Across Moghra'yi, Vol. I: The Sunderlies: Difference between revisions

Several millennia ago, the migrants who followed the receding waterline down into the to-be desert basin were largely wiped out by the onset of the ice age. Most of the clans perished; those that survived were driven deep into the lightless comb-caves where the last vestiges of technology warmed the sheltered earth. The Sunderlies were devoid of higher life during the coldest centuries -- giant, ice-sheathed worms coursed their way through the frozen caves and woolly rocs made their nests atop the snowy peaks, but what remained of man did not emerge for thousands of years.}}</poem>}}

{{quote | <poem>{{#invoke: ColorParse | parse |A millennium after the last people were driven into the earth, at the height of the Wrathchild empire in the great southern salt desert called Moghra'yi, a race of beings known as the Ophaedians migrated north from their desert city to the Sunderlies. There they escaped the reach of the kuyeti, the monstrous man-scorpions whose empire spanned the great desert. The Ophaedians were gifted with the ability of goldworking, and during the course of their four-thousand year reign over the Sunderlies they wrought hundreds of spires and bridges of solid gold. Around 1800P they disappeared suddenly, perhaps as a result of the warming climate to which they had lost their adaptation from their years spent in the colder northlands. As the earth warmed, a primitive people emerged from their cavern recesses. They climbed the snowy combs and settled the superior caves. According to their myths, these new folk made oaths to the nameless gods who had warmed the earth for their children's return to the surface. So were born the clans of true folk.