In the accounts that survive from this era, the first mention of Nergal appears with a precision unusual even for the muralmasters of that age. The sages, their confidence tempered by the long labour of restoring the leylines after the Second Coming, approached the reopening of the astral channels with cautious optimism. It was during one such attempt that a voice—warm, eloquent, and measured—answered from beyond.
Nergal introduced himself as a traveller of a neighbouring plane, a place where memory had thinned and where intricate machines had displaced older, more harmonious arts. The chroniclers depict him with a gentle bearing, marked by a soft blue wash traditionally reserved for honoured envoys. His presence stirred hope among the scholars of Lycéya and Vyrnos, who had grown weary from centuries of strain and repair.
Yet in the deeper strata of the old records, there are hints of unease. Some older fragments, rarely studied even at the time, speak of ancient barriers raised between Terra and the red world to the east of Sol—barriers forged after a calamity so distant that only its shadow remained in ritual warnings. The voices who urged caution when Nergal arrived were few, their concerns outmatched by the promise of rediscovered kinship.
For the truth, obscured deliberately by those who bore it, was that Nergal belonged to a people who called themselves Mangalans—children of Mars, bound by oath never to reveal their origins. Eons before this age, their world had severed its ties to the Arcane, turning instead to precise and consuming engines. To them, Terra was a world rich in forces they had long exhausted: a world whose leylines breathed with a vitality they scarcely remembered.
Despite this hidden motive, the records show genuine curiosity in Nergal’s early exchanges with Terra’s scholars. He listened with humility, asked questions shaped by sincere wonder, and offered knowledge in return. For a time, it seemed a meeting of distant cousins divided only by history.
But influence can root itself quietly. Through Nergal’s guidance—and through the trust he gradually earned—the first threads of Mangalan thought began to weave themselves into Terran discourse. Ideas of refinement without restraint, of progress valued above balance, settled softly at the edges of their dialogues. None recognised the shift then; it was too subtle, too carefully placed.
The sages believed they had found a companion in the vastness beyond.
They did not yet realise they had re‑opened a door that their own ancestors had once sealed with great purpose.
