And so it was that these Exiles escaped that worst of punishments.
But exiled they were, and to a world both young and primitive. Though punished for sacrilege, they maintained a sense of the right and the good, ideas yet in their infancy on this world. For though this world was possessed of life both mystical and mundane, the axis of their morality was far shifted from that of the Exiles.
This world held not the daemon and the angel, but rather the chaotic and the harmonious, the Fey and the Mystical. The sense of good and evil, compromised though it may have been, held by the exiles, could only end poorly in such surroundings. When dealings between the races took place, the terms on which each side dealt were incomparable, and though linguistic difficulties were circumvented, this would prove only to exacerbate later problems.
For soon after their arrival, the Exiles made enemies among the Fey, whom they declared war upon. This war was of terrible consequence, for though ancient and powerful, both races lacked the prolific nature of their younger cousins. The embitterment drawn from the casualties of this war only ingrained their mutual hatred all the deeper. The war was without finish, for the exiles alienated the potential allies they might have found among the Mystical, who were opposed to the Fey in many pursuits. Worse still; the culpable among the Exiles, those who had earned the fate of their race, moved unseen amongst the Fey, and passed secrets of true darkness to them.
As did the first shadow echo the first light, so was evil born from the goodly exiles to this young world.
Amidst this war, changes were wrought upon the nature of the Exiles. Lives of many summers now ran uncounted, and their race became less prolific. This change only increased the rage that they, as a race, felt for the killings committed by the Fey. In their arrogance they did not see that the Fey had become pawns of their own darker brothers, and that their rage was hypocritical. In want of a final solution, it was proposed that if allies could not be found among the natives, perhaps they could be fashioned. For great was the power of the Exiles, and amongst the primitive races was one that was akin to their servants, long lost due to their great sacrilege. Forged as an alloy of the natural race and the magic of the exiles, this new race became the Vassals.
But this bold stroke only brought the struggle to a new level, for as the dark secrets had been passed to the Fey by the culpable Exiles, so was the magic of the forging. New servants arose to serve the Fey, and sporadic skirmishes grew to total war. Where before both sides had been restrained by their own rare immortality, they now spent their servants as innumerable grains of sand in a desert of growing troubles.
Like a whirlpool, the troubles eventuated by the coming of the Exiles grew unchecked, drifting inexorably toward the fate merited by a crime most heinous. Though this had not been a world of the angel and the daemon, that fate too lay nigh the horizon.
It was into this spreading conflict and darkness that two beings arrived from the old home of the Exiles. Though powerful in the grandest of fashions, they too were chained by the lessons intended for them by greater powers. This is their tale, and the tale of how the punishment of the Exiles eventuated.
