The Keeper of the History of the Irda stood on the hillside, surrounded by her people, assisted by friends and love ones, though she was as young and strong as the saplings that grew nearby. She had seen the world of her childhood pass on, had seen the sacred History of her people destroyed, but still she smiled, because of the Gift that she would give to all her people.

She held up the book, the Gift of the gods, and in a voice as pure and clear, as bright and beautiful as sunshine, spoke the beginning of the words written within, the words that wove the History of the World, of the Ogres, firstborn of the gods.

This I have salvaged out of the destruction. The music is gone forever, as is the beauty of the Ogres, but the words are preserved for all to read.

We are the Irda, firstborn of the gods.

The High God looked down upon the chaos and bid the god Reorx to forge the universe with his mighty hammer. From the forge of the gods, our world was wrought and the gods played here, as children gambol in a field.

In the sculpting of the world, sparks flew from the anvil and settled in the skies, danced in the heavens. The sparks were spirits with voices like starshine. They shone as the gods themselves, for they were pieces of the gods themselves.

The gods saw the spirits and wanted them for themselves, and they battled over them, striking mighty blows upon the world. The High God looked down upon the destruction and was angry with his children. In the heat of his anger, he decreed that each of the triumvirate of the gods, Evil, Neutral and Good, could gift the spirits with one legacy, and afterward, must allow the spirits to go free.

The gods of Light gave the spirits bodies, that they might master their world. The Dark gods offered weakness and want, that the spirits might learn greed and corruption. The gods of Gray, the Shadow gods, gave the spirits free will, that they might shape their own lives.

And so, the races were born.

From the gods of Evil came the Ogres, firstborn of the world. Gifted with immortality and untold beauty, the Ogres chose the lofty mountains as their home.

From the gods of Goodness and Light came the elves, graceful and regal and good, who sought the enchanted forests and hid themselves away to live in harmony with the land.

Those of the Middle, the Gray gods, brought forth the humans. They were short lived and brutish, but they had the capacity to both destroy and love. To them were left the grassy plains.

The Ogres set themselves above to rule the other children of the world, but the elves were too placid, too good to make suitable slaves. The Ogres turned to the humans to build their castles and their cities and their roads. On the bones of humans, the Ogres built a civilization.

Like stars in the sky, the watchers of the darkness were the mighty Ogres, building a nation of order and discipline. But their hungers consumed them, their greed and desire made them weak and ugly, and their appetites devoured them.

The humans rebelled against their cruelty and vengeance, and the Ogres fell from the grace of the gods.

Igraine, governor of a mighty province, learned from the humans the most precious gift of all. He learned of choice, of choosing between right and wrong. He learned from the humans the gift the gods had given, the ability to destroy and to love and the potential to choose between.

He gathered about him the Irda, the Children of the Stars, his friends and family, those who believed his vision, and they fled the mountains. Through hardships they traveled, finding a new home, Anaiatha, among the Dragon Isles.

The Ogres are no more. They will disappear back into the chaos from which the world was made.

But the Irda will continue, in goodness and strength, firstborn of the gods, chosen of the gods.

And this History, the Irdanaith, the Book of the Stars, will continue. I write it for all the Irda to see and study, that we may never make the mistakes of our ancestors, that the History will never be lost.