The True Threat

The True Threat
A Report to the Authorities of the Plutars

A letter written to government officials in the Plutars a few years before the Shatterbrige War, warning them of a terrible threat on the horizon.

When Archon fought Archon, and believer fought believer, naivete died and the Faloran Empire died with it. Common Law took the last Emperor's place, and the Arbiter rose to preside over the new order of things. Mankind was forced to reassess its view of itself and its place in the world. It was a cultural shock unlike anything else in recorded history. We are grateful for it, for it gave independence to the Plutars. But we should be wary that any more such grand events in history could bring tragedy to the Plutars just as readily as that civil war so long ago ended the Faloran Empire.

Despite the immensity of that historical event, which saw both the rise of the Dominion and the independence of Malvern and the Plutars, there is something far more grand ahead threatening the foundation of the world as we know it. A mere couple of generations ago, a storm broke over the northern continent. A place too unkind and sparsely populated for the Dominion to even consider occupying has suddenly been transformed, much to our fascination and our horror.

The northern continent as we know it - or knew it - was inhabited by nomads, fishermen and scatterings of civil folk in palisaded villages of wood and stone. It was a place beneath the notice of the Archons, and a negligible place to attempt trade, save for the occasional demand for quality furs. A few Havsgardian trading posts were established over the centuries, but permanent settlement was never encouraged by the Dominion. Thus, the fate of the north was not something anybody could have predicted. Not even the Archons themselves foresaw what has come.


The Arrival

There was no warning.

Northmen sailed across the northern sea and onto Dominion shores. At first the Archons feared that an unprecedented invasion had taken place, and that the northmen had somehow united under a warlord. What they found was that these northmen were not invaders.

These northmen were refugees. They were fleeing across the perilous waters to beg for the protection of the Archons they had mocked for so long. When questioned by the Wardens, who had hurried to the scene, the refugees could only blabber convoluted tales of a great and destructive wind. They spoke of the northern hills shaking and cracking, of the plains drumming with a distant march. They could not speak of specifics, only of fears and coming madness.

Piece by piece, however, an image began to form in the minds of the Dominion authorities.

A new enemy had arrived to the northern continent, forcing the northmen into the sea. And yet, there was nothing further north than the northern continent. Where had they come from? The world beyond the northern shore was far too cold for life, if even there was more land to be found.

In a moment of rare agreement, the Archons convened and agreed that something had to be done.

First Contact

The subjects of the Dominion have been fed comforting propaganda by the Archons. According to the Dominion, all that transpired in the north was a civil war amongst northern warlords, and a migration of peoples was the result.

We know that these are merely well-intentioned lies. Through bribery and espionage, we have had access to Dominion records concerning the first contact between two worlds.

In response to the northern troubles, the Dominion launched several expeditions into the north to trace the wild tales of the refugees, and to find their source. What the Wardens found defies the imagination. The Wardens, relying on crude maps, stumbled across a city where a city should not have been. Their account tells us that they chose several men to try and make contact with the city's inhabitants, but those men did not return. A warning was sent back to the Dominion that the north had been invaded, and the invaders were likely not friendly. The Wardens kept vigil.

They soon found more cities springing up, seemingly out of nowhere, along the planes, hills and mountains of the north. The Wardens began to observe the invaders themselves expanding southward, though they never witnessed the construction of a city.

The foreigners are of an ethnicity never before recorded, bearing peculiar uniforms and decorating themselves in bizarre fashion.

The Wardens eventually managed to ambush a party of the invaders and attempt an interrogation. Much to the Dominion's horror, the foreigners demonstrated a rudimentary command of the Faloran language, despite the fact that the Dominion had never before made official contact with these people. It implied that these strangers have been watching us for a very long time. The interrogation also revealed that these strangers refer to themselves as the 'Tenkou Courts' and that through the use of daimon Magik, the north is being transformed to accommodate the rest of the Tenkou from whatever homeland they are still coming from. When asked where this homeland was, the Wardens were only spat upon and laughed at, as the Tenkou claimed they come from Heaven and are guided towards us by their gods. It has since become clear that these Tenkou have Archons of their own.

What is likely most worrying of all to the Archons is that for the first time in known history, we have encountered a foreign civilization similar in design and purpose to the Dominion itself. This is a direct challenge to the Archonic authority and religion. While the Malvernians are mere heretics, these Tenkou have an alien Archonic lineage and consider their traditions and daimon culture to be superior to our own in every way. In comparison, even Samar and Preica would have fit comfortably into the Archonic hierarchy. These Tenkou will suffer no co-existence, and have been studying and preparing to destroy our way of life for generations.


The Future

The Tenkou command powers unlike anything we have ever seen before. We can only hope that we have Magiks of our own that they know nothing of.

As trouble brews in Varantium and Jovinium over Radiance's latest displays of political incompetence, we can only guess what the future holds. The common man knows next to nothing of these 'Tenkou Courts', thanks to intensive censorship. Yet we can expect that the Archons are surely deep in one another's counsel, preparing an adequate response to protect and save us all from this foreign menace.

For surely, if this threat is not addressed with all the collective power of the Dominion and the Plutars, it will be far too late for us many years down the line. Even if it means rejoining the Dominion, the Plutars must do whatever it takes to focus on stopping these 'Tenkou'. All else is a distraction. Sooner or later, they will come.