that precipice enormous rocks upon the fleet, dashing the ships to ruin and spearing the unfortunate sailors like fish until only wreckage remained in their wake. Overlooked, however, was the intervention of that divine agent of discord, who preserved a remnant of the Ithacans, clinging tenaciously to floating debris amid the turbulent foam, and bore them upon seemingly favorable currents to the fog-shrouded isle of Red Caye.

Just as Penelope, Queen of Ithaca and wife of Odysseus, preserved her fidelity against the suitors, so too do the exiled Ithacans maintain their devotion, offering fervent prayers their savior might one day return to lead them back home. Unbeknownst to them, however, salvation’s call has already been answered by the goddess, and such pious aspirations prove eternally deferred.

Chapter 2. Minotaur

The tyrant Minos, whose name eternally brands the beasts in his own proud or profane legacy, purportedly confined one such creature, part bull and part man within the serpentine depths of his Labyrinth, an alleged bastard of Queen Pasiphaë, degraded by the vengeful Poseidon into an unnatural vessel and coiled in such depravity as to produce a monstrous offspring; a creature to whom was affixed the name Asterion, whose stellar dignity served only to mock the sordid reality of its birth and the pretensions of a divine order that allowed it.

Theseus, the self-styled Duke of Athens, aided and abetted by his paramour Ariadne, is credited with navigating the Labyrinth’s mazes and striking down the Minotaur, allegedly liberating Athens from the grim tribute of sacrificial youths and consigning all such hybrids to oblivion; yet so entirely was the hero consumed by victory, that all reports of beasts gathering in the East were dismissed as the jealous inventions of lesser men.

Yet amid the tribes of the Levant, whose superstitions are outstripped only by their audacious avarice, children were passed through the flames of Moloch, the bull-headed idol revered as a god, purportedly to beget the beasts through some alchemical fusion of soul and savagery. Sensing an opportunity, our goddess Eris, taunted this Eastern potentate into joining her Great Game, whereupon that Eastern potentate, compelled by pride, unleashed his barbaric progeny to enlist in her wars, little suspecting that the very instruments of his savagery would soon become the arbiters of a severe and unbending justice.

Within the very domain of Discord, these creatures, called into an existence without their consent and abandoned to a purpose not their own, awoke to a consciousness wholly unforeseen by their creator; at once severed from their divine progenitor, they have renounced his violent savagery, embracing instead an austere discipline and a severe justice, their only inheritance being the sullen disposition that accompanies a monstrous form and a rational mind.

Chapter 3. Hierax

Long before the founding of Troy, when the Teucrians were beset by a famine born of either impiety or improvidence, they received aid from Hierax of the Mariandyni; whereupon Poseidon, viewing mercy as meddling, transformed that generous benefactor into a hawk, ensuring he who was once beloved by mankind would now be despised as its predator.

Seeking the intercession of Demeter, into the heavens that winged creature ventured; awaiting him however was not his merciful goddess, but a startling reflection of his own nature: the bird-headed apkallu, those same guardians whom Ashurnasirpal II had bound within Nimrud, a secluded company which Hierax was the first to encounter.

Unwelcome in the eyes of those who value independence over fraternity, suspicion yielded to opportunity; Eris descended upon the throng of hawk-men and, approaching each in solitary audience, whispered promises of boundless plunder and dominion in her Great Game; each consented to this pact, defrauded by the offer, and unwittingly dragged back into a coalition from which they had hoped to escape.

The Hierax, now ensnared within the domain of Eris, a terrorizing confederacy and fractious alliance, continued in their habitual folly, unaware that the very pride and predation which had exalted them above mankind had written their bonds, and delivered them from freedom into a service they had mistaken for mastery.