Chapter One » A Foreboding Wind

[Befera]

{ M E M O R » L U X }
Chapter One » A Foreboding Wind

Before The Great Blizzard, there wasn't much in the way of peace in this land. Many a battle was to be had between the rivaling bands, but those battles never did see the light of day. There was a steady fire of pure hatred brewing here in our paradise, and our sires and the sires before them were far too buried in that hatred that they never would have guessed that the punishment to come would tear them away from paradise so quickly.

It was a winter to surpass every winter before it, and a winter that would never let itself be forgotten. It wasn't just the winter itself that changed us, though. It was that fateful night where our entire world seemed to turn over to reveal nothing but cold, white death.

Insecurity and fear is what packed all of us in under the same dark shadow of regret. The grottos were overflowing with ice and snow and cold air, and the fields had become nothing more than oceans of deep snow, which seemed more like quicksand than anything else. The mountains to the north had become even more deadly: sending avalanche after avalanche down into the valleys and basins, and killing off the wise old horses who made their homes there.

The Great Blizzard dragged on for an astounding three months straight, and by that time, our numbers had dwindled to almost thirty percent of what had been there before. After so many had died trying to take shelter from the storm in the packed grottos and in the deep forests, there wasn't much left of the rivaling bands anymore. We all grouped together then, against all of our morals and values, if only to survive until spring.

Those of us who did survive were stuck with the painful heartache of seeing the muddy and uncomfortable spring that came after The Great Blizzard had carved its stigma into our precious land. The grouped rivals managed to stay together, and they formed the Ciaran herd, commemorating the winter of darkness that they had endured, and reminding them of why they banded together in the first place: to live.

Now, the horses of Lux, or the Luxan horses, are trying to piece back together what they had lost. Paradise is growing back now: back to how we remembered it. Those of us who have passed on still watch over our descendants, trying to keep them from repeating the history that almost destroyed us all.

Already faced with this challenge, there still remains the mystery across the sea: what lies behind the wall of The Forbidden Mountains. Piece by piece, the puzzle is coming together, but will this mystery tear us away from what we were already forced to see as of the highest importance?

Can we hold on to the simple will to survive long enough to keep the peace, or will these lands slowly drift back into chaos? Will we remember the light, and even the darkness, that brought the herds together so long ago? The future lies with you, and with your descendants now.

A foreboding wind shakes the trees, and so the story unfolds.