village-capture (May-2025)

The village is a peaceful, calm place. Citizens in brown gather crops, make bread, and sleep soundly at night knowing they and their families are far from the war. Every morning, they wake with the cry of the rooster to a new dawn. Everyone knows everyone else, and they live happy lives surrounded by plenty.

But then the frosts came.

Creeping shadows, crawling up the sides of the houses as the sun grew dim. Snows fell, something unheard of in the warm, fertile plains. The grass grew stiff and cracked with a touch, the animals froze standing in their pens. Pink crystals formed where sweet fruit once grew, cold as ice and just as hard. Where herds of Mado Horses once roamed the grasslands, great shaggy Mamoos took their place. The waters froze over, and many perished from the cold. The days grew short and the nights were long.

As the village starved, THEY came. Great shades of the north, hovering above the earth, wearing the skulls of long-forgotten beasts. Eyes that glowed like lanterns, and horns that spanned the sky. Where THEY went, the frosts followed. Where THEY passed, the air grew still.

THEIR followers soon arrived on great sleds and Mamoos. They handed out bundles of warm clothes and taught the villagers the ways of the tundra. The moon itself served this tribe, cold beams freezing over all that they deemed too warm. Open flames were barred, dissent suppressed. And yet, all in the village knew that it was nought compared to what THEY could have done. An ancient terror took hold, closing lips and stifling the air. Soon, the villagers would learn to follow THEIR rules, and never question. To never speak of THEM. For words held power, in the elder days. And THEY were from a time before the first Polytopian rubbed two sticks together and made flame. Long before the first Mado Horses and Baerion ever lived.

THEIR time was nigh.