A History of the Valley

(This is totally fanfiction. It is unrelated to anything else I've written here.)

It came to pass that in the year 545 SC, the Shapers sent an expedition to the Dry Valley, at the border of their empire. The expedition was led by two Shapers, Zakary and Barzhal, neither of them unskilled in creation or control. With them traveled a fair number of human and servile retainers, as well as creations to guard them. At first, they had grand hopes; the power of the Shapers would transform the valley, turn it from dry, parched wasteland into a lush paradise. But at the first signs of success, Barzhal made his move for power. He staged his own death in an experiment and fled to the far side of the waste.
Barzhal took with him, on the expedition and then in his flight, several serviles - small, dim-witted humanoids created by the Shapers for menial labor beneath Shapers' dignity. What was unique about these serviles, however, was that they were created in Sucia Island - a far-off Shaper outpost, where serviles had rebelled against oppressive Shaper rule and sought freedom. Their revolt was crushed, but these serviles, who called themselves the Awakened, were smuggled off the island by a sympathetic Barzhal.

Barzhal promised the Awakened freedom; here in the valley, he told them, they could have the life that they sought, if they supported him in his quest for power. For a time, they remained allies, as Barzhal expanded his power, founding a town (named in his honor) and turning the valley green - leaving a wide strip of wasteland around Drypeak, so that they would not realize the deception.


But Barzhal modified himself - an act forbidden by the Shapers - with magical essence-filled canisters of his own design. He did not realize was that the canisters, as well as granting power, twisted their users, turning them cold, heartless, power-hungry to the point of madness. Barzhal turned on his former allies - enslaving the unlucky and leaving the rest of the Awakened to flee to other parts of the valley. In the shock of the betrayal, the Awakened split - one faction still professed desire for a peaceful, secret existence. But the others, who named themselves the Takers, were embittered by the betrayal, and declared all-out war - against the Barzhites, the Shapers, and even their own reluctant brethren. They created drayks, powerful creations long forbidden by the Shapers for their power and rebellious nature. In turn, the drayks created others of their kind, and even drakons - creations more powerful and rebellious yet - and more and more, on and on, eyebeasts and rotgroths and creatures powerful yet abominable. The successes they saved - the failures they imprisoned in Zhass-Uss, to fight among themselves and grow insanely powerful - and insane - behind locked doors.

Thus the stage was set. The failures from a hunded experiments - that Shaper law would have forbidden - filled most of the valley, rendering it dangerous to life and limb. The Barzhites and Takers gathered their strength, while the Awakened attempted to do the same, limited by their morality and, truthfully, their sanity. The loyal Shapers, under Zakary's rule in Drypeak, grew ever more dispirited and worn-down by their apparent failure. Anyone who ventured over the border and discovered the secret was killed or abducted. And from the Shaper homeland came an Agent to investigate abnormalities in Drypeak, with an apprentice Shaper in tow.

On an unrelated note, these guys rock.