It is the hope and mission of all those that would set themselves above mere beasts, enslaved to the wills and passions of their body, to undertake great deeds in youth. To, while the body still maintains its youthful strength and ability of recuperation, perform acts that are worthy not only of themselves and their peers but also of their ancestors and descendants so that they will be remembered long after the strength has left their bodies and when other names fade into obscurity. It is then, when their body begins to fail them, and they must fall back on the strength of their mind, that they must turn to the recording of the deeds of themselves and the new youth so they might not be forgotten. Thus, it behooves those that seek to truly be elevated among the greatest of mortals or to be counted on the same level of the Gods or their children to dedicate themselves to the exercising of both the mind and body, so that when the mind fails the body has the strength to carry on assured in its own strength and skill, and when the body fails the mind is a bastion, a sanctum to which the spirit can withdraw and remain safe until the such a time as the body can be reinforced. Such is what I had hoped to dedicate myself to when I returned to the Academy after a life of seeking my own glory.

  Upon my return from journeys across the world, the Masters of the Academy requested I write of all the knowledge I had gained in my many years. I refused saying that I was not fit to write such a vast history as a lowly agent and teacher of the Academy and that such works should be reserved for one of the masters. Then I was asked again by my students, they too, I refused saying that I, while I was a teacher, was only a few degrees and years their senior and still had as much to learn as each of them. To the honor of both the master’s and Students they were persistent and approached the one figure they knew I would be unable to refuse and petitioned that he order me to carry out a history of my travels. They were overjoyed by his accepting to intervene and were astounded that he would go further and order me to write a “History of All that is Known and Rightly Believed”. Such was the letter of commission that was presented to me by my King, my brother, and my best friend, Alaric Getheurin First of his Name, King of the Vale and Protector of the Lesser Realms, Prince of Sabrienne and Lord of Nightingale. So, I, dedicated to my work by the will of my betters and the wishes of my lessers, begin to recount those names and deeds that are most deserving.

  I therefore shall begin writing a tome that will encompass the following;

The Histories of the World from the origin of time to the present day containing the History, Mythos, and notable events in the Kingdoms, Republics, and territories of Man, Elf, and Dwarf West of the Araconian Mountains, All the lands, kingdoms, peoples, and territories that lay between them and the Hibernan Ocean; Including the most memorable events from Yndis, Jiang, the Tain-Jin Steppe, and the lands beyond the Al Kazneh Desert as well as some, from across the oceans of the world, that have come out of the mysterious lands of the West, Collected from sources historical, as well as religious, profane, and methodically organized. In cases where there are variants between differing accounts of an event or when the account seems to be so outlandish that even the masters of old doubt their certainty, I shall endeavor to record each account and provide to the best of my ability a fitting and proper explanation of which I feel is the most accurate and give my reasoning. I very much doubt that I shall be wholly correct but look forward to corrections and arguments that might be made against this work.

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  I shall begin my book with the beginning of the world as it is reckoned by the most ancient sources in the Vale, where it is widely agreed upon, even in the most far off lands that I have traveled and in those lands of those whom I have spoken to, that they keep the best records of those most ancient histories. Even the Elves of the Eregrean Forest, renowned for their wisdom and knowledge of the ancient world and of the inner workings of the Gods, admit that, despite their long lives and because of the hubris that so habitually plagues their scholars, the Vale has maintained the most accurate records of those earliest days. They do however claim that it was their own wise men and oracles that taught the Vales-men their wisdom in a time when they had not yet been so blinded and corrupted as they now are and that the knowledge of the Gods and their origin spread from themselves to the Vales-men, and then to the other nations of mortals by way of adventurers, trade, and the general migration of Man, Elf and Dwarf. Most sources, that I have found, tend to agree that the Vale (or at least the people that would become the Vales-men as we shall see later) is the origin for much of the knowledge of the nations of the ancient world. There are those, particularly and most notably among the Anatharan people, that claim that they did not learn these things from the Vale but instead obtained them directly from the gods when they still dwelled in their most ancient homelands that have since been lost to them after the Ascendency. There are also some that claim the lands beyond the seas have their own line of knowledge, which I am quite willing to believe because if those lands, that are as of yet unmapped, are as old as the few travelers that venture to and from them say then it is not possible for the Vales-men to have taught them for they have only been in contact with the farthest west for a few centuries at most and have not penetrated the interior of those lands. Since they lay beyond the scope of this history, we will suffice to say that they follow much the same general story as the one detailed below with the exception of differing names and rituals and customs which are their own.

  Next, I must address the matter of dating this history. It is impossible to accurately count the actual age of the earth as the Gods did not count the years as the mortal races do at least until the birth of Agrica, who taught us to number our days and to count the months and years so that we might take better advantage of the plants of the land in their cycles of plenty, and even then the Gods and many of the Longer lived races did not bother to count the passing of seasons and instead chose to track by other means that make sense only to their much extended lives. So, we are left with an uncountable gap in history between the beginning of time and when we can actually begin to call recorded history. It is important to bear in mind that until such a time, for many parts of the world after the Ascendency of the Excelsari, it is impossible to place an entirely accurate date for events. Instead, the earliest sections of our history will be vague in terms of a chronology and may seem to be happening very quickly when in reality they could be carried out over geological ages (For what care the gods for the numbering of Man). I will endeavor to clarify when it is possible for me to do so as, though it is difficult to place a year to an event, we can still get a rough estimate from the oldest of oral histories and from what has been passed down by the Gods themselves in days when they still walked among Mortals. Such is the task that has been laid out before me.