Lore of Aertu

Explaining a Few Unexplained Details from The Chronicles of Aertu

I will endeavor to clarify a few background items from the series. Some of this is explained in the appendices, but I thought readers might benefit from additional clarification.

Here there be spoilers, if you have not yet read the first two books.

Who is the Allfather?

The Allfather is the creator of the universe in which the world of Aertu exists. Aertu is the first of many habitable worlds he created and populated. He is a male-gendered individual of a class of deities who routinely create a new universe upon maturity. Before his maturation, the Allfather existed in a universe created and ruled by a female deity. He had many brothers and sisters, all of whom went off to create their own realities.

Beings like the Allfather imagine the physical and magical laws of the universe they create, so sibling deities may create realities with wildly different physical and magical rules than one another, or their parent. Most create children in their likeness very early in the creation of their universe, and teach them the workings of creating their own one day, billions of years in the future, thus perpetuating the cycle of their kind.

What are the Aelir and Aelient?

The aelir are the children of the Allfather, superficially created in his likeness, but each one is unique and unrelated to one another. He created fourteen in all, divided into seven females and seven males. He could have chosen to make them non-gendered or not to create them at all, but he followed in his mother’s example. They provided their father with companionship and assistance as together they built his universe. They held power in all four colors of magic equally and, like their father, could combine the basic colors into new powers. He forbade them to combine all four colors into white magic, his power of creation, except under his direct supervision.

Not yet mature, the aelir could not alone create beings like themselves, but the males and females could combine their essences to create beings of lesser power. Thus, they created aelient, hundreds of thousands of them.

They created the aelient to assist them and the Allfather in the caretaking of the many worlds they created, leaving a portion of them with each world as they moved through the universe. The aelient could wield all four colors of magic, but had not the capability to combine the colors into new forms. They also tended to be stronger on one or another of the colors. Unlike their parents, aelient were not destined to mature and leave the Allfather’s universe.

Who is The Nameless God/Adversary?

The Nameless God is a male aelir who rebelled against his father. He did not wish to eventually mature and leave the Allfather’s universe to create his own. Instead, he fell in love with the first of their worlds, Aertu, and wished to keep it for himself.

He ignored his father’s prohibitions against unsupervised white magic and creating sentient creatures. Attempting to replicate the Allfather’s making of elves and humans, he instead created goblins, trolls, dragons, and other fell beasts.

To add insult to his transgressions, he taught some aelient that they could pool their individually strong powers to form white magic and create things. Attempting to improve on the creatures of the Allfather and the aelir, renegade aelient created disease, parasites, and other noxious creatures.

When discovered, he was stripped of his name, forbidden to take another, and banished from their number. The Allfather intended the revocation of his name to lessen his influence over thinking beings.

Are Elves Immortal?

Elves are not immortal, though they are extremely long-lived. They generally live over three thousand years, with an average lifespan of around thirty-two hundred years. Significant outliers have lived for over five thousand, and very few pass away younger than three thousand years. For elves, their internal strength in magic appears to influence their lifespan, with the most powerful sorcerers living the longest.

Some might wonder how their bodies do not wear out over thousands of years. It is likely their innate magical nature that protects their teeth and other body parts from wear. In fact, when they near the end of their lives, they lose most of their magical strength, and age to death nearly as fast as humans do, declining rapidly over the course of a couple of decades.

Elves are limited in their choices to blue magic only. They are incapable of using the other three colors

Who and what is Goromir/Hadaras?

Originally named Goromir, and going by the name Hadaras in the series, he is the oldest living elf on Aertu. At over nine thousand years of age, he has surpassed the average lifespan of elves nearly threefold, and has been alive for most of elvish recorded history, but is he really an elf?

Goromir was the firstborn son of Balgare and Chaldee, the first King and Queen of Elvenholm. Balgare was less than three hundred years old at the time, very young for an elf, and Goromir was heir-apparent to the elvish throne for forty-seven hundred years, until the birth of his younger half-brother Aelwynn. He attained the additional role of high sorcerer during his time as crown prince. Thinking he would only rule for a couple of centuries, as he was not much younger than the king, who was then over five thousand years old, he abdicated in favor of Aelwynn and remained as high sorcerer until the aftermath of the Great War. He disappeared from history after concealing the Nameless God’s primary weapon.

Though rumors abounded that Chaldee was in fact an immortal, Goromir discounted them. It was not until much later, as Hadaras, that he received confirmation that his mother was actually Iselle, one of the fourteen Aelir, venerated as a goddess among humans. She used white magic, in violation of the Allfather’s prohibition, to take the form of an elf and marry Balgare. It is assumed that she repented to her father for the transgression, as she was not stripped of her name and banished like her brother. Also likely in her favor, she did not lead any aelient into disobedience. She disappeared when the Aelir were called to leave Aertu and move on to teach the other worlds they built with their father.

With his mother a goddess, Hadaras is technically a demigod, only half elvish. Possibly due to his mother’s assumed elvish form, he only inherited elvish magical abilities, though more potent in them than any other elf, including his father. He may be immortal, immune to death, save from physical harm, or he may have an exceptionally long lifespan, running in the tens of thousands.

What Is a Halfblood?

Halfblood might refer to either a first-generation offspring between a human and an elf, or the ancient ruling caste of Sudea.

First-generation offspring nearly always have magical abilities inherited from their elvish parent; Aleron and Cladus are examples. However, magical inheritance is not necessarily the case for subsequent generations. Two first-generation halfbloods are as likely to produce non-gifted children as they are gifted.

Members of the Halfblood Caste (Halfblood is capitalized when referring to the ruling caste, rather than individuals) who ruled Sudea until the aftermath of the Great War were closer to two-thirds elvish, due to repeated intermarriage between elves and halfbloods during the early years of the kingdom. The higher percentage of elvish ancestry resulted in magical ability being the norm for Halfbloods.

While elves are limited to only using blue magic, derived from life force, human sorcerers may use blue or red magic, derived from death. No one is certain why this is so. Most human sorcerers pick a color and stick with it throughout their lives, but there are exceptions.

Though the Sudean Halfblood Caste is now extinct, the Kolixtlani and Adari versions of it survived in the form of hereditary priesthoods. Sorcerers also occasionally crop up in non-halfblood families, from a fortuitous alignment of elvish traits that persist in the greater population. Members of the Thallasian Sorcerer’s Guild are examples.

First-generation halfbloods and members of the Halfblood Caste enjoy much longer than average lifespans, two to three hundred years in many cases, but persons from the general population with magical abilities tend toward normal human lifespans. King Aleron I was one hundred-five at his death, and considered to be in his prime adulthood.

Andhanimwhid and Zadehmal.

Zadehmal (Translated: Cleaver of Souls) is a massive battle axe created by the Nameless God for his use in the Great War. After his defeat, his enemies found the weapon to be heavily warded and indestructible. He built it with an internal collector and repository of red magic, as well as a spirit trap designed to capture the souls of all who it touched. He joined a portion of his spirit to the weapon, and so linked every soul he captured to himself, adding to his strength, and he could easily draw upon the stored magic the weapon automatically collected from the death surrounding them.

Andhanimwhid (Translated: Sign of the King) is a large two-handed sword, about six feet in length. It was forged by Goromir for King Aleron I’s use in the Great War. He built it using methods he learned from the dwarves, plus his own innovations, magically warding it against damage. He also built in a large collector and repository of blue magic, for the wielder to draw upon in battle. Though the sword was not built as a spirit trap, the mechanisms Goromir employed were in many ways similar to one.

Aleron was spiritually linked to Andhanimwhid when the Nameless god slew him, and he passed his entire spirit into the sword when the enemy struck him down. His soul now resides within the weapon, and he ensures that none but his direct descendants can use its power, or even draw it from its storage location, sheathed in stone at the back of the Sudean throne, nor can anyone use the unsheathed sword against its rightful owner. Now, Aleron I speaks to his descendant, King Aleron II, when he is in close proximity to the artifact. The younger Aleron can also sense the essence of every other Sudean king that held it within the sword.

Of Blue Quartz and Bloodstone.

Blue quartz is what denizens of Aertu call the blue form of the mineral zircon. The mineral is rare, but found throughout the world. It has the capability of storing large amounts of blue magical energy. More optically clear specimens hold larger amounts of energy than cloudy or opaque pieces. It does not naturally draw power to itself, but a magic practitioner can push blue energy into the stone and draw it out at a later time. They often build the mineral into magically warded devices that automatically pull blue magic from the surrounding environment.

Bloodstone is a deep red variety of zircon, currently known only from one source in Thallasia. It has the property of storing large quantities of red magical energy, which it actively draws from the environment, including nearby red magic users. As its storage capacity is quite large, the optical clarity of a specimen does not seem to matter, though the clearer pieces may hold more energy. Raw stones will draw in and hold all red energy in a space, precluding its use by any nearby practitioner of red magic. To use bloodstone as a storage medium, it needs to be incorporated into a warded device that allows the user to draw on the power and prevents the stone from stealing the user’s energy. Hence, bloodstone collectors and repositories need to be more complex than those incorporating blue quartz.

It may be assumed that the knowledge and use of bloodstone were more widespread before the Great War, since the primary practitioners of red magic, the forces of the Nameless God, made use of magic storage devices, and the knowledge only survived in Thallasia. However, other colored gemstones are capable of storing and focusing the magical energy of like color, hence the sapphires built into Andhanimwhid’s hilt. Even clear quartz may be incorporated into a repository for any color of magic.

In Conclusion.

I hope this information helps to elucidate any details that were unclear to you, the reader.

Best regards,

Julian E Benoit