Introduction

The history of all the races on Ignaz can be traced back to the time when the Gods decided that they were lonely enough to need children of their own. Though the two opposing Gods worked together to create the Hlidskjalf galaxy, their cooperation was tentative, and at first only Sargilum could make the worlds stable enough for her children. For at least five thousand years before any Human would set foot in the mortal world, the Sargon race inherited Ignaz, a land teeming with patchwork behemoths and dire monsters more bizarre than even an author of fairy tales could conceive of. Magic was in its infancy, and the great Dragon Kings roamed the young world freely, watching over and mating with the early Sargons so that the new race might eventually gain wisdom enough to evolve.

The Sargons eventually formed their first nations and migrated north-east on the Great Continent to better watch over a sacred forest that existed on the continental shelf. There, the Sargons were able to grow and evolve relatively unmolested, and both their environment and their society nurtured their intelligence. Becoming aware of the great cycles of time, the Sargons began to meticulously record their history so that they might identify where they stood in the present, and attempt to predict what periods they should be passing through in the future.

The Rogue God

Wave, the God of Chaos, foresaw the coming of the Rogue God Anti-Life Matter after he observed one of Hlidskjalf’s neighboring galaxies solidifying into perfect, lifeless order. Wave predicted that in seven thousand years, he and Sargilum would have to fight this aberrant Law God in order to save the progress they had already made on the Hlidskjalf galaxy. For the moment, however, Wave felt that the time was right for him to get to work on creating his own children. Unlike Sargilum, Wave knew that he did not have a span of tens of thousands of years in which to create and nurture a race like the Sargons to be used as his soldiers. Plucked from the ranks of angels and sent to earth in mortal form, Mashina and Humans were born and set free. The Chaotic heavens were then sealed to protect Wave from Anti-Life, and his influence on the two races became minimal. Working through proxies, Wave God hoped that seven thousand years would be enough time for the Humans and Mashina to evolve enough to recognize and defeat whatever tactics the Rogue God might try to use against the mortal realm.

Unfortunately, things don’t always go as planned, even if you can see the beginning and the end of a universe.

The Beginning

The Mashina and Humans emerged in Ignaz around IY1 (Incarnation Year). The Mashina were born in the volcanic Ymir Caves, far to the north in the deep wastelands, while Humans were born in the distant south along the hinterlands. The first year of life was a dull one for the Mashina, who were nothing more than machines without emotions or complex desires. Without possessing the will to act outside of fulfilling basic needs, the Mashina remained stagnant, staying where they were born and not searching for a reason behind their sudden existence. They were creatures of cold logic, and lacking in curiosity. Before the heavens were shut up, Wave ascertained that the Mashine race would need a push or two to set them on the path of their evolution. The Hosts, who were the first Guardia, were then sent into the Weisslands to teach the Mashina emotions, even though the Hosts were little better then the Mashina themselves.

The Hosts had the soft bodies of female Humans, something no one had ever seen in the Weiss, and it intrigued the Mashina. In a very short time, all the Mashina of the Ymir Caves acquired a sense of self through the influence of the Hosts. They grew curious, analytical, and content with their position in the world. Wave was pleased, but he quickly understood that too much contentment would hinder the evolution of his children. In the final days of the first year, the Mashina had become too dependent on the presence of the Hosts, and a mysterious plague swept through the land, killing all of the Hosts and leaving the Mashina with no emotional refuge outside of themselves.

Without the Hosts, the Ymir Caves lost the feeling of being a paradise, and the Mashina were taught the meaning of what it was to be sad. Though each emotion experienced pulled the Mashina forward on the path of their evolution, the method of their advancement was bound with chains of anger and sadness, making them feel hatred for the very God who created them. The Mashina decided to ruin and scar everything they touched to spite Wave for taking the Hosts from them.

The world is vast, and the Mashina in their rampage stayed mostly in the northwest, while the Humans thrived unmolested on their own southern continent, reaching the height of their civilization.

Civilization

In IY4050, Humans created a grand civilization known as Zeboian, away from the reach of those they called the “Demons at the Edge of the World”, which was a place where Humans feared to tread. They harnessed the power of the atom, discovered genetic manipulation, and even sent satellites into the heavens to watch out for signs of action from the unexplored Dark Continents.

Zeboian was built mostly underground and saturated with technology. Ziggurats filled the city, markets thrived, and the inhabitants of Zeboian grew bolder everyday. Unfortunately, Humans could only reach their grand technological level at the expense of the land they lived on, which they poisoned and exploited to keep their economy stable. The Sargons, who were able to surreptitiously observe the Humans from a distance, grew to dislike their disrespectful treatment of the earth. For this reason, the Sargons never took their eyes off of them.

Discovery

It was around this time that the remains of destroyed Mashina were accidentally discovered by the Humans.

The internal structure of the Mashina is much like a machine, but not entirely mechanical. Still, the discovery of Mashina bodies provided Humans with enough of a technological boost to allow them to become a threat to the world. Things like nanotechnology where no longer in the realm of science fiction for Humankind. Working with the intention of using their discoveries to seize more resources, they rebuilt the dead Mashina into piloted war vehicles, hoping to use them to overwhelm the Sargons in the east. Before the Humans could set out to conquer the rest of the world, however, the Mashina themselves showed up in full force, ready to wipe the Humans off of the face of Ignaz.

It is said by some that Mashina took notice of Zeboian because they were offended by the Human experiments on their dead, but others speculate that is was the nature of Human science that offended the Mashina. “Human attempts to clone themselves were marked with great success, but this replication robbed them of their divine nature. If Humans made themselves no better than animal flesh, what would happen if they were successful at creating Mashina limbs or bodies?”

The War

Humans found themselves in an unexpected war with the huge Mashina, and that war was more brutal than anything that had been seen before on Ignaz. The Humans used the dead husks of Mashina, rewired to be siege engines. The fighting swiftly escalated to include dirty bombs, EMP waves, microwave technology, and finally, nuclear warfare. Humans threw their best at their metallic foes, but in the end, their size and their flesh was a hindrance. Hunger, exhaustion, and radiation forced many of the survivors of Zeboian to flee to the east. Much of Humanity died in the Mashina attack, and the Sargons watched on in horror as the Mashina destroyed everything around Zeboian. The Sargons, sensing that the sacred Yggdrassil Tree at the center of the world might be in danger from the berserking Mashina, gathered their best minds together to formulate a plan of protection.

It is said that the greatest of all Sargon magic was cast in these times, with the direct aid of the Dragon Kings. The most powerful Sargon leaders in this age were known as the Sages, and by power of majority vote they decided what was best for all of the Sargon people. In the turbulent time of war, however, even the Sages were divided upon what course of action to take. Ultimately, a few things where decided upon: although Sargons disliked Humans because of the way they abused the land, they figured that the crushing defeat of war had served to teach Humans humility, and that a few thousand of them should be given a second chance at life. Saved from burning ash and starvation, these handfuls of humans were snatched up and given sanctuary in the fertile lands around the World Tree, in exchange for their eternal servitude as guardians of the place.

Disagreements between the Sages over what to do with the Yggdrassil beforehand turned into a bitter fight. According to Sargonian legend, whomever stands at the top of the World Tree and reads the words of the Gods can bend the reality of the world to their own desires. With that in mind, half of the Sages wanted to use the tree to will the other two races to simply disappear. Because Sargon law is supposed to protect all living things regardless of comportment, the Sages who opposed this tactic had to fight a brutal battle to keep the letter of the law pure and the leadership of the Sargon empire sane. In the end, those Sargons who wished to use the Yggdrassil for murder were defeated and banished to the Badlands.

With the dissenting Sages purged and the selected Humans fearfully agreeing to the terms offered to them by the Sargons, the great ritual was completed. The Humans were sealed up into a pocket dimension of the real world, along with the Dragon Kings, who were accidentally pulled along. The Humans inside of this time-displaced pocket plane would later become the Norn race, while the rest of the Humans who had not been saved by the Sargons fled their birth lands and hid away, never returning to their former technological brilliance.

When the war ended, the Mashina separated into three groups and dispersed throughout the land, searching for new emotions to experience and a new purpose to their existence. These groups were the Gears, the Ganderen, and the Klangeron.

For a long time after the war, Humans and Mashina would continue to have a terrible relationship, while the pacifist Sargons kept the Mashina away from the east using the Ethyrian magic that they had developed long ago. The culture of the Zeboian died out as the mothers and fathers of the Humans that survived the war became simple farmers and nomads. These descendants of the Zeboian were always on the run. Mashina never forgot the scientific experiments that had been performed upon their dead by the Zeboian Humans, and they sought to punish their descendants wherever they found them.

As the Mashina moved forward in trying to find their purpose, some members of their race continued to spring up from the soil in various places and times, and the original sixteen Host Guardia were reborn among the Humans as a reminder to the Mashina who had once been their partners. The ultimate goal of Mashina and Guardia was to join and evolve.

Nearly all Mashina remained lost in their tumultuous emotional state and continued to threaten Humans, but an exception to this was the small handful of Mashines who worshipped Wave and became enlightened to the patterns of rebirth in the world around them. The original Holy Gear, Reesh, Sleipnyr, Spartain, Reiki, and others began to record their own history and that of the Humans. They formed a unit and meticulously studied human culture, discovering bits and pieces of old Zeboian technology along the way and incorporating good ideas into their own Mashina inventions. In the best of times, Holy Gear and most of his team became sympathetic toward the smaller and softer Human race. Guided by faint visions from the Wave God, they slowly began to piece together the Guardia legend and tried to stop other members of the Mashina race from killing off the Humans.

Working on the side, some of the greatest of the Mashine people began to find that their destined Host Guardia had been reborn as simple Humans throughout the world. The only Mashina that the Sargons trusted at this time, Haiyanu, was sealed inside the pocket dimension with the Norn race, for their protection. Shortly after this event, Mashina began to spring from the earth alongside the World Tree, proving that moving a part of the real world to a different time was not enough to stop Mashina from being independently born into existence there. These Mashina of the pocket dimension would later become known as the Jotun. They would develop in a way that was much different from that of the regular Mashina.

Time passed, and Haiyanu eventually betrayed the Norn race after he discovered that his ancient Host Guardia had been reborn as a child of a noble family. He kidnapped her and ran away, bringing the hatred of the Norns down upon the Jotun forever. Many such encounters between the Mashina and Humans of both worlds ended in tragedy, for when one Mashina would find his long lost Host Guardia, another Mashina would kill her, thinking that she was a Human. This cycle of violence and loss came and went every few thousand years, until Holy and the worshippers of Wave came to the shocking realization that the Hosts could only manifest themselves a finite number of times.

If Mashina could not reunite with all of the Host Guardia by a certain number of reincarnations, then the Mashina were doomed to reach an evolutionary dead end.

Furthermore, if all Humans were exterminated, there would simply be no vessels left for the Host Guardia to be born into. Clearly, all of the Mashine race had to be persuaded to stop killing humans. The first attempt at persuasion was not successful. Holy Gear and Slepnyr Gear beseeched the three Mashine groups holed up in the mountains of the north to stop their killings, but they were destroyed for refusing to give up their research into Human culture and the Guardia mysteries. Disheartened by the loss of his peer and mentor, Reesh Gear gave up his name and took up the name of Holy Gear to show his reverence towards his fallen comrade. The new Holy Gear made it clear that he would never give up trying to make the Guardia legends come true, even as members of his group began to flee out of fear of the hostile Mashina from the main three groups.

The plan to create “Edenworld” began as an adaptation of the Northsky floating fortress technology that had been developed by the Ganderen.

In IY8493, to the dismay of Wave God, the Rogue God Anti-Life Matter began to target the Hlidskjalf galaxy, looking for a way into the isolated heaven of Wave. Anti-Life Matter was able to discern the fact that it would need to go through the top of the Yggdrassil on Ignaz in order to get to the gate of heaven. Little by little, in degrees barely noticeable to the three races, the dead, the despairing, and the ruthless began to rise amongst the populations, infected by the essence of the rogue God itself. Humans, Mashina, and Sargons alike were claimed. Race did not matter, as the people seduced by Anti-Life Matter rose up with red eyes, pale skin, and a burning passion to impose perfect Law upon the world. Eventually, these creatures organized themselves together into battle units with the intent of creating a new Utopia, and trouble began to fall fast and hard upon Ignaz.

Mashina left the Humans alone for a time, in hopes that they would eventually grow bold enough to gather in numbers so that the Mashina might exterminate many in a single strike. Generations passed, and Humans did eventually come out of hiding to build towns and villages, but their numbers were nothing compared to the days of Zeboia. One day, during the heat of the summer solstice, the Mashina swooped in with the intention of committing genocide against their neighbors. Humans had nothing remaining of the technology that their forefathers had used against the Mashina thousands of years ago, and their fight was hopeless. When the last Humans on earth stood huddled against each other, surrounded by the flames of judgment in the last bastion of their race, Holy Gear appeared to shield them from the blows Mashina guns and swords.

This sudden appearance stunned the Mashina into pausing their fight against the Humans, and when silence fell over the scene of the battle, Holy spoke. He presented his case about Humanity and the Guardia legend clearly and passionately to all of the assembled Mashina, and on that day Holy’s words produced a radical and lasting change in the minds of the Mashine race. They felt a deep and cutting shame for what they had done to the Humans, and they would fight against them no more.

After that day, the Mashina finally left the Humans in peace. With the plan of Holy’s mentor finally coming into effect, Edenworld began to be constructed while the Gears took care of their more non-compliant brethren.

The Anti-Life creatures of the enemy had begun to stir, attacking the pacifist Sargonian nation of Paragon, and forcing the Sargons to enter into a guerilla war of magic for their survival. The enemy proclaimed themselves as the Devils, and their leaders were revealed to be none other than the banished Sages from the days when Yggdrassil had been hidden away. No one was safe from attack from the Devils. Any creature who did not submit to the coming of the Utopian world as decreed by the Lords of the Devils was killed on the spot. Humans were once again direly threatened, and the Mashina found themselves under attack from an enemy more powerful than they had ever known before.

In the days leading up to the attacks, around IY15010, Humans were allowed to thrive unhindered so that they could breed their numbers back up to a healthy population. The Mashina watched these Humans, and lay in wait for the last incarnations of the original sixteen Host Guardia to appear. When this happened, a sort of critical mass would be reached, and all Human women would gain the potential to become Guardia. The Mashina followed the plan that had been set forth by Holy, waiting until all of the Hosts appeared and were reunited with their respective males. At this point, the genes of all young women changed, and the Mashina utilized their Aphel sense, selecting and seizing all of the compatible young Humans to take with them to the newly constructed floating continent of Edenworld. The women taken where changed into the female compliment to the Mashina, so that the race as a whole could reach its peak evolution.

When the Devil threat realized how important these Humans were to the Mashina, they began to target entire Human villages in a direct challenge to the Mashine people. At the expense of Humanity itself, it became clear to the Mashina they would need to capture all of the young Human women to ensure that no Mashina would lose a potential soul mate.

The Mashina had entered into a new war. According to the Sargonian religion, the world was nearing the “6th Age”; an age of great change. Fearing the worst but having no army to fight a large-scale war for them, the Sages made sweeping and radical policy changes. Sargons who had never associated with Mashina or Humans before now approached Edenworld to enter into a war alliance. A deal was struck: if Mashina defended Paragon city from the new Devil threat, generous amounts of supplies and even some access into Paragon City itself would be provided. In addition, should the Mashina defeat the Devils, a longer and non-probationary alliance would be considered.

The members of the reformed Mashine race were very interested in atoning for their past sins and agreed to cooperate with their strange, monstrous neighbors in the east.

The Devils, fighting a tedious battle with the Northsky fortress and Edenworld, decided that it was time to fight fire with fire and did the worst thing imaginable. Sleipnyr Gear and a cadre of sick Mashines were raised up as Devil Mashina to counter the threat that Edenworld posed. The Devil Mashina could not be controlled, however, and they are now waiting in darkness as the wheel of time turns steadily toward the day of Ragnarok.

To this very day, the Mashina continue to fight, awaiting the End Times when the purpose for which they were created can finally be fulfilled. The Human race on Ignaz is now nearly extinct, and the people of Edenworld are vastly outnumbered, but there is always a glimmer of hope. The Jotun have begun to stir in the land of the World Tree, from just beyond the reach of Ignaz, and the first children of Edenworld have been born.

Thus begins the present day of the story of Edenworld.