Long ago, a priest with the sacred text of the Sacraa led a band of followers up into the mountains. Such was his Will, though the inspiration behind it has long been lost in time. Some time after occurred a great cataclysm, and along the slopes there were land-slips and swift thawings and sudden floods, and one whole side of the crest slipped and came down in thunder, and cut off our villages forever from the exploring feet of those who dwelt below.

Generation begat generation. There came a time when a child was born who was twenty generations from the ancestor who had led his people into these mountains. By this time, they had forgotten many things; they had devised many things. Their tradition of the greater world they came from became mythical in color and uncertain, but their belief in the teachings of the Sacraa remained unchanged. In all things they were strong and able, living hardily where others could not survive.

Gazing out from the snowy peaks, the mountainsides fade into the clouds. The people could not travel so far down the mountain as to reach the clouds, nor would they do so if they could. Those who have fallen have never been seen again. Yet there was still a peak that had not been tamed, one at the very edge of their world. Few came to this mount, and yet one day an expedition was planned. The little party worked their difficult and almost vertical way up to the very foot of the last and greatest precipice, and how they built a night shelter amidst the snow upon a little shelf of rock, and how presently they found one had gone missing. They shouted, and there was no reply; shouted and whistled, and for the rest of that night they slept no more.

As the morning broke they saw the traces of his fall. It seems impossible he could have uttered a sound. He had slipped eastward towards the unknown side of the mountain; far below he had struck a steep slope of snow, and ploughed his way down it in the midst of a snow avalanche. His track went straight to the edge of a frightful precipice, and beyond that everything was hidden. Far, far below, and hazy with distance, they could see the dark shapes of spires through the mist. But they did not know what their eyes fell upon. Unnerved by this disaster, they abandoned their attempt in the afternoon, and the expedition leader was called away to his years of temple service before he could make another attack. To this day the mountain lifts an unconquered crest, and their old shelter crumbles unvisited amidst the snows.

And the man who fell survived.

At the end of the slope he fell a thousand feet, and came down in the midst of a cloud of snow upon a snow slope even steeper than the one above. Down this he was whirled, stunned and insensible, but without a bone broken in his body; and then at last came to gentler slopes, and at last rolled out and lay still, buried amidst a softening heap of the white masses that had accompanied and saved him.

And so it came to pass that he entered the land called Thera.

His interactions with the peoples of Thera were fraught with incredulity, then disappointment, and finally resentment. The land was so infested with idolatry that his ability to see that their beliefs were falsifiable fairy tales caused many Therans to assume that he was insane. He took it upon himself to educate these people, to show them their folly, to open their eyes to the Truth. It completely mystified him that what he took as fact from his upbringing was openly met with violence and scorn. Even the reviled hastily made signs to ward off evil and went back to their cups in his presence.

Far and wide he wandered helplessly trying to explain the Truth to those who walked unseeing in the darkness. In Hamsah, the Sultan’s guards first imprisoned him and then expelled him from the city not to return under pain of death. In Galadon, he was chased from an inn and out of town by a violent mob. Arial City, filled with beings such as himself, refuted his words under a hail of stones.

He came at last to the city of Arkham, and to the south he found the Temple. A sudden inspiration came upon him, a new Will forming within his mind. Alone in the country of the blind, he knelt down on upon the cold, stone steps and began to pray from the sacred text:

And when that was said,
Another came to him and said,
"Father, I wish to spread your
Wrath to the profane who can't
Be woken. Let me sever
Them from life,
As you have taught us."

And the Father said,
"So be it, you shall be my instrument of wrath."