The Story of the Hearts

For those curious. Don't feel you have to understand all of this, or its implications, to play through Epic, though. This is just for those lore buffs and speculators.


Eons ago, the world of Erdu fought the Yth and the coming of the Devourer. However, they underestimated the Ythlords until it was too late, and the planet was destroyed. Foreseeing the same fate for other worlds, the goddess Eilessa (Shard) and the rest of the pantheon pooled their last dregs of power to create a Voidship and a mighty power source, the Crystal of Erdu. They would spare the next world the same fate. Before they could safely escape, however, the Yth damaged their vessel and it crashed somewhere in the Astral Sea.

Among the only survivors were the servants of the Erduan god Akadder, creatures of shadow and thought known as Anubians. Without guidance, the Anubians attempted to use the wreckage of the Voidship to restore their gods. On Erdu, there were only two predominant forces, the gods' own divinity and the magic of the mind (psionics). In the Kalindian System, Anubians had access to a much more diverse spectrum. Proving more ingenious than even their creator, the Anubians constructed nine different vessels and accompanying gems for the nine worlds and spacial regions, yet the Crystal of Erdu was beyond them and they could not properly assemble their designs. The Anubians failed, and the Devourer inevitably consumed everything, save a people descended from the Emperor Endymion Norson and his inquisitors, the race of Gith.

In a doomed future one million years hence, an Anubian vessel was found by Zerthimon and other githzerai, whose psionic and engineering skills were enough to discern its nature. Under the notice of a totalitarian regime, they reassembled the vessels and even recreated the unifying effect of the Crystal of Erdu. Because the Gith had been survivors of the Kalindian System, not even the Devourer could totally dissolve its history, and Zerthimon rode that shred of chronology back to a fuller, lusher past. However, he was intercepted by the Queen of the Universe herself, Vlaakith CLVIII, who understood his mission was to change the future and avoid catastrophe, with no guarantee if even the Gith would survive this time (and certainly no guarantee Vlaakith would be the absolute authority). The githzerai were killed in a crash that landed in the wake of the Elder War, just after the Old Gods had been destroyed and the Far Ones repelled. Zerthimon's consciousness fled to the Ethereal Plane, and Vlaakith, not wanting to interfere with anything that might jeopardize her future, took her fleet and hid in a darker corner of the Void dubbed Githspace. Her agents, the githyanki, scoured Creation behind the scenes, seeking Zerthimon, but the psychic-ghost was far too elusive thanks to a cloaking stealthsuit in which his consciousness hid (a huge, imposing, black apparatus that oozed shadow and exhaust: the form of the Dark One).

He used his time wisely and met with some of the most powerful figures in history, warning them of what was to come and enlisting their help in finding the vessels and the gems. In this endeavor, Zerthimon first came to Highking Gloriandel, and for a time they worked together with like mind, creating fusions of magic and technology called helms in which to more precisely control both the gems and the vessels. Despite never managing to collect all the gems or reproduce the Crystal effect, Gloriandel did devise a way to harness the helms, vessels, and Har'venoth into something he called the El'avenoth, or the Heart of Creation. Its potential to create a new reality drove a wedge between the two, and Zerthimon fled with the few reclaimed Har'venoth before the elf could explore his designs any further. Gloriandel laid a powerful enchantment through blood magic, however, so that the Har'venoth would inevitably find their way back to him or (he didn't quite intend this) his far-flung descendents. He might have pursued the githzerai ghost had there not been an uprising in one of the imperial territories, some young upstart calling himself Nor.

Zerthimon moved about Creation as time passed, collecting what he could with the aid of such accomplished figures as the Ur-Pasha of the Efreeti, the Witch-Queen Iggwilv, Oberon Partholon, Iluvistria Firstborn, Archdruid Chantico, Count Strahd von Zarovich, Archmage Serren, and the archangel Ezariel the Watcher. Each of them retained a helm and in some instances a vessel, meant to be safeguarded from elves, githyanki, and especially Yth until which time he could gather the necessary components to lay the Legacy Matrix over Creation, thus masking it from the Devourer. Yet some of the gems and vessels were still cascading through time and space, and it wasn't until the advent of the Demon War (20 years ago) that all the necessary pieces were accessible. By that point, many of the helmbearers were undone and Zerthimon had to again seek the components, only to find that Ezariel had already done so.

Zerthimon joined his items with Ezariel's and began the unification, however in its late stages the Gith realized with abject horror that Ezariel was not masking Creation, he was forming a new one using the Gloriandel Contingency. Heaven was to become the sole reality! Zerthimon desperately intervened and the contingency failed, allowing the Har'venoth to escape and sending the vessels cascading again through time and space. Terrified the window for victory was now closed, Zerthimon fought his way free of Heaven in hopes of establishing the matrix before the Devourer arrived. The likelihood seemed grim indeed, and this time he'd have more than Vlaakith and the Ythlords to contend with.

Somewhere in the distant past, a green wyrm watched curiously as a jade meteor struck the summit of his mountain. Perhaps it was key to the mysterious woman who'd crashed a decade earlier. Much closer to the present, a young boy named Endymion witnessed a piece of the firmament crash land behind the next hill. Similarly, others watched the vessels and the Har'venoth cast over existence, becoming ingrained in the history, the present, and the future of the Kalindian System.