THE SHATTERING

We ruled the world for countless ages, leading

campaigns against the Heavenly Host and pulling down
their prisons of stone and iron. We tempted other
angels to fall and built mighty cathedrals and citadels
across the face of Creation. We protected and
tormented the race of dust and, eventually, bared all the
secrets of Creation to the descendants of Adam and
Eve. But, in the end, it all came to naught.
While Lu cifer and his most trusted legions
were fighting the nephilim, the race of Adam and Eve
were bu ckling under the weight of their newly found
divinity. Perhaps it was the disappearance of the Ten,
the evi l of the nephilim or just cruel fate, but the sons
and daughters of the first mortals shattered at the
moment when the whole of Creation lay open to them.
Destiny cannot be preempted, and this is what (in our
hubris) we'd sought to achieve. Why Lu cifer had not
foreseen this, I cannot say. In our long years in Hell, I
heard many who believed that he had meant to bet ray
us and humanity alike but to what end? I don't know
what to believe anymore.
Instead of becoming gods, the enlightenment
of the race of man bu ckled under the weight of the
newly found revelations. We sought to accelerate
millennia of maturity in just a handful of generations. It
was too much, too soon.
THE FALSE TONGUES
But this was not our only regret. The
Shattering had even more dire consequences � the
fragmentation of the mortal tongue. Sin ce the time of
Adam and Eve, mortals used a form of our tongue,
simplified for their ears but nonetheless it echoed with
truth. All mortals spoke this One Language, a pure
tongue that did not obfuscate and allowed them to
grasp the significance of all. When Penemue taught the
race of dust how to write and weave this One
Language, the very doors of Heaven were opened to all
of mankind. But they were not ready. They were
blinded, and in being so, they lost the ability to
comprehend the One Language. Their speech devolved
into a cacophony of lesser languages. Instead of one
nation of mortals, they fragmented into hundreds, even
thousands of tribes and clans. Never again would they
see themselves as one race, united by a common
mother and father.
The breaking of the mortal tongues had
another effect � they could no longer gaze upon us
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and understand with clarity what they saw. Memories
of us became legends and myths, spirits of superstition
that some worshipped while others either ignored or
did not trust. Even if we wanted to help, we could not.
The mortals were so broken that we had become
ineffable to them, and in so doing, their boundless flow
of devotion and faith dwindled to nothing.