Lordeans Final Address
These were the final words spoken by Lordean before the assembled armies at Nortaq, moments before Taninsam and Tohu appeared to judge the warring peoples. They have been recited at the Festival of Remembrance ever since, a reminder of what one soul was willing to sacrifice for peace.
- Preserved by witnesses from all sides of the First War, their accounts remarkably consistent despite their enmity
Lordean''s Final Address
Brothers and sisters of all races-for that is what we are, beneath the blood that stains our hands-I speak to you not as a commander, not as a warrior, but as one who has seen too much death and can bear no more.
Fifty years we have fought. Fifty years of fathers burying sons, of mothers weeping over empty cradles, of cities burned and forests poisoned and everything good and beautiful ground to ash beneath the boots of war.
And for what? For pride? For vengeance? For borders drawn on maps that the dead cannot read?
I have killed your sons. You have killed mine. We have each taken from the other things that can never be returned, inflicted wounds that will never fully heal. This is the truth of war-it makes monsters of us all, and calls the making glory.
But I say to you now: it ends. Here. Today. With me.
The gods gave us this world as a gift, and we have repaid their generosity with blood. We were meant to be guardians against the darkness, and instead we have become the darkness ourselves. We were trusted with creation, and we have chosen destruction.
If my death can purchase even one moment of hesitation, one instant where a blade is not swung, one heart that chooses mercy over murder-then it will have been worth more than all my years of war.
Remember me not as a warrior. Remember me as one who finally learned that some victories are not worth winning.
May the light of Taninsam guide you all to the peace I could not find in life.
The Aftermath
Moments after Lordean finished speaking, Taninsam and Tohu manifested above the battlefield. The punishment that followed-the withdrawal of magic, the beginning of the Age of Silence-was terrible, but it was also mercy. The war ended not with victory but with divine intervention, exactly as Lordean had hoped.
For it is written: Lordean did not die at Nortaq. He was transformed-taken by the gods as a symbol of what mortals could become if they chose sacrifice over slaughter. What became of him afterward, none can say.
What matters is not where Lordean went, but what he left behind: proof that even in the darkest moments, redemption is possible.