The Shrine of Hamaskis.
Origins of the Dinosaurs
The Shrine of Hamaskis.Origins of the Dinosaurs | |
The origin of the creatures known as dinosaurs has long been a puzzle to scholars who have been unable to discover any god in the pantheon of Titan claiming responsibility for their creation. It is to be hoped that the following discourse may throw some light upon this enigma.
Dinosaurs - Large, non-intelligent reptiles - not to be confused with Dragons - Salamonis Concise Dictionary
For the first two weeks as I tried to write down all these wordsmy hands could not keep from trembling.
My name is Jakhelms Wolfslayer, though I have been christened Doug by my fellow Titanorians at the council at Salamonis (due to my persistence in digging up information). I am an Allansian by birth though five years previously I was living in Khul - the Dark Continent.
And it was whilst I was travelling the SouthWest corner of Khul that the great gold rush of The Cloudhigh Mountains was under way. But gold miners were suddenly being terrorized by monstrous animals! Large marauding reptiles which had been extinct for millions of years (so native survivors related anyhow). When I saw them I knew they were Dinosaurs (e.g. triceratopses and brontosauruses) and also other kinds of strange Dinosaurs I'd never set eyes on before. Strangely enough, somehow I also knew that the latter had not existed on our world for centuries.
It turned out that the Dinosaurs were coming out of an underground, and partially sentient, portal. Thus I name this part of my tale Portal of Evil; evil for reasons that will be explained in a moment.
I was one of the adventurers recruited by the leading mine owners to combat these menaces. I was a young, relatively unseasoned adventurer at the time but I succeeded. I defeated the evil. The ancient portal which had been discovered by an ambitious mine-owner named Horfak. Horfak's greed was his downfall; the portal encouraged him to use its powers to turn others into his slaves so he could become a powerful warlord. But it corrupted him and led him to believe he was the senior partner in their efforts to conquer the surrounding lands. His slaves (unfortunate miners turned into zombies) rode Dinosaurs to find more victims.
Being of Allansian origin the word Dinosaur entered my mind almost as soon as I saw one (this unholy Portal even had the means of turning resisting prisoners into Dinosaurs!). But I was curious as to why Khulians did not recognise the word when I spoke it to them. As a native inhabitant of the Allansian Continent I am quite familiar with Dinosaurs and it intrigued me to notice that the locals I spoke to were not. However as I've said they did seem to instinctively know that some of the monsters had been extinct for many years. As did I in several cases. But of course I had more immediate issues to concern myself with.
During my mission I also observed that the Dinosaur-herding Zombies wore strange amulets around the neck. I obtained one and with the help of an inhabitant of the region, whom I have sworn to keep anonymous, I was able to discover more dark secrets. Long long ago there was a tribe of Goblins living in that same area and one of their War-Chiefs likewise found this underground portal. It had already been sealed by unknowns many years ago and this goblin war-chief had likewise misused its power to form armies of slave warriors, herding Dinosaurs to terrorise locals. But he in turn was defeated by one of his own people (as I defeated Horfak) and the goblins sealed the portal underground once again. Unfortunately Horfak had found it all these centuries later.
(In fact some research suggests the Brain Slayer Empire, prior to the sinking of Atlantis, also stumbled across another such portal and likewise misused it, but this is not relevant to our discussion of the Dinosaurs.)
I finally was able to cross safely to the world on the other side of this portal. I was astounded! A strange, mesmerizing land which was even more astounding than the frontier woodlands I had just been searching through! A sunlit wilderness - a vast panorama of marsh and jungle, plains and forests, with snow-capped mountains lining a distant horizon. I could not comprehend how it could exist in a Gold Mine, then I finally acknowledged the portal was in fact a gateway to another world. The sun was a different yellow, the sky a different blue and many Dinosaurs were roaming around freely. Some I recognised, some I again instinctively knew had not existed on our world for a long time.
With the help of a Mad God and friendly tribespeople (descended from wandering adventurers from Titan) I was able to find the twisted warlord in his newly constructed fortress. Horfak had mutated into a grotesque being, little more than an extension of The Portal's will. But using a mirrored surface I was able to shock him, thus destroying his will and then I slew him. Once I'd helped the tribesfolk battle his remaining Slave Warriors, I returned home.
Once on the other side of the portal I used an explosive powder to destroy the evil portal once and for all time. With no living partner to stop me, it could not prevent its fate!
In the end I finally returned to Allansia.
Having experienced enough excitement to last a lifetime! (As it happens, as my reward the people of Klienkastel offered me was more gold than I could carry. But gold had somehow lost its attraction to me and I accepted gems instead.)
When I returned home I resolved to investigate the nature of the portal and Dinosaurs further. Here I must confess most of my findings (and those of my helpful contributing friends) are mostly speculation.
When I told the council about my adventure, someone suggested the portal I found could in fact be the reason for Dinosaurs being on Titan! Because after all, no civilisation has ever made any comments about the origin of the Dinosaurs. The most common types e.g. brontosaurus, triceratops, and tyrannosaurus Rex and rarer Dinosaurs do not seem to have a god of their own amongst the animal gods. Which is most unusual, as most beasts seem to be represented by their patron creators.
So I came up with the theory that Dinosaurs were actually created elsewhere. By others Gods (who were as bored as our own Gods) during The Godtime and subsequently put onto a world with jungles and hot pools and a Mad God (possibly one of the original creators?). And both sets of Gods had decided to work together to kill their mutual boredom, and provide the means for their creations to travel from world to world. Hence the portal, and maybe more than one.
Since very little is known about The Claytime and The Godtime a lot of people have often speculated about the exact degree of civilisation and contact between all the new races. If my theory is correct then a lot of unintelligent Dinosaurs could easily have wandered through portals onto Titan, their descendants still roaming Titan's plains and wildlands to this day. I saw genuine brontosauruses and triceratopses on the other side before sealing the gateway of the Lost World. As well as many breeds of Dinosaurs that became extinct on Titan, millions of years ago.
That is in fact another curious part of my tale. The fact that others as well as myself somehow knew some of these Dinosaurs died on Titan so long ago. A strange instinct. I will explain my theory for that in a moment. But as for the fact most of the harassed miners did not know about Dinosaurs nor their name, we believe that all Dinosaurs must have become extinct on Khul, but survived in Allansia, due to climate change or perhaps when the lands split.
When I was in The Cloudhigh Mts and saw this evil with my own two eyes I got the impression that the portal had been around a lot longer than anyone claimed. Since Day One of Titan, even before time itself was released. One instinctively knows that monstrous gateway was old. As old as the rock walls that have hidden it for aeons, older by far than the humanoid races of Khul. This portal was around since before the time human beings were still swinging from trees. Thus, quite possibly, a gateway to the original home of the Dinosaurs.
Many believe that before the First Battle, many species of animals had come and gone. For although creatures did not age before Time was released on Titan, they were able to die of starvation or be killed by other animals. Wandering Dinosaurs from the lost world could only establish a permanent species on Titan if enough of both sexes migrated. Brontosaurus and Tyrannosaurus Rexes are two examples.
Survivors of the Cloudhigh massacres kept relating to me "this species became extinct millions of years ago." I believe they may be right with that particular estimation because we simply don't know how much time had passed between the creation of Titan and the First Battle. It could conceivably have been millions of years.
Whenever our instincts told us that the marauding reptiles in my mission were from the past I do not mean the Dinosaurs were literally from the past, but I mean they were more common on Titan a long time ago. Their ancestors probably became extinct because mostly male or mostly female ones wandered between the worlds and then the portals were sealed. After the First Battle, as likely as not.
In summary my theory is the portal or portals were actually made to link Titan and the unnamed world where Dinosaurs roam. With the intention that the peoples of Titan and Dinosaurs would go back and forth. The portal I saw had ancient text and carvings on it, plus a picture of a being with a big mouth. Which might have been a god instructing humans (or giants) to construct the portal! It is surely a shame there is no one left to decipher the ancient script.
It also occurs to me that a mischievous God added the secret aspect that enough time would pass and the portal would become evil and choose a partner to create an army of slave warriors, turning those who resisted into Dinosaurs.
Never the less, some of my friends have offered equally plausible problems with my theory of the Origin of the Dinosaurs. Since they helped me so much with my work it would be unfair to not include their points.
My learned colleague Hugh Eldred-Grigg of Shabak's take on these speculations is that Dinosaurs are found in Allansia, but not Khul or the Old World. Hugh's quite right, and since Dinosaurs are fairly common in Allansia that suggested there were probably more portals in the area back then, before the continental splitting. Or perhaps prior to the splitting natural competition with the local species or simply the climate forced the majority north to what is now Allansia, and that is why they died out elsewhere?
Our esteemed Master of Theology Ken asked why they were definitely not created by a god or gods. The Godtime followed the period in which creatures were created on Titan. Is it not possible they were created in the period before the Godtime with other creatures but have just diminished considerably since their creation?
And I accept Ken's point that there may be many extinct animals which lived in the Godtime or even before in the Claytime, and died out before the First Battle, and many more which evolved into different forms. As The High Priest confirmed, if either of these things happens, then it is not unreasonable to assume that mortal scholars would have great difficulty identifying which gods were responsible for their creation (they have enough trouble with the names of the bird and fish deities).
However, most of us agree this did not happen with the Dinosaurs; they are still an active and important family of species and if there were gods for them, we would expect Allansian scholars to have taken great pains to discover who they were or at least list them as unnamed deities. As Ken himself said, the Animal Court stabilizes the creatures on Titan, so the absence of gods might suggest that they do not come from Titan originally. Also, there are simply more of them on the other side of the portal, so I think it likely that this lost world is their origin.
It is true we all assume that the Animal Court is not a comprehensive list of every Animal Court member. However, we do see the point of view that such impressive creatures would perhaps be granted a mention in the list. However again, and here I must agree Ken has several persuasive points, we would have also applied this argument to elephants or rhinos or even camels who also do not have a specific god assigned to them in the chart. The fact that the god is not named does not mean that the god does not exist. As I said my theory is only speculation.
Ken agreed with our point that on the other side of the portal we do indeed seem to see a far greater preponderance of the Dinosaurs. And as he also said, is it not a possibility that some people who passed through the portal were transformed by its magic into Dinosaurs? Certainly we know transformation into an animal form is a common result of passing through it. It is not necessary that the animal into which a person is transformed is one from the Lost World. For instance I met a bear on the other side (a native species of Titan) who turned out to be Horfak's former mining partner no less!
Never the less the transformed creatures retained the intelligence and memories they had before, whilst modern Dinosaurs do not. However, both these could be explained away quite easily (e.g. over generations, the intelligence fell because no one was willing to talk to them), so Ken's explanation is still a possibility.
Ken also had another point. If Dinosaurs did come through the portal how did they fit through? Some Dinosaurs, certainly, but what about a Brontosaurus? More importantly what about Plesiosaurs? These are giant sea-dwelling Dinosaurs. The portal is no where near the sea. How did they get through it, cross land and then find the ocean. I realise that there is an argument that there may have been other portals at other times. However, some under the sea? To what end? And if they were originally on land but fell into the sea then it is an amazing coincidence that the other side of the portal also fell into a new oceanic domain of the lost world.
As it happens the High Priest had a theory about this. Sea dinosaurs travelling between the worlds: maybe Hydana and his Lost World equivalent insisted that if there were to be portals (or a portal) on land, there should be one in the sea as well, so that their marine creations should also be able to interact with one another. Portals also which were sealed after the First Battle.
Will we ever know for certain?
That is a question that haunts my dreams on more than one occasion.
Some of the Styracosaurus that the Lizard Men ride are caught from the plain of Bronze or possibly the Plain of Bones and there may be nomad caravans travelling between the flatlands and the Plain of Bones to Shabak and the Glimmering Sea beyond.
And now I finish my writing, pausing with my pen, my hand no longer trembling. For a few brief moments I was back in the untamed wilderness of the Khulian forests, and the mysterious Lost World that remains buried underneath tons of Igneliote.
And realise that sometimes I miss it more than I would admit to myself!
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