The Dreaming God -A Fable

 From: Jason Zavoda [nemesis@MAGPAGE.COM]

Sent: Tuesday, December 18, 2001 5:50 AM

To: GREYTALK@MITVMA.MIT.EDU

Subject: [GREYTALK] The Dreaming God -A Fable

There was a dream of wings. Tharizdun laughed, and from his laughter the Gods of Oerth were born.

Tharizdun had eight children of his laughter. Some men would call evil, others good, but all hated and feared their father Tharizdun.

The Oerth was a wilderness. The elves walked naked beneath the trees, the dwarves were more of stone and mud than they were of flesh. Man was a beast, hunting in packs, hiding in trees and caves from the greater beasts around him.

The oldest of Tharizdun's children, born only a sliver of a moment before his kin, reached down and gave thought to mankind. Tharizdun watched and smiled and blasted the land. In some places he drew the heat away till the waters froze and the plants withered. With a glance he raised mountains that belched forth fire, or turned the grass and trees to sand where the days baked and the nights were bitterly cold.

Man did not perish, nor elves or dwarves. All grew stronger and new races and species were born. The other gods showed themselves to the tribes of man. The ancient fathers of the Flan, the Suel, Bakluni, Oeridian, and Olman, and tribes which fell and did not flourish, and tribes which live on Oerth beyond the borders of the Flanaess.

Tharizdun took the spirit of the beasts and the spirit of man and twisted. The monsters of the Oerth were born, touched by evil, brought forth to torment and to destroy.

The dreaming god, Tharizdun, grew bored with his children, tired of his own monsters, angry at the resilience of man. He would do away with them all, devour all the Oerth and the gods he'd born from his dreams, but his children knew his mind.

None had the strength to match Tharizdun. Not all eight together could defeat him, not even bind the master of nightmares. But together they might trick him and use his greatest strength against him.

The world was a dream to Tharizdun and while he was awake he was its master, but some part of Tharizdun always slept. A balance was struck between his waking self and his dreaming existence. The children of Tharizdun knew that they must shift the balance, send Tharizdun into an eternal sleep, but some small fragment of the dark god must remain awake or the Oerth, its people and its protecting gods would be swallowed whole into the dreaming mind of Tharizdun.

The children of Tharizdun created a great hall within a castle sitting on a hill. Inside they prepared a feast beyond the imaginings of men. Of the Oerth and on the Oerth this hill and castle and hall appeared to be, but it was an island of thought, a cage and a trap for the dreaming god, their father.

They sang and feasted and rejoiced. They wove a dream, a pale imitation of Tharizdun's great dreaming. It brought the dark god to them. He was within the hall, though the doors were barred, and ruin was around him. The hall was dark, the walls scarred and the finery tattered and decayed, but his children were not there.

He found ten thousand rooms within the castle walls, ten thousand horrors he left behind him, twisted dreams and nightmares, but always his children were not there.

The sound of laughter that he no longer possessed called to him and he .allowed it in greater and greater haste. Up he went till he came to a small door in the highest tower of the castle. Inside there was a child's room and sleeping in a bed was Tharizdun, his children 1 s dream, small and pale, a fragment of himself, the dreaming sliver that the waking Tharizdun held inside.

There was a ladder against one wall of the room and a trapdoor in the ceiling. Beyond the door Tharizdun could hear the laughter which he sought to reclaim. A little climb and the trapdoor was flung open. Inside was laughter and a dream of wings.

Only the gods know what happened to Tharizdun's oldest child. In the room below, the child Tharizdun is awake and laughs among ten thousand rooms, but does not sleep.

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