Larsan Folly
The Larsan Folly
In the Year 726, Old Valendian:
The Larsan Folly is the most generous name given to the time of strife that befell the world after the coming of the great Mist. It is a dark time of lost history, where fiends sprung whole from the Mist and tore apart cities, men tore apart nations, and civilization's fire almost burnt out in the dark night of barbaracy.
What is known is scattered and fragmented, and diligent scholarship has only uncovered the facts of the events, but few of the motivations. What is known is that Emperor Larsa of Archadia, citing the evils of manufacted nethicite and the terrible effects it took upon the armies and people of Dalmasca, undertook to destroy the sources of these tainted artifacts once and for all.
It is known that Emperor Larsa and the Queen Ashe went together to the Ridoran Cataract, and the Pharos there. The events of the day are not fully known or understood; and the ruins of the Pharos remain so mist-infested that no ship, air or sea, has dared within ten miles of the island since that day.
Mist poured from the Pharos; so thick it blotted out the sun, until the sky seemed to run riot with the terrible colors. A madness swept the vieran race; a rage so terrible, it is told of only in bloody, hushed whispers. Those few viera remaining, old enough to have been alive upon that terrible time, bear scars, and few can or will speak of the horrors endured or, often, perpetuated, by them.
Men and women died in the streets; torn apart by Fiends, choking on Mist so thick that every breath became a wild magic. Houses, cities, crumbled, rotted, burned. Within a month, no nation known to the world remained in existence; the centers of power disrupted, destroyed, undone by the mad Mist that swept the world. Races never before known sprung from the Mist, as confused and terrified as any other, having been born into a world gone mad.
How long, precisely, the terrible Mist raged, is not entirely known. The shortest credible estimate is three months; the longest, eight years. The Mist Madness that many endured made most diaries useless; ravings of madmen, moments of lucidity, terrible despair.
The salvation of civilization would not come quickly; and it remains to this day a work in torturously grinding progress. But it was reseeded after the fall primarily by two very disparate groups, often at odds philosphically: The Sky Pirates, and the Judges.
The Sky Pirates had fared better that most during the time of the Mist; their airships allowed them to fly high above the Mist, descending only for resupply, and the colonization of many of the new flying islands that arose during the Larsan Folly allowed for successful farming and long-term resupply.
The Judges, remnants of Archadia's Ministry of Law, took it upon their order to return to the ways of the ancient laws, and as knight-errants, travelled the land. Their tales are legendary, and there are few towns to this day that were not, in part, founded by the vigilance of a Judge, bringing the Law to the lawless wilderness.
Before the days of the Larsan Folly, the "Pirate" part of Sky Pirate was more often euphemism than not; sailors of the sky, most were working-class people of decent morality and background, who felt no bond or kinship to any one nation, and roamed freely through the world. When the Larsan Folly befell our world, they were the first to rally; supplying news, messages, information, from city to city, from ruin to ruin. Supplies, medicine, support, the Sky Pirates became a steady trade in the skies over the Mists, and well after they had faded. Of course, as commerce of the sky swiftly overtook land commerce due to the Fiend populations, the "Pirates" part of Sky Pirates once again became a fitting moniker; and many are the tales of piracy in the high skies, of great injustice and justice wrought alike by their kind upon one another.
In this fashion, it could be said, both the Judges and the Sky Pirates had this in common; eschewing any bond to one land, they were able to do their good works across the face of Ivalice, and spread far and wide in their efforts to undo the damage wrought by the Mists.
In future chapters, we will explore the the good works wrought by these disparate men and women.
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