From EncyclopAtys
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“The alcohol drunk on this winter's evening lights up my smoky soul with amber, and as I stare into the glass, pen in hand, I remember those years. Those coloured rings, of my atysian youth, which now sit under the tired eyes of an emphysematous old man.
The surface of the cup, half-filled with honey-coloured wine, focuses my ethereal gaze in waves of hypnotic waves.
I find myself thinking about the Olao, this tree which has the property of creating thinner and thinner rings every cycle, eventually not evolving at all. Singularity! While each year brings its share of strata, of roots, in turn floors and vaults, Primes or canopy.
There was a year when all the wines were good; in that year of 2539, the season was so hot that the fruit was as if it were candied. I still have some wines from that time, but they are reduced to a kind of bitter honey.
If one were to pick out, on the cross-section of Atys, the predominant rings of homin history, there is no doubt that the reigns of King Yrkanis, Emperor Dexton, Great Mask Mabreka-Cho and Governor Ailan Mac'Kean would stand out as key periods since the Green Rush. It was the son of Cerakos II who gave the impetus by creating the first political assembly open to refugees; the Akenaks, Fyros patriots, elected by their peers, and brought to manage the immediate daily life of the Desert people under the aegis of the Emperor and the Senate. For fourteen cycles, homins from the Old Lands have been flocking to the gates of the new cities built by those who fled the Kitin horror nearly sixty years ago thanks to the Rainbows. For the first time, they were given a major role.
One of the first tasks of these 'Honoured Ones' was to participate in another of the Emperor's ambitious projects: “The Dexton Legion”. A new elite military corps of patriots under the command of the strategist Icaphotis Dylidus.
Very quickly the problem of the equipment of these soldiers arose and Sharükos decided from the first manoeuvres to found an academy of imperial craftsmen in charge of making the armament of his Legion: Red for their armours! Kostomyx fyros scarlet, and fiery weapons, of the best possible quality would be provided. It was at this moment that the Imperial Alchemists chose to announce to their Emperor a formidable discovery: the refining of excellent continental materials into supreme continental materials of the same type and quality...
History repeats itself, it is said. Like Jinovitch, who was killed, abandoned by the nobility and army on the borders of the Jino Waters, King Yrkanis nearly lost his life in the Matis capital, a place as eponymous as the once renamed Loria Lagoons. In the Majestic Garden, the leaves rustled with the anger of the Sovereign. The Kingdom had just been attacked. A certain Akilia Ash Storm had led a handful of Marauders to the gates of the capital. The nobility had not moved and the city was only saved by the intervention of a few refugees. Karan Yrkanis, furious, gathered his indolent vassals and the Matis guilds. The latter were renamed Houses in the same way as the oldest Families of the Matis nobility and those at their head were ennobled. The quickly stifled protests of certain members of the Court did not change anything...
At the same time, reports of the King's spies were pouring in, the Dexton Legion was being whispered about in the Palace council chambers. The Fyros were arming themselves, why? No doubt Yrkanis then remembered what he himself said during the reign of his tyrannical uncle.
“If the amber rots, what should the fibre do?”
A forgotten amber cube that rises from the past when no one is expecting it. This is how Fen Han Go, nicknamed Sorrow could have announced the return of another Sage to Zora. It was during a meeting of the Zoraï Circles that this newcomer named himself Season, offering his help in the fight against all the enemies of the Sick Country, and recalling the role that the Kamis had given to his people. Much more oriented towards Tradition than Sorrow, he was able to make himself listened to by some, but also to attract the distrust of others.
The ripples of my amber wine have stopped licking the sides of my glass. Taking another sip, I smile as I think of the Lakes, which have also seen their share of storms and showers...Erlan, Chronicler
in The Erlan Chronicles, 2539.
