A Brief History of Aquila

''The dusty bound manuscript unravels in your hands. You at first fear that you had underestimated its advanced age and that it would imminently crumble to ash, but the material holds steady, with nearly every word remaining legible after all these years. As you carefully push aside the leather cover and sprawl out the first page under the gentle light fron above, you can just make out the famous symbol of the golden eagle of Nova Aquila.''





Introduction
Greetings. If you are now reading the prose upon these pages, it means that the history of the Republic has at least outlived my own, fleeting existence, and even if the great walls of Nova Aquila should wither under the weight of centuries and our noble democracy be swept away by the tides of history, its memory shall live on, and so too will the legacies of its many founders, who sacrificed everything and demanded nothing in return but justice for their brothers and sisters.

For the purposes of this tome, I will refrain from divulging my true identity, as it is not my name that matters, but rather the message that I seek to preserve and the knowledge that I wish to share; such a concept is true for the entire history of our tiny blue world, a scarred cube amongst the vastness of the void that has seen more war and destruction in its short lifetime than the next dozen combined - but, by that same token, more kindness and compassion as well.

The true history of Aquila has remained shrouded in mystery for thousands of years, but in these recent decades of relative peace and understanding and our slow ascension to an age of reason, we have set aside our differences and devoted our resources no longer to war and conquest but to exploration and empathy, as our forefathers many generations before us. The advent of Slip travel has linked our vast world's many corners together, and our greater understanding of the phantom energy that at once sustains life and drags us ever closer to Death will power our reactors for centuries and materialize our designs for great statues that will tell our story as long as the soil beneath us remains.

Therein lies my task as requested by the research committees of the UAS, to discover truth and seek understanding and unity when it matters most - when the smoke has settled and it is time for the world to decide what happens next. Though many versions of history exist and many of my predecessors' texts of pure revisionism are indeed quite entertaining, I am confident that the information our Order now possesses will grant us the clearest picture of the past that Aquila has yet seen.

I - Da capo
Our story begins like any other - with a man and an idea. At the absolute earliest stage of existence that we can divine through our astrological methods, the being that we now know as Moros spontaneously achieved sentience and drifted through the primal planes of the void for an unknowable amount of time. Though it is impossible to say what exactly transpired in these early years, we can infer that Moros spent millennia dreaming and imagining a world without darkness, where light could triumph and he could reign as the benevolent all-father of all that has ever been dreamt or made real.

Moros, or as he called himself originally, Coda, eventually learned to manifest these dreams into reality, and traveled by his lonesome across the void for millions of years, creating world upon world, each completely unique but equally tranquil and quiet as the last. Though Coda loved to sing his song of creation, he inevitably grew to hate the silence of the void in response to his art, and sought to find a cure for his unthinkable loneliness. Thus is the curse of every artist, architect, and visionary: focusing in on oneself for so long can never replace the jubilation found in sharing with others.

Eventually, Coda used his song of creation to create a being intended to be his equal, and to share the joy of his art with. As she awoke and stared out into the stars for the first time, she became instantly enthralled with Coda's promises that she would share his wisdom and create stars of her own with his benevolent help. The two divines shared the universe together, creating countless worlds and falling deeper in love with each stroke upon their dark aisel. To signify his undying love for her, Coda granted Thash the gift of his Heart, the source of his knowledge, guarded within the Eternal Flame, for her safe-keeping.

They enjoyed peace for thousands of years until Thash, too, grew bored with the status quo and sought to share her own insights with others. Though Coda was initially hesistant to further dilute his own omnipotent powers, he eventually agreed to raise a family of lessers with Thash, and the first generation of the Celestials was born. Simple and predictable creatures, the Celestials were an ignorant race that the two divines spread equally to nearly every world that they had created, with an average of one or two per overworld. Primitive and lacking even a modicum of their creators' power and wisdom, they provided some entertainment for a time, but as Coda descended into a temporary restful state after creating dozens of worlds a day for millennia, Thash grew bored of their simplicity and ignorance to the point of wrath.

Without notifying him first, Thash took Coda's Heart from the Eternal Flame and bestowed it upon the Celestials, whom she gathered at the home world of the First Son Avus. Though certainly of immense cosmic significance, this first congregation of the Celestials is especially important to our history in particular, being debatably the most important moment in Aquilan history, as it was when our Elder God and progenitor, Avus, was recognized as the most powerful among Coda's first children, cementing our world, albeit in its most primitive state and not resembling its current form, as we know it, in virtually way, as perhaps the most vital to every cosmic war to follow.

Avus, the First Son, was entrusted with the Heart after Thash's departure back into the shadows. The Celestial was the first to taste the artifact's unspeakable power, elevating his wisdom to unparalleled levels perhaps even comparable to that of Coda mere moments after being exposed to its golden core. Avus shared this wisdom with his brothers and sisters, and with their heightened powers, the children of Coda declared themselves Gods, no longer to be shackled by the chains of their creators. When Thash panicked and begged for her children to return the Heart, lest they incur the wrath of their Father, Avus and the Elder Gods brushed her aside, believing themselves to have ascended above their progenitors, who were now powerless without the Heart.

Thash returned with haste to Coda, who instantly awoke from his deep slumber, his divine presence now permeated with cold fury. Though Thash appealed to his merciful nature for forgiveness, Coda blamed her for their children's insolence and lashed out, sending her fleeing across the cosmos, powerless. He then set about hunting down the so-called Elder Gods to extinction, his new wrathful state proving that his children had not stolen his powers, but simply his empathy and desire for creation; he now sang the song of destruction.

In the ensuing First War, Coda raged and thrashed amongst the stars, slaughtering legions of his own children and choking the light from countless stars of his own creation years prior, destroying so much of what he had built with his own hands in a bid for revenge against his children. Eventually, Avus was able to rally his comrades to form a united front against their Father for one final struggle to decide the fate of the universe. Untold numbers of Elder Gods were slain in this decisive battle at the seat of Avus' kingdom, but when the smoke cleared, Coda was forced to bitterly retreat back into the shadows of the void, withdrawing from the vast plane that was once his undisputed realm and swearing that he would return to put his children in their place.

With Coda at least temporarily neutralized, the Elder Gods set about establishing their own new universal order, wiping their father's true name from all records and referring to him hitherto solely as Moros, and eventually simply the Ancient Fear. As one final insult against Moros and in an assertion of their newfound power, the Celestials crushed what remained of Coda's old realm and embarked on a trek to find a new place to build their kingdoms and empires, far from the lingering influence of the Ancient Fear. The broken mess of shattered original worlds that lay at the frontiers of the universe became known as the End, and was speculated to be the hiding place of Moros and the place where fallen spirits, both mortal and Celestial, gathered after dying, transformed into husks of their former selves known as Endermen - those ubiquitous shadow creatures which haunted every world for centuries until it was far too late for the Gods to excise them.

The Elder Gods arrived near the center of what we now know as the observable universe and set about creating their new overworlds under the benign guidance of the Heart. It was an incredibly slow process, and even with the Heart, the Elder Gods took centuries to achieve what Moros could in seconds. Still, they eventually settled and, though reclusive, still banded together to prepare for their Father's prophesized return. Kept in absolute secrecy, the Gods created a system of interdimensional tunnels to permanently bridge togetheir their worlds and quickly mobilize should the need arise. Additionally, and perhaps even more vitally, this space between the dimensions was designed to keep the Heart secure from any who sought to exploit its power. The Elder Gods elected a Celestial named Orwell to guard this mysterious plane, which he christened as the Nether, taking the grave responsibility of acting as Guardian of the Eternal Flame in perpetuity. The children of Coda, however, could not foresee the corrupting influence of the Heart even when so far detached from its owner, and the Nether was eventually corrupted into a twisted reflection of the Ancient Fear's wrathful nature. Avus and the other Gods eventually lost contact with Orwell and, no longer able to enter the Nether, were left guessing as to the fate of the Heart.