PROLOGUE

The Chronicles of Halar

-In the Beginning

In the beginning, there was the omnipotent, the omniscient and the omnipresent being named Halar, or the One in the common tongue. HE existed alone when the world was still young, formless and empty and darkness spread throughout all the lands. And HE said, "Let there be light" and so it was fulfilled and seeing that it was good, HE separated the light from the dark and named the light 'day' and the darkness 'night'-the first day. Then HE said, "Let the heavens be separated from the waters of the earth" and thus the sky was created -the second day. And HE said, "Let dry continents appear and all the waters be gathered to one place" and land and the oceans were created. Seeing that it was good, HE then said, "Let the land bear vegetation and all forms of plants" and so it came to pass –the third day.

The Halar then went on to say, "Let there be two great lights to govern both the day and the night" and it was done and HE named the light that governed the day the sun and the light that governed the darkness the moon and as HE was a being of light, HE made the light over the night lesser than that which governed the day –the fourth day. The next day, the Halar said, "Let the waters teem with living beings and flying creatures rule over the skies" and all happened according to the Halar's words and seeing that what HE had created was good, HE blessed them saying, "Be fruitful and multiply". And so the fifth day passed.

And the Halar said, "Let living creatures populate the continents" and it was so and seeing that all was good, HE then said, "Let us make man in our likeness and place him over all others, that he may rule over all living creatures of the world" and thus the first human was created –the sixth day. Then, seeing that all that HE had made was good, HE then chose to rest on the seventh day.

So, the world was shaped in seven days and all living creatures then observed the seventh day with respect thereafter, the day which the Master of All Creation rested from HIS exertions.

For a time, everything went well and all life prospered upon the rich world until that infamous occasion, that of the fall of man.

Not much had ever been chronicled regarding the fall of man, yet whatever that happened undoubtedly shaped the condition of the world for generations to come. All that was obvious was that the favor and the presence of the Halar left the man, the creation that HE had originally placed as overlord of all other living beings and as a result, corrupted all life with sin. Once placid creatures turned into hostile beasts and they feasted upon each other and on the man if they could. Man himself became exceedingly dangerous, beating on each other, even indulging in horrific crimes. Those were dark ages indeed, when brother fought brother, when father fought son, when no compassion existed throughout the entire world at all.

Eventually, order was soon restored but without the Halar, man lacked direction, purpose and unity. Petty squabbles ultimately tore humanity apart, as the early men decided to go their way and erect their own civilizations, each striving to outdo the others. Some went to the bitterly cold north and laid the foundation for the Myriad Empire; some went down south and established the kingdoms of Vaj'ya whereas others went to the east to create the Phacien realms. However, there still remained some who were faithful to the memory of the Halar and went to the west to set up the Corinthos Church, haven to all who still held firm to the teaching of the Halar. None however ventured into the central continent of Freya except for a few brave souls, little was ever known about the lands there and rumor had it that the Halar had resided there.

As the world changed, so did the form of men in order to adapt to their surroundings. Those in the lush greeneries of Phacien for example grew to become in tune with nature itself, their senses heightened and the movement quick and stealthy. They now named themselves the Aesir. The men in Myriad developed highly cold-resistant bodies and grew to become men of great stature; their skin however was very pale, giving each one of them an albino appearance. There in the frosty north, they developed an unhealthy never-ending thirst for knowledge and called themselves the Daim, the all-knowing and looked down upon their less-illustrious neighbors. The kingdoms in Vaj'ya however were at constant war with one another; and the continent threatened to be torn apart by war and strife. Ultimately, two major factions prevailed; overwhelming all of the lesser blocs and they were the Hym, nocturnal and bestial humans and the insidious Feldrak whose greed for all beauty was unsurpassed. Only those in Corinthos remained much unchanged and their knowledge ever expanded day by day. The concept of war was alien to them and their civilization expanded rapidly.

The Aesir were content to stay all by themselves in the green woods of Phacien, guarding their borders zealously against all intruders. Vaj'ya on the other hand was torn apart by civil war and strife, the Hym and Feldrak constantly waging war upon one another, intent on destroying the other and obliterating them completely off the face of the planet. Yet even though the Church and the Empire prospered and became mighty in their own right, it was inevitable that they would one day collide and clash it did, in the center of the world, the mysterious continent of Freya. Both nations were looking for new places to expand their sphere of influence to and what better place to do so then at the large and supposedly rich plains of Freya. Establishing settlements there, they quickly moved inland seeking to draw upon the resources of this new and untamed land and to harness them for the benefit of their respective nations.

Then, men discovered the material that would ultimately prove to be the source of all conflicts to come, and it was called Mana. Little has been noted of its discovery but it was soon found out that Mana possessed mystical properties and even gifted its wielder the use of magic, long said to be a non-existent, mythical ability! The Empire and the Church instantly deployed countless miners to harvest this new and highly precious resource and it would only be a matter of time when these great nations would encounter each other.

The first meeting between the two great empires did not go well, needless to be said. Both nations sought for dominion over the new continent of Freya and neither would relinquish it willingly. As both thought it was their right to claim the new fair land for themselves, they soon fell into petty squabbling over who should truly be the master over Freya, the Grand Vizier or the Emperor. As a result, both factions formally declared war upon each other and the continent of Freya was engulfed in flame-the First Great War.

Over the next three years, millions of lives were lost and both civilizations teetered on the edge of total annihilation. Seeing that the Church was in a precarious position, the Grand Vizier of the Church during those evil times, the Lord Ramon decided to send overtures of peace to their northern brethren which were accepted gratefully. The war had cost both sides dearly and the Empire and the Church were almost bankrupt at that point. Therefore, both factions met at the city of Havan in Freya and signed the Accords of Havan, a brokering of peace which would be honored for years to come between the Church and the Empire.

Sadly, the new and tentative peace that was brokered by the Grand Vizier would not last long and conflict would once again rear its ugly head as both civilizations continued to grow great after the war. The once-neutral Aesir and the long-time foes that were the Hym and the Feldrak too were dragged into the escalating tensions as once again the Church and the Empire sought to master the other.

The Daim in particular grew exceedingly intelligent and proud of their mighty achievements, of their magnificent cities and their technologically advanced armies. Such was their pride, their arrogance; that they dared to perform the unspeakable, to attempt to play God. Their intentions- to create a new breed of humans, a species totally committed to the Empire and would utterly devastate the Church.

Creation of new beings was undoubtedly virtually an impossible task, or so did The Church of Corinthos believe and had long considered even the contemplation of such to be heresy. Those who sought to create new sentient beings first thought to tamper with the genetic structure of men, before seeking out new methods to overcome the limitations of the human body. Genetic manipulation, inter-breeding, radiation were among the inhumane methods used, yet they were considered a small price to pay for the progress of science. Many of their test subjects needless to say did not survive.

After many years of trying without success, those involved in that accursed project or also known as Project Genesis finally achieved a breakthrough resulting in the birth of the first genosapien codenamed Adam, a name intended to mock the beliefs of the main detractors of Project Genesis, the Church.

Adam indeed was almost a flawless being, his physical and mental abilities far outstripping that of normal humans. He too possessed many traits similar to that of humans, like the ability to feel emotions and the capability to think rationally. There were even leaked reports that he possessed supernatural abilities, the gift of magic. There was one untimely flaw found in this new creation however, and that was his temperament. Adam was discovered to highly unpredictable, suffering from extreme mood swings as well as being prone to extreme violence, also proving to have a bit of a sadistic streak, judging by the way he had disposed of the 'pets' his creators had given him, other creations that they had engineered. He delighted in torture, relished in the screams of horror and basked in moans of anguish and despair. One of his creators even went as far to likening him to the devil incarnate. However, they still continued to nurture their 'baby', constantly keeping an eye on his progress as well as making sure that he could not escape.

There was no way in the world that they could have foreseen what would have been the consequence of their actions.

It all began to unravel as Adam became more and more restless and the days went by. For the entire length of his short existence, he had been confined within the cellars of the facility he was created in and he knew that his 'parents' merely kept him there to control him. Over the times, he gradually lost his patience until he finally decided to take matters into his own hands, seeking the one thing that he had been denied all his life by his captors; freedom. Wielding the abilities that had been gifted to him through excessive experimentation and genetic tampering, he sought to break free and escape the dreariness of his life and thus, the Massacre of Genesis came to be, each and every personnel assigned there was brutally killed and mutilated, all by the bare hands of their own creation, all save one so the rumors say. For it had been said that Adam killed all his tormenters but one, a woman…an exceedingly beautiful woman on the staff and he raped her, intending to produce offspring that would aid him in overthrowing those who had created him, the humans.

Rumor also had it that the woman, shocked and enraged by Adam's heinous actions of killing her colleagues and defiling her took her revenge on Adam within the isolated facility. Nothing was ever known of what she did to him but the stories stated that as a result, Adam disappeared without a trace. People say that he ran into the wilderness of Phacien where the Aesir put him out of his misery, others say that he went into the Barrens, long said to be inhabitated by monstrous and dark humanoid creatures and there he died alone. For almost twenty years, there came no news about him and people gradually forgot about the whole scenario and took it as a prank, an old wives' tale, even the stuff of myth and legend, not realizing how foolish these thoughts were.

Nine times and ten times and half a time passed and Adam revealed himself once again, emerging from the icy wastelands of the Daimyar and this time, no one could say that his existence was all a bluff. For Adam emerged from the Barrens at the head of a mighty demon army, numbered in the millions and he himself had grown terrible to look upon for his once handsome hue had now been replaced by a form full of hate, malice and rage and the desire to share his agony was great and above all things, he desired revenge upon the human race. Taking for himself the name Abaddon, or Apollyon the destroyer he marched on the Human Empires, starting with the hated Daim first and was abetted mainly by the Seven Sins; Lust, Greed, Wrath, Sloth, Gluttony, Envy and the mightiest of the Seven, Pride. Overrunning the lands of the Empire to the north quickly, hethen turned his attention towards Freya, the land rich with Mana.

From the discovery of Mana to the conception of Adam or now better known as Abaddon, the great angel of the Abyss, these were the events that would shape the world to come for many ages to pass….