User:Bill/Etholen Lost

In the Land of Twilight

Our grand-dads tell tales of comin' to this place. They came from a place called Etholen and that's what we call this place to keep the faith.

Etholen is not Earth. It is a world of eternal twilight; a living world that radiates warmth and supports life in a manner more like a mother than the world that gave humanity birth. The original Etholen was a small town in Texas that seemed to fade off the map over the course of dozen years. No one quite understands how the residents of Etholen came to this world or if it's possible for their descendants to return home.

We wasn't the first to be in Etholen though. Thems what come 'afore us was the Crucifers and the Shepherds.

The townspeople of Etholen, around three-thousand men women and children, found other human settlements in their starlit new home. These were few and far between with only another thousand or so people living in small walled forts. The strangers spoke broken Latin with a lot of influence from French and Italian. They also dressed in a strange, almost ancient fashion; many among them wearing armor and carrying archaic weapons. Luthor McDevitt, the educated Pentecostal minister of the lost Texans, knew enough of the dead language to act as interpreter.

The strangers claimed to have lived in this place for almost a thousand years. They said that this world was one of the hells meant to test the faithful for ten-thousand years of darkness. Demons maraud through this twilight land McDevitt was told and his people would be tested too.

Confused by this dire prediction, McDevitt questioned the strangers further. He learned that they called themselves Shepherds and that they dedicated themselves to the defense and protection of the common folk. His contact informed him that there were also men and women that called themselves Crucifers. The Crucifers would not satisfy themselves with waiting for the end of their trial. They believed that the Lord would reward them for carrying the fight to the demons. The Crucifers slay demons in an effort to prove their faith and righteousness.

Grand-dad says that the devil's afraid of the sun and that the light of day will save us all. Too bad there ain't no sun on Etholen. Guess I'll have to save myself.

Just as the Shepherds said, the demons came and tried to carry away as many as they could. Texans are not the sort to give up without a fight though and the people of Etholen beat back the twisted and gibbering horde with guns and grit and everything else they could get their hands on. The Shepherds praised their faith and prowess.

Even though they were impressed by the newcomers, the small walled town was incapable of supporting all of them. So it was that the people of Etholen had to spread out across this new land and find their niche among the forts of the Shepherds and Crucifers. Over the years many of the settlers, as they would come to be known, and their children took their own vows. Now more Crucifers and Shepherds speak English than Latin.

Etholen's got a mind of its own. It don't listen real good though, so don't bother askin' it much.

The living world grants its human inhabitants warmth, food, and moisture sufficient to sustain life. It produces gravity very similar to Earth's and supports a substantial amount of native life.

While it is possible to commune with the living world, the practice is forbidden by the oaths of both the Shepherds and Crucifers as blasphemy. Those who do learn to coax favor from Etholen were suspected of having fallen to devil worship before the arrival of the settlers.