Bergfólk/Loftfólk

THE CREATION OF HIMMELUND

  As told by the Weavers and the old libraries beneath the stone  

THE NAME OF THE WORLD

  The world is called Himmelund.   In the tongue of the Bergfólk (the Gnomes), it means:   “Sky Above.”   In the ancient primordial language of the Loftfólk (the Aetherborn), it means:   “Rock Below.”   Two peoples. Two meanings. One world — built by accident, by grief, by pact, and by love.   THE BASALT SLAB   In the earliest times, Himmelund was nothing more than a wandering slab of basalt drifting in the void.   Cold. Unshaped. Unclaimed.   A fragment of reality looking for a story.  

THE ARRIVAL OF JOY

  Then came Joy, an Overlord not born, but constructed.   Created in the dawn age by the organisation that predated ARCHIVE — the Planar Wanderers or System-Makers — Joy was meant to be an Overlord of Mechanus.   But she was a failure.   She possessed:   too much emotion,   too much curiosity,   too much human spark,   too much chaos woven into her order.   Mechanus rejected her.   And so she drifted — alone between worlds — until she touched the basalt.  

THE WORLD OF LINES

Joy’s powers did not bind her to the slab. Instead, they rewrote it.   Order and chaos collided across the stone, forming mechanical lines in magnificent, recursive patterns:   ancient symbols of creation,   spirals of wonder,   lines of home and peace,   sigils of knowledge,   glyphs of potential.   The basalt slab became a canvas of living geometry.   Where the lines intersected, the stone sparked with resonance, and from those intersections were born Joy’s children.  

THE FIRST CHILDREN OF HIMMELUND

  They rose from dust and pattern:   small, curious, bright-minded, wonder-filled, carved with the same lines as the world itself.   They built their homes where the patterns ran strongest. They were the first civilisation of Himmelund.   Later ages would call them:   Bergfólk — the Gnomes.  

THE LINES UPON THE BODY

  It is said that every child of this world carries their story written upon their skin.   Each mechanical line reveals:   their past,   their present,   the possibilities of their future.   Each crack is a trauma. Each smooth line, a choice. Each ripple, a consequence.   On the backs of their hands lies the birth-marking, a unique pattern — like a fingerprint — that only a Weaver may interpret.   The Weavers alone read the stories of their people.  

THE IMPERFECT CREATION

But stone cannot live alone.   Joy’s creations, like Joy herself, were imperfect. They possessed story but not breath — identity, but not sustenance.   They died as quickly as they were born.   Joy cried out into the void, and only one Overlord answered.  

THE COMING OF SUEZNAR

  His name was Sueznar, a lord of the air realms.   His world had been ravaged by treasure-hunters who believed a foolish rumour: that rainbows hid pots of universal currency.   The rumour was a lie. But his people died defending nothing.   Sueznar had lost children too.   So he heard Joy’s cry.   And he answered.  

THE PACT OF OVERLORDS

  Sueznar offered a bargain:   “Help me preserve my children until a worthy world can shelter them, and I will grant yours the breath they need.”   Joy agreed.   Sueznar bound a cohort of his people to Joy’s newborn race — not as servants, but as mates and kin.   They would join with the Gnomes, bear their children, and help carry on a line that could not survive alone.   These sky-born beings became:   Aetherborn — cousins to the Air Genasi.   Together, Joy and Sueznar created the first sky, a sky capable of sustaining life.   And the Aetherborn became revered:   as mates, as nurturers, as life-givers — their gender irrelevant, their bond essential.  

THE AIR PEOPLE HIDDEN

  As part of the pact, Sueznar’s remaining people — those too fragile to survive Himmelund — were hidden deep beneath the basalt, preserved in stasis until a new world could be found for them.   As generations passed, the souls of Himmelund’s children bound themselves to the world, and Joy’s worship grew.   Sueznar faded from memory.  

THE GREAT LIBRARY BELOW

Recently, the Gnomes dug deep into the stone and found an ancient library — one that held the life-stories of its librarians, each carved into slabs.   There they discovered:   the truth of Joy’s imperfection,   the pact with Sueznar,   the buried air-people waiting for a home,   and the promise their goddess made to find a world worthy of them.   The tinkerers, creators, artificers, and those who still held the ancient spark of Mechanus gathered to fulfil this promise.   They forged clockwork sky-ships to search the heavens for a new world.  

THE COMING OF ANGELS

Before their ships could soar far, the angels arrived, wondering who would intrude upon thier "air-space". They disagreed with the mechanical makings of the air-ships, beliving thier own wings to be superior.   Seeing the Aetherborn — cousins of their own airy bloodlines — they believed them worthy of Heaven’s order.   They stripped clans apart, taking the strongest Aetherborn for their designs.   The rest they dismissed with a cruel name in the angelic tongue:   “Slab Gnomes.” Small rock creatures.   (To the Gnomes, the insult rings with the same venom as “Muggle-born.”) Many of them with high intellegence, were taken as slaves, the rest were left alone in this world, only the Aetherborn that is in hiding, left to be mates, soon to meet thier destruction.