Pathway to Sydara: Guardian of the Gate

The Tale of Creation

-a short summary of the Book of Sarben

In the beginning, the gods ruled the universe, creating life and beauty with a wave of their hands. The master of the gods was Valsla, and he was the mightiest and most powerful of the gods. He gave life and power to the other gods and has been regarded as the Father of the Gods in many other tales and legends.

As the gods lived their immortal lives, they began to experiment with their power by creating whatever their divine minds could think of. Eventually, their divine power created the world and the beasts that live on it. From the horses that majestically gallop across the fields to the birds that fly through the vast sky to the fish that swim the deep oceans, the gods created it all. They also created the mortals and gave them long life, letting them live up to three hundred years old at most.

And so the gods appointed a mighty god as overseer of the new world. This god was Ziavaxe. And with a council of lesser gods, Ziavaxe ruled the world and watched over its inhabitants.

But, despite the excellent work the gods had done, the world still lived in Darkness. The mortals of the world lived in the shadows, calling themselves Ziaxes, Men of Darkness, after Ziavaxe.

For a few generations of men, the Ziaxes lived in the Darkness. They adapted to the world, learning ways to find food and shelter, developing red eyes that could see through even the darkest shadow. Some of the Ziaxes even learned how to control the Darkness and created what mortals would later call dark magic.

Though all had seemed peaceful, something happened by the end of the first millennium that changed the way the Ziaxes lived forever. A younger god named Sarben created Light. He showed his creation to the other gods and they spoke unto him saying, "Go unto the mortal world, Great Sarben, and show the mortals thy miracle!"

And thus Sarben gave the Light and became the Great God of Light and ruled the world with a council of lesser gods alongside Ziavaxe. Sarben created a great sphere of Light in the heavens and called it the "sun." He also made a sphere that did not shine as brightly as the sun called the "moon” and hundreds upon thousands of smaller stars that would shine away the Darkness, so the mortals would never be swallowed by the Darkness ever again.

But Ziavaxe was outraged to have his power over the world shared by such a younger god. So the two gods held council with each other and decided to have two separate peoples: one that worshipped the Light and one that worshipped the Darkness. The Men of Light were called Sarbenians while the Men of Darkness stayed with the same name of Ziaxes. They also divided the times of each day calling the beginning of the day when the sun shined brightest the "morning" while the later part of the day when Darkness was at its greatest the "night."

The Sarbenians flourished on the Islands of the East calling their land Sarbenia. Among them were mortals of great pureness that could control the Light just as Ziaxes could control their Darkness. These mortals were called Sargens; they were known as the blessed mortals of Sarben. The Sargens started the Sarbenian line of royalty, for Sarben had blessed them with the pureness of true kings.

In the south, across the Great Channel, the Ziaxes were growing in their land they called Vilaria. The Vilarians expanded from their capital city Eyran.

As the years went by, Sarbenia grew stronger and vaster. The kingdom's capital was Nizrock, a glorious city on the Islands of the East. It was King Trian the Great who led a great expansion from the Eastern Islands to the continent in the west. The kingdom expanded north, west, and south reaching as far as possible with only the Great Channel in the south and the land of the godless people, the Lysarians, in the west hindering its growth.

As the third millennium drew closer to an end, the Sarbenian and Vilarian kingdoms made contact across the Great Channel and thus their rivalry began. Battles erupted from the Sarbenians and the Vilarians. These battles erupted from random periods of time for hundreds of years.

Then at the beginning of the fourth millennium, King Vacaldon the Ruthless of Vilaria attacked South Sarbenia; this led to the Southern War. After the Ziaxes won the war and conquered much of South Sarbenia, the pure Sargens felt that their land was becoming tainted with the enemy's Darkness. And so, a large quantity of the Sargens took a great ship over the Eastern Sea to find new untouched lands to live on. The only Sargens that stayed behind were the ones of the royal line who stayed to continue their rule over Sarbenia.

Great Sarben, the God of Light, was disgusted at the tainting of his land and the loss of his blessed Sargens. So he came unto the world and blessed one of his most loyal priests with the ability to live in both the Darkness and the Light. The priest's name was Lexar, and he used the ability to help keep balance between the two kingdoms of Sarbenia and Vilaria. He became known as the Balancer of Light and Darkness, the Nizain.

When Lexar grew old, his power was blessed onto his only child. And so the Power of the Nizain passed onto every new generation.

And all was peaceful until the beginning of the sixth millennium when the unexpected happened. The Dark King Rauchton of Vilaria led a great naval attack against Nizrock, the capital of Sarbenia. A four year siege took place, and Nizrock eventually fell.

After the city fell, the kingdom of Sarbenia held a great council. Zar, King of Sarbenia at that time, decided to divide the vast kingdom in hope to better protect its massive land from further invasions. He divided the kingdom between himself and his two sons. Zar ruled over the northern part of Sarbenia and called it Zaria. His son, Larlo, inherited the middle part of the kingdom and named it Sargenia for he was pure with Sargen blood. And finally, Zar's second son, Ravil, was given the southern part of Sarbenia that had survived the Southern War and named it Ravilla.

And so, throughout the years, the followers of Sarben, the Great God of Light, knew they would always be safe from the harm of the god Ziavaxe and his evil shadows as long as they worshipped their Great God and prayed for his divine protection.