Annals of the Society

"We draw our personal darkness around us to keep us safe from the sun." Tanith Lee====Father always wanted a boy.  He blamed the armaya, the curse,  that held our people in the desert that he got me; for mother's death he blamed only me.  Though I can...

[size=14][b]The Ocul Tritae[/b][/size] The storm settled in with steady rain as darkness fell. Sarkan took shelter under a low rock overhang, cast into a gentle curve of smooth stone after millennia of wind and sand. He lay on his back, exhausted from his flight from...

Rilen, stop! Please! The desert of Stygia was worse than the stories he'd heard. Which was surprising, since those in Aquilonia are often quick to exaggerate everything else about that hellish land. Still, if you don't want to be found, and water isn't a concern,...

Drowning. They say that drowning is a terrible way to go, except that it's over relatively quickly. Once the water rushes in, everything goes fuzzy, the panic subsides, and darkness overtakes.   I beg to differ.   I've been drowning, slowly, bit by bit, my...

'Why me?'  At some point, I suppose everyone asks 'why me?'  I have come to the conclusion that the only appropriate answer is 'why not?'When I was younger, the answer was easy, the question rarely asked, because we were born to it.  We knew no other...

[size=14][b]Manifest Destiny[/b][/size] [b]Stygia - Present Day[/b] A backhanded strike came swiftly and quite unexpectedly, spinning Sarkan to his knees. The heavy rings that adorned the acolyte's hand adequately amplified his displeasure, leaving a trail of broken...

I am clean.  Scoured pure by wind and sand.  All that remains in the crucible is wind and fire. I was born to the armaya, the curse.  Born to the Rose & Swords and the desert of a woman who I am told was soft and weak and taken for her water shortly...

[b][size=14]Prologue[/size][/b] Stygia - Centuries Past The Priesthood deemed the site sacred, as evidenced by the orientation of the myriad trails gifted to the desert sands by the revered sidewinders and their serpent-kind. The Oaiti Temple, once completed, offered...

 We had all heard the stories, of course.  But as the decades passed the stories became less history and more myth. Kishara was a high priestess of Set, whose beauty was rivaled only by her cold-hearted cruelty.  In addition to her priests, acolytes,...