Armant

In the beginning, all was within Tian, the silver river that spanned the breadth of creation.  Therein dwelt only the God That Was, the Emperor Upon the High Throne who ruled from the Celestial Mountain of Turesh.

Our world drifted atop the river as a lotus blossom, beloved before all others by the Divine.

Yet our ancestors grew wretched and craven in their indolence, and the corruption of man awoke a slumbering nothingness from Diwa, the black mud of the river's bed: the Dark One.

Twilight ate the sun and ate the sky and threatened to submerge the world into a roiling torrent within Tian.  Penitent men sought to call the attention of the God That Was to their plight, so made a mighty pyre and upon it cast the bodies of sinners and thieves, of perjurers and traitors.  Wicked men burned until their fat ran as tallow and their bones cracked like dried mud.

The God That Was came upon the face of the world in a roar of thunder, one hand holding fury and one hand gripping wrath.

With a spear forged of uttermost light, the Dark One was riven, its body cast deep within the earth.

But the struggle demanded much of our Emperor.

Highest Turesh was broken, the eternal planes shorn and cast away so that only a shattered mirror's shard remained, and the halls of the Emperor Upon the High Throne fell silent, abandoned but for his waiting servants.

The light of the righteousness of the God That Was burned away the twilight, even as the waters of the river grew muddy with the blood of the Dark One, and the flesh of our world withered to bare rock to taste its poison.

When all seemed at an end, the last survivors of man followed the last star in the night sky and found by its brillince the spear with which the God That Was had shriven the Dark One, and perched atop it was the Carmine Throne.

Upon that Throne she sat, the heir to the world and the salvation of man: the Armant Empress Incarnadine.