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When I awoke in Paragon City I was wracked by anger. Furious though I did not know who or what could have elicited such ire. In the aftermath of my recollection I like to think I understood. Though I’ll admit I probably am missing some cosmic needle in the stack, some full accounting of actions that resulted in my catastrophe.

With an unusual new power over Time I chased my legacy through the eons. From the vaunted halls of New Rome to the annals of the Precambrian Era. No shred of my beginning, nor my ultimate fate could be discovered. No birth records, no death certificates. I had ceased to exist as a member of any timeline. I had destroyed my own causality.

Within the depths of the Temporal Ocean I saw a force, a darkness so profound I have returned to the shores of Paragon City to rescue those who have fallen or been forgotten from the tempest of Time. To forge an alliance of those who could face this darkness and aide in it’s defeat.

Time has it’s permutations, the ghosts of our past haunt us even today. The legacy of the Roman Empire echoes for millennia with it’s accomplishments. How we regard those ghosts colors how we’re seen to future generations and sets the tone for the continued haunting.

Dark Astoria is talked about for generations though largely forgotten thanks to the efforts of early-21st Century heroes who fought the growing menace under it’s streets. I like to think I did my part, disrupting ritual sites. Not glamorous work, but necessary.

Melog lurched carefully behind me, my wife nestled in his massive rocky arms like a slumbering child. His thundering feet trod the path behind us as I lead the way to our ritual site. A small cairn deep in one of the parks that nestled between the towering heights of Paragon City.

The stars twinkled above, setting the stage for sorceries of a rare sort. A backdrop to my hubris manifest.

The Circle of Thorns number among some of the most dedicated and depraved practitioners you’ll ever read about. Readily known for kidnapping select bloodlines and robbing museums of antiquities, their antics have become so common it borders on comical were it not so dire. Possession of any part of the Malleus Mundi is prone to attract their attention and it did just that. As I slid into the third hour of my incantation they sprung to attack.

Energies had been coalescing around me for some time, the very essence of elemental forces seeping off the stone as it hung suspended in air above my prone wife. As the night moved into morning and the witching hours chimed, I could feel something slip free, the stone was releasing more than simple earthen motes, some inner nuance was coming loose. This revelation invigorated me and renewed my stamina for the last phase of the spell. Then they struck.

Melog was craft of one purpose, to serve me. His instincts mirrored my desire and as the hooded malcontents crawled up the hillside he rushed to meet them head on. He is but one servitor and the Circle never travel alone. As a handful of lessor acolyte were countered by Melog’s rigid girth, a more seasoned wizard circumvented his physique and snaked his way to my shrine.

This was all it took, my attention was pulled at a crucial moment and while for a time I thought I could hold the energies in suspension, I was proven wrong. The light released as my grip lessened was blinding, the roar deafening. I never know what happened next. The spell spiraled out of control and tendrils of unrestrained energy snaked around the hillside eradicating acolytes, Melog and finally.. me..

Time alone mended the wounds of my mind and a quiet moment of recall was all needed to understood my error. As a sorcerous master I was upon the verge of joining a cabal of others, whose vaunted ranks dedicated to help guide the mystically inclined within Paragon City. My tutelage garnished me with great power over stone and this mastery my qualifying token. The High Council was to be my opus were it not for darkness that descended upon me with such fury.

My wife was stuck by illness that few could identify and fewer could name. A wasting malady capable of terrifying haste. In my anguish I sought answers, a means to use my power and save one life. A path so foolish that even now I shudder at the consequences.

The Malleus Mundi is known in many circles arcane and otherwise. It’s pages rumored to hold secrets that would unmake reality or grant godhood, the very stuff of myth among legendary beings. On select days of the year the book appears in the city and the brave, daring and insane all clamor to find it, to hold it for just long enough that a single wish might be granted. Pages tear from it, scattered by some impish forces, and offer a tantalizing taste of the power the completed manuscript might hold.

A single page is all it took for my plan to unfold. The incantation seemed simple, though it would be dangerous. Power beyond the ken of many in my field for sure, but I had to try. I would steal a measure of time from a stone, a simple century of it’s rigid existence. A gift to my wife who lay with but a handful of days remaining..

Outrage clouded me on those first days. My actions had rent me from time and space. Though I did not know the damage I had caused, the scope of my catastrophe beyond reckoning, I was haunted by a furious ire. If only I could remember who or hat had earned such hate..

The doctors referred to me by a name I couldn’t recall. Everstone. FBSA records knew of me, though few could pinpoint their point of entry to the database. Theories abounded though in time this mystery would fade as I sought a more complete understanding.

Time is an inexplicable force. At once a river through which we drift and an ocean upon which we sail. From beyond the shores of Eternity I have sailed to the reaches of Precambrian Earth. I watched empires be crushed beneath the inevitable pace of progress and elemental forces battle for supremacy. All this in a search for myself, for I have lost everything in the pursuit of foolish ideals..

..we should start at the beginning. Where I woke upon the shores of Paragon City, bereft of sanity and besieged by outrage and guilt.