Episode description[edit | edit source]
And so the season turns, and the cold winds sweep in, and candles and fires and stoves are lit. Black branches against a white sky. There are more stories to tell, though. There are always more stories to tell. It’s not long before we meet our old friends again, I promise. They’re waiting, right now. They’re kicking the frost off their boots, cold fingers on metal buckles. Before we find them again, though, there is an old story to tell. Perhaps you’ve heard it before. Perhaps this is the first time you’ve heard it. There’s a small island, you see? Waves crash around its rocky coast. There is the silhouette of a tower. It’s better, don’t you think, to bring everybody up to speed?
Contents[edit | edit source]
Opening[edit | edit source]
“
Oh, I suppose I have one more story in me. But if you want me to tell you about them, then, well, I need to start from the beginning. The very beginning.
When I was a young man, Hieron floated in the void, anchored to nothing. The only light was the ambient glow given off by me and my kin. Time passed uncounted. There was no such thing as a year then. After all, there was no common center by which folks could count and organize their lives. Imagine that. Really try to. No holidays, no birthdays, no days at all. How would you count 'em? And then, with his strength and wisdom, Samothes struck his hammer to scalding iron, and built us the sun, placing it in the sky above, giving us not only light, but time too. Suddenly, everyone on Hieron had something new in common. We were all united under his blazing star. Don't get me wrong. I am not saying that was his intention. For all that Samothes has done for us, sometimes it feels like it's a side effect, like a whistle on a steam engine.
In any case, years passed by in uncountable number, partially because there were a lot of them. Partially because, well, the way we gods wrote and rewrote history then, it meant that, a little difficult to get a complete count. Still, you probably know the stories. Loose alliances between elves and men, roving hordes of orcs, the dwarves digging deep, humble halflings and gods alive. Now, don't get me wrong, those stories, well, they're stories, not histories, but for the most part, the basics line up just about right. And then... the war between my boys and then Marielda, and then what happened between Maelgwyn and Samothes. Y'all call what happened next the Erasure.
And after that, people lost track of the years again for a whole new reason. Not because there was no sun, not because we were rewriting history, but because folks were so busy trying to survive, they didn't have time to count the days. For years, decades, centuries, nearly everyone on Hieron struggled to survive. Even in the safest places, the City of First Light, Nacre, life seemed stretched thin. When terrible things happen at the periphery, even the center feels it. Ain't no inside without an outside, right?
In any case, time passed, and eventually, after a lot of death, after a lot of failure, things started to even out, bit by bit, drop of blood by drop of blood. Populations slowly grew until finally, there were a number of settlements that you could rightly classify as cities. Now that I think about it, them folks you wanted to know about? Each one of them came from one of those places.”
Plot[edit | edit source]
In the first of two recap episodes, Samol begins to tell Stornras Glasseye of the events of Autumn in Hieron.