Accessing Black Gate Database...
Database Credentials
User ID: ********
Password: ******
Information Accepted...Accessing Database Profile...
Welcome Founder
-Input Request: Retrieve File 0001-A, The Origin
Retrieving File 0001-A...
Document Retrieved...Accessing...
Document Accessed
Translating...
Translation Complete
Document 001-A, The Origin
What is immortality? The ages-old question philosophers have pondered for centuries, debating the nature of eternal life. Is it a gift? A curse? A blessing or the doom of one's soul? Can it save mankind, or will it herald the end of us all? In truth, immortality is just another piece to a neverending puzzle, a fragment of a time when magick was wild and untamed. A time of gods, and a time of monsters. Written below is perhaps the most important piece of the Sanguinum Libre, or as it is more widely known by members of the Black Gate...
In the beginning, mankind had just started to wander the planes on two legs- hunter-gatherers, tribal warriors. They could not comprehend the world around them, let alone understand the forces at play. Their lives were short and fickle- many did not live long, and when they did, they were thrust into a terrible and dangerous land that did not care if they lived or died. But they were not alone in this world. Before them were the Keepers, or as they are now known...witches. Powerful beings who harnessed the power of magick to preserve and balance nature, placed upon the Earth by the Gods themselves. Far more advanced, intelligent, wise, these beings were both worshiped and feared by the tribal hunters. For what is one who wields magick but a god?
As more of humanity was birthed into the world, the Keepers began to retreat from their villages and citadels into the roots and branches of their Great Trees. These ancient, skyward-reaching trees not only shared a singular root system that spanned the whole of the world, but were also joined into a collective consciousness that stored the whole of Keepers' knowledge. The oldest and tallest of these trees would come to be known by the Scandinavian people as the Yggdrasil, the World Tree, for from it all life was birthed. Or so the legends say. Within these trees were burrowed entire villages, wherein the witches thrived and hoarded their power. Some say that if one could find them, they may find cures for every known disease, every spell ever uttered, and the DNA for every being ever born. Mere speculation.
Centuries after their retreat from the world at large, the Keepers would bear witness to the advancement of society. Once merely apes that picked up stones and spears, sparked fires with flint and stone, they had grown into capable hunters who built nomadic tribal civilizations of tents and mud huts. Some would burrow into caves, hunting in the evening under the ever-watchful moon. They grew smarter, faster, stronger. But still so uncivilized. Or at least, that was what the mystics believed, until the fruit from their trees began to disappear.
