A Brief History of the Moon

The moon is a constant source of wonder and magic to the people of the Sea of Larga. The Moon, which has no formal name, is the source of all language, of all magic, of the tides and the five seasons of the world. It is fairly close to the world, and so shows brightly in the skies. The Moon makes two arcs over the skies in a day – once at day, once at night.

It is a large, gray chunk of rock with purple runes emblazoned in several sizes on its surface. The five greatest of these runes are the five runes of magic and the runes tied to the seasons – Fire, Earth, Wind, Water, and Moon itself. For each rune, there is a time of day where it is most prominently facing the world, and there are times of great power throughout the year when certain magic workings are more powerful than at other times. Both Noon and Midnight are marked as the times when then the Moon rune faces the world most strongly. These events cause a renewal of ongoing mystic energies that have been bottled into items or beings, and there is slight moment where magic itself fades, only to return within moments. This gap is the basis for the second used in the World’s timekeeping. Most spells compensate for this in some way – flight spells boost the target upward to compensate for the brief fall, etc.

The five seasons each ties to one of the prominent runes, thus the runes are called the Seasonal Runes, or the Elements. All of the seasons except the Moon season are the same length – roughly 3 months. The season of the Moon is only two weeks and occurs at the end of the year. The people of the world know it as “the Fallen Times”, or “the Dead Days of the Year”. The Earth Season is Spring, and brings with it rough seas and storms initially, and then calms down to the harvest and the bounty of the Earth. This season is naturally very important to Elves. After Spring comes Summer, the Fire Season, and warm days and bright nights mark this time. Next is Autumn, the Wind Season – the wind whips the seas and a chill can be felt coming in, as fire is diminished by one of its enemies. Winter, the season of Water, comes next and brings with it cold temperatures and dark nights. Snowfall is known in some areas of the Seas of Larga, ones further South. Seamen know this is a time to be North. Once Winter is done, the Dead Days finally kill the year.

The Dead Days are a time of great darkness, when magic is strong and the ways between worlds weaken. Many wondrous events happen only in this season, such as the Day of Ghosts, when Ghosts of the living can sometimes appear to bring messages to the living. Another day, more anticipated than the Day of Ghosts, is the Day of Gifting. On this day, once the sun has fled – a mystical being known as Lord Klogar the Mighty visits children to give them gifts if they are good, or takes them away and eats them if they are bad. (“The Wards of our house were worked with great care, for hope that Lord Klogar our children won’t snare…”). Many special festivals and local celebrations and days of terror occur during this season that is just as often a blessing as a curse.

The Moon has many other runes that are smaller, have less pronounced effect, and represent things that only wizards understand in many cases. There are runes for all sorts of concepts, and a skilled Astrologer can tell you when it is best to get your ship’s hull fixed or build a new house. The time of your birth also marks the magic that your spark of life will be tied to. Most People have a rune they were born under, but Wizards caution that this effect is so minimal it is fruitless to judge people based on it. (Many people point out that Wizards show up at people’s doorstep to offer training to their children based on star charts and Horoscopes, but the Wizards just grunt at this and say “leave this to the experts!”)

The Wizard’s relationship to the Moon is ancient. The power of the Wizards is based off of their meticulous study of the Moon and the stars. The study of Astrology and Astronomy aided the Wizards in learning the principles of what would become spell-craft. After a time, Wizards began to compare notes and the Guild was formed to better aid in sharing information and resources. It also allowed the Wizards to begin to specialize and start the selection of magically untainted individuals for training. The Wizard’s Guild took as their herald the rune of the Moon itself in purple on a white field. While the Moon rune is no more magically potent than the other runes, it has become associated most with Magic because of this use of it.

The greatest gift the Moon has given to the world is language. From birth, all of the talking breeds can speak the same language, hence the name Talking Breeds. Talking is related in some way to intelligence and sentience in some way as well, but there are breeds of creatures that have intellect that can not speak (Dragons, for example), but there are none known that can speak who are not self-aware.

The runes themselves are made up of veins of a purple crystal known as Scree that is piled up in massive mounds. These crystals are not found naturally anywhere else on the Moon, they are found in veins on the world itself, but never in large quantities. The enormity of the project of creating the Runes (not to mention deriving their shapes and arrays to manipulate the magical fields around the World is simply staggering. The first Talking Breeds (the Elves, Djinn, Pixies, Tritons, and Gnomes) all recall that the Moon had already had the runes on it when they awoke to intellect. If the runes are the work of one of the Talking Breeds or a predecessor, they either are no longer around, or will not confess their involvement.

Divine acolytes claim that only the Pantheon is powerful enough to have created the Moon, but no God or Goddess has ever even hinted that they made the Moon or its Runes, or even know who did. In a desperately frustrating passage in the Sutras of the Life Goddess it is said she awoke and learned language from the Moon before breathing life itself onto the World. This would place the project’s date at well before life on the World, if true. This is yet another reason that Wizards hold that divine acolytes are mad or mentally dominated by some outside mystic force (and, says the Wizards, therefore dangerous).

Wizards have visited the Moon on a limited basis. The spells and protections required for visiting the surface of that orb are taxing and expensive. Only a handful of expeditions have been made and only by very powerful Wizards who kept what they found a Guild secret. For a brief time, the Gnomes of Mandir Crag were building a fabulous Eagle-shaped airship made to carry a team of explorers to the Moon, but this project was stalled during the War and entirely destroyed by the Elves after Mandir Crag fell to their forces. Some say the Eagle made it to another loft, but not even the most dedicated treasure hunters have been able to discover where.

Alfric Gnomekin, greatest of all Gnomes is the only living creature to have learned the very secrets of the Moon itself, they say. Alfric does burn with Lunar fires and was imprisoned for Millennia beneath the scree mines of Cademan.