Warden: A title that nephilim have fought and killed for across millennia. A mark of prestige that echoes through ages with the deeds of those that claimed it. My birthright. Once, it was all I ever aspired to. Now, it sickens me.

In truth, the mantle of Warden is a concession; a compromise born of necessity that satisfied neither party from its inception. Although, one could call that the mark of a successful compromise, considering the alternative was the potential end of all life on the continent.

The Era of Discord saw humanity teeter on the brink of extinction. Its reckless overuse of magic saw entire civilizations consumed in the fallout. It preceded the rise of the nephilim; beings born of that magic with both powerful souls and a hunger for them. They carved out kingdoms for themselves by conquering the broken empires of the past, assimilating them under rule that was occasionally benevolent. My ancestors wrote many treatises waxing on the greatness of the past, but the truth is rarely so glamorous. A thousand would-be kings and queens emerged from the ruins of humanity’s folly, most as petty and cruel as the tyrants that preceded them. Theirs were kingdoms of ambition, and ambition breeds conflict. But then, conflict born of conviction need not be evil. For all its horror, we cannot deny that there is glory in war.

From such times rose the Paradise Church. Born in the last remaining cradle of safety in the continent, they had a vision of an uncorrupted humanity. United by belief in a time when faith was all but forgotten, they became a force unlike any the world had seen. I would love to have seen it; tyrannical monsters defeated by those they deemed so ‘common’. Faith or no, the courage to face foes as they did is something worthy of legends. The saints of the codex earned their place in history.

It took nearly three-hundred years, but one by one, despots were laid low by their holy magic. With bloody hands, the church claimed the fertile heart of the continent. They would have surely spread further had they not met a perplexing obstacle. The prosperous and geographically protected region known as the Heartland had served as the foundation for the church. The regions beyond the newly styled ‘Paradise’ had not been as fortunate.

Not that the lands of the Church were free of hardship, but the conditions of what the adepts began to call the ‘frontiers’ were of a different persuasion. An order of magnitude larger, it played host to many more warring factions that had long reduced themselves to ashes. In doing so, they had caused irreparable damage to much of the land. As such, they had neither unity nor natural barriers to protect them from the next threat.

Nightmares; soulless amalgamations born of uncontrolled magic and fear. Monsters, in a way, but closer to a natural disaster. They do not discriminate. They do not think. They consume mortals and immortals without distinction. Faced with this aberration, a new form of symbiosis had formed between the nephilim and their human subjects. Blood for power. Power for protection.

This posed an interesting challenge for the church. Cowed and wretched servants were easy to convince of their holiness. A tortured slave has little reason to refuse power, and those masses had given them much advantage in their wars to take the heartland. These new kingdoms were sturdier, and built upon dynasties that had survived centuries of war. Though the paladins of Paradise could defeat any one such house, to conquer one was to invite conflict with all of them, for they were not so foolish as to ignore the rising threat to their dominion. Both sides were too powerful, too convinced of their own greatness, and to war was to invite another calamity that this time, would so none rise from the ruin.

The Twilight Entreaties were the church’s answer. An offer of legitimacy and partnership in the eyes of the dominant power of the world. Some took it as an insult; as if such a thing was the rite of the order to bestow. Others saw it as an opportunity; with the backing of the church, they could destroy any competitors who refused the offer and claim their dominion forevermore. The church further offered places in Paradise for any houses that were willing to ally with them. Though humiliating to some, it was a tempting offer to those that had seen so much death that it was no longer entertaining for them.

And so, both sides accepted, planning to outlive or outlast the other. Then, millennia passed. The lands of Paradise are as bountiful as ever. I have seen them myself. I have stood before the grand temples that reach higher than the spires of castle Lithia and watched thousands of souls flagellate themselves in devotion. It is a pitiful display, for they no longer pray to find meaning, but because it is all they know.

Better, I suppose, than what has happened to us. We are trapped, now, stagnant and ignorant. There is no glory to be had anymore: no meaning in the violence. Endless fighting against creatures that do not live, or breathe or feel or love has reduced us to something less. It is poetic, in a way. Like the nightmares we exterminate, we know only enough to understand our own endless hunger. Gone are those with ambition. Gone are those that reached for more. Gone are pride in strength and deed that led us to touch the truth of creation. We are rotten flesh hanging from the bones of control, clinging to any opportunity to assert dominance in our dim, hopeless kingdoms.

To be anointed as warden is an honor; the highest that the church can bestow. It is authority, over mortal and immortal to steer the course of an entire realm and shape the frontier. It is power to quicken the hearts of all beneath their gaze. Yet it is a falsehood: a golden circlet fastened by chains. For what is a warden if she cannot leave her own prison? She is as much a prisoner as those she rules. The cell may be larger, its furnishings bright. But it is a cell nonetheless, and we are suffocating in it.