A Foretoken
(As remembered in the Elder Iberlands, before names were counted)
-As spoken by Gallas, Druid King of the Frost-Blood Mogge, and preserved in the listening of Tovar, Oracle of the Great White Owls.

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In the elder days-before mortal kings etched their borders into stone, before time was measured by crowns and conquests-there came upon our people an age of quiet sundering.

It was a time when Elves still walked both the high places and the low, in the days after the Dragons passed like storms along the horizons, when Elven Folk shared the world with mortals under treaties older than memory.

Yet even then, doubt found root.

There arose among mortals a whispering hunger, cunningly seeded by those who wore borrowed faces-the Changeling Wizards, who fed fear as if it were wisdom.

They told the mortal kings, 'Your walls are too weak. Your guardians too gentle. The magic of the elves no longer serves you.'

And so the mortals asked not for harmony, but for protection that could not feel.

From dark enchantment and twisted craft were born the Gargoyles-hard stone anima, ensouled beings shaped into monstrous forms, they bound them to the high ledges and battlements, where they were commanded to watch in silence.

Left as prisoners-their spirits sealed beneath carved faces, their breath slowed to stone.

Long had Elven Folk offered our alchemy and spellcraft for the good of all. We had healed, guided, and guarded beside mortal kind for ages beyond counting.

But as mortals are-so they go.

Fear bred greed.
Greed bred forgetting.
And forgetting became blame.

Thus-the space between our peoples widened, until the old paths closed and we were pressed back into the frost-bitten heights of our ancestral lands, while the changelings crafted their own protectors for the mortals.

There the Gargoyles might have remained forever-silent witnesses upon stone-had we not been moved by pity.

For even stone remembers breath.

We, the Frostblood Mogge's, broke the bindings laid upon them and unmade the cruel spells of the Changelings.

To those Gargoyles who accepted our mercy, we granted a fragile freedom; that by night, beneath the deepest dark, they might shed their stone and walk as living flesh.

Some chose never to return to their high places. They descended from towers and walls, forsaking their vigil, and lived among our people in the hidden valleys and cold forests.

In time, they took mates from our kindred.
And from those unions were born children
the world had never known-elves with wings, beings of radiant beauty and unguarded innocence, bearing a magic yet unnamed.

They were the MORGG's.

Mortals glimpsed them at dusk and dawn-a shadow passing the moon, a flash of wings against the snow, or lower, as shadows against the sea.

Stories spread as all stories do, growing sharper, greedier, until myth became desire.

The changelings sought their revenge in subtle ways until the mortals tainted the Morggs' name with callous slurs, staining their fragile existence, and claimed them as marvels to be owned, as if wonder itself were property. From that hour, the old goodwill ended.

What had once been shared truth became superstition. What had once been kinship became a war of wills.

For the sake of the listener, I-Gallas, Druid King of the Frost-Blood Mogge-speak now what was preserved in the Great Books of Mogge. That you may stand in wonder and tremble in knowing, as we once did.

That mortals fell short in those days. When a dark evil threatened our kin, and lies took root.

Yet hope did not vanish.

For in that age arose two souls-one born of mortal blood, one of mortal grace-who chose to stand where others turned away.
Alvaro, and Daniela of the western shores,
whose names the stone itself remembers.

These are the tales of a time when all was not as it seemed, when the Winged were seen as something to be feared, and of the choice that divided our worlds.

𖤓𖤓𖤓