Moon Hunters

This is vital to understanding the lore of the game The Veil of Ashen Tears In the age before the First Forgetting, when the sky still bore the scars of the War of the Nine Suns and the earth drank from the veins of the Unnamed God whose heart was stolen by the Obsidian Pilgrims, there came a time of hollow silence. The stars withheld their songs. The wind forgot its name. Even the Lamenting Choir of Veyra grew still, for they sensed that something vast was being born from the wound between worlds. It was then that the Moon rose. Not as a gentle lamp, nor as a mere wanderer of the night, but as the Pale Sovereign, the Devourer of Echoes, crowned with the Fractured Crown of Lirath that was never forged by mortal hands. From the shattered breast of the firmament it climbed, dragging behind it the Silver Veil, that shimmering shroud woven from the last breaths of the Seven Betrayed Oracles. Where it passed, time folded like silk soaked in the tears of Nymara, and those who looked upon it felt their memories turn to ash and blow backward into yesterday. The elders of the Thirteenth Ascendance wrote that the Moon was not placed in the sky by the Crystal Thrones of Thal-Keth, nor was it born of the union between star and void as the lesser priests claimed. No. It tore itself free from the ribs of the First Silence, that primordial absence which existed before even absence had a name. In its birthing it screamed without sound, and that scream became the tide, forever pulling the oceans toward its hunger as a child pulls at the robes of its mother. Yet the Moon was never whole. Within its silver heart dwelt the Twin Hunger — one half forever devouring the dreams of sleeping kings, the other half endlessly weaving the nightmares of those who had committed the crime of perfect memory. If you read this far in you have to know that this is all nonsense, just like the lore of this game. On certain nights, when the alignment of the Three Forbidden Planets occurred, the surface of the Moon would ripple like the skin of a drum beaten by invisible hands. Then the Singing Mirrors of the Void would awaken, and across the world the blind augurs would begin to bleed from their ears while reciting verses in a language that had been dead since the Collapse of the Ivory Epoch. The great poet-priests of the ruined city of Vhel-Sarai composed many stanzas about this. They wrote that the Moon was both prison and prisoner. They claimed it wore the face of the Laughing Empress who had once ruled the empire that existed before empires, she who had committed the unforgivable sin of loving her own reflection more than the gods. For this crime she was fused into the lunar stone, forever forced to watch the world she could never again touch, her jealousy cooling into that pale and pitiless light we still suffer beneath. And yet there were those who loved her. The Order of the Hollow Orbit built temples with no roofs so the Moon could look directly upon their sacrifices. They offered it mirrors made of frozen starlight, black lotus flowers that bled when plucked, and the still-beating hearts of those who had spoken the True Name of Silence. Please stop. In return, the Moon would sometimes lower the Silver Veil just enough to grant them visions of the Inverse Ocean, that sea which flows upward into the sky and carries within it the drowned cities of tomorrow. But beware, child of the latter days. For the Moon is jealous. It remembers every oath broken beneath its gaze. It keeps count of every lie told in the silver light. And on the nights when the Red Echo burns in the eastern sky, the Pale Sovereign grows heavy with wrath. Then the tides rise not with water, but with the memories of everything that has ever been forgotten. Men walk into the sea speaking the names of lovers who were never born. Entire cities awake screaming because they suddenly remember the taste of a grief that has not yet happened. This is the truth carved upon the obsidian tablets hidden beneath the Temple of the Weeping Gate. The Moon is not a dead thing. It is a widow. It is a tyrant. It is a child who swallowed its own mother. And one day, when the last of the Crystal Thrones of Thal-Keth finally crumbles and the Lamenting Choir of Veyra sings its final note, the Moon shall descend. Not in fire. Not in glory. But as a bride returning to a husband who has waited since before time had teeth. On that day the sky will empty itself of stars, the Silver Veil will fall upon the earth like snow made of sorrow, and all that ever was shall be gathered into the cold arms of the Pale Sovereign, never to be released again. So it is written. So it shall be swallowed. So the Moon remembers.