HumbleLunars/Introduction

<quote>Odour of blood when Christ was slain
Made all platonic tolerance vain
And vain all Doric discipline.

History's most triumphant failures, Lunars stand proud in the darkness or languish kingly on garbage thrones, ruling empires of nobodies at the edges of Creation or among the unloved places of the cities. Since the fall of the last age some have wandered Creation, tired and ragged eyes dragged after their tireless ancient bodies. Barbarian Kingdoms are raised amid the ruins on the Threshold, poor and despised mortals and forgotton Chosen looking on each other with eyes to sad to judge.

That, minus about 50 adjectives, is the story of the Lunars. Solars exalt in a moment of boldness that seeks victory, and their lives are a triumph and a glory. Lunars exalt in a moment of hard earned failure. Theyir mortal lives were full of struggle and hardship. They did everything they could do to fight and survive, but events were stacked againist them, and they lost. When it is all but over, Luna embraces her Chosen. Some roar with rage, giants crushing towers that had loomed over them a moment before. Some, their battles already lost, withdraw from society to find better things in the wilderness. But all are well aquanted with just how nasty Creation can be.

In this, they are not unlike their elders. The Lunars of the First Age knew well the crimes of their spouses. They knew something horrible would follow. They could have stopped the horrors wrought by the Solars and thus avoided the Usurpation and what followed. But they did not.

During the first age, many Lunars lived in the Creation spanning empire of the Solars. They stood besides their spouses, their humility lending a human touch to thier spouses might. They championed moral causes that were too uninteresting or too small to attract their spouses' attention. Perhaps they worked to protect Gaia againist the ravages of First Age industry, perhaps they fed the unpopular Barbarians living outside the Deliberative's reach. Perhaps they devoloped cures for diseases that killed relatively few - Cystic Fibrosis rather than AIDS. No Solar would appear to protect a traveler from bandits - but a Lunar might stoop to do so. For this, the Lunars became the most popular Exalts of the first age. They were Saints and Boddhisattvas, and when they spoke, all of humanity listened.

They saw clearly the madness of the Solars, but they did nothing to stop it. Some loved their spouses too much. Some were afraid of their spouses. Some simply did not like their fellow Lunars and so did not organize as the Sidereals did. As the Solars became more and more terrible, Lunars withdrew further into their pet causes.

Not all Lunars submitted themselves to the Solars. There had always been those who did not take a Solar spouse, but instead journeyed into the lands near the Wyld. Their they built frontier kingdoms, populated by the most adventurous mortals from Creation. Alien fauna roamed as beautiful gossamer architecture dominated the cityscapes. These Lunars too knew the crimes of the Solars, but they thought it would mean nothing to them, self-sufficent at the edge of the world.

And so in the end, the Lunars left little mark on history. They knew but would not act. When the Sidereals and Dragon Blooded came, most Lunars fought and died protecting their Solar lovers. A few stood aside weeping or fled into the wilderness, their to join their brothers at the edge of the world. Some of them sought to marshall armies from the Wyld, some of them tried to build new lives. Great alien kingdoms ruled the edge of the world, a counterpoint to the Dragon Blooded Shogunate in the center.

Then the Contagion struck and the Fae came. Lunar society was virtually destroyed, although the Lunars themselves survived, as they always had. Some wandered the earth, some started over with Barbarian people in the Threshold.

Now, the eldest Lunars are dying. Reborn,

(and.....I gotta get back to real life. Timing.)