Genesis Circle

Journal Entry VI: The Progenitor’s Cult

Aien Ballen, Contract Archaeologist to the Dragon Imperium Year 5330 of the Third Cycle

Abstract

This investigation chronicles the earliest sect to worship The Progenitor, an association I term the Genesis Circle. Rejecting Ey'feay traditions of sap and sun, its members enacted flesh-and-bone rituals intended to reshape the world and teach a dire lesson to their kin. These rites culminated in the birth of the first orc brood, an act that fractured relations and ignited enduring conflict between elves and their progeny.

Introduction

In the centuries before The Wombwood's demise, the Progenitor denounced all deference to arboreal divinity. Surrounded by devoted acolytes, they declared that true creation needed to spring from sacrifice rather than growth. The Genesis Circle’s central dogma held that by spilling their own blood and shattering their bone, they would continue the progenitors' task and forge a new lineage, one capable of bending nature itself. This entry assembles fragmentary evidence of the Circle’s foundation, rituals, and the seismic schism it provoked within elven society.

Surviving Evidence

1. Iron-Tipped Standard: Recovered from the ruins of a collapsed temple shrine, this slender pike is crowned with a bone helix entwined by sinew. A hammered inscription reads, “From Ruin, Dominion,” presumably concerning the Circle’s intent to subjugate nature through destructive rebirth.

Cultural Emanations

From the sparse relics and hostile Ey’Feay chronologies emerge three core tenets of the Genesis Circle:

• Flesh and bone as the true matrix of life, overturning sap-based creation.
• The Progenitor’s self-sacrifice served as a warning that clinging to decay (i.e., old nature worship) doomed civilisations.
• A mandate to sculpt the landscape by construction born of ruin, foreshadowing orcish fortress-builders trampling ancient groves.

The orc brood, conceived as living parables, embodied the Circle’s lesson: mastery over nature comes through sacrifice and upheaval, not reverent stasis.

Hypotheses and Speculations

Given the brood-pod’s ligatures and the standard’s inscription, I propose the Genesis Circle staged public rites in which the Progenitor whorshippers shattered a branch of their own skeleton before a gathered assembly of elves. The first orcs emerged as both progeny and portent, their bodies half-shaped by elven lineage and half by the Progenitor’s fractured essence. Their subsequent raids on elven settlements may have been intended as living demonstrations of the Circle’s world-reshaping philosophy.

Conclusion

Though the Genesis Circle died out long ago, lingering evidence remains as grim testaments to its radical creed. By birthing the orc brood, the Progenitor engineered a didactic rupture that forever altered elf–orc relations. As excavations in derelict sanctuaries proceed, I anticipate uncovering further vestiges of their ceremonies, each clue deepening our understanding of how one sect’s heresy sowed strife that endures to this day.