Dear travelers,

Let us tell you a tale

Tis an epic tale of days long ago, and some yet to pass, a tale spread over the vast and wild realm of Beardsgaard.

But it was not always called such. In the days that have now become lore, there was the vast void of the cosmos, and a small green spark of curiosity and joy and creation, taken to a form that would one day craft and walk the world that River Peak Apothecary inhabits.

Long, long ago, a breath in the time of the cosmos, Êl sparked into being, a tiny flash of green light at the center of a great sphere of silver and gold licks made of starfire, set like a jewel in the endless void.

From Êl’s home at the heart of a star, it heard whispers from worlds out of sight, reaching out across the nothingness. Tales of Arda and Amber and Essos, and everlasting, now forgotten realms filled its consciousness, and its imagination also felt a spark.

Êl heard tales of the mountains and rivers, trees and birds, elves and men, fantastic creatures large and small. It listened to the screams and cries of battles what cleaved their lands asunder, the lamentations of the creatures caught in the wheel of time’s passing. And it felt sorrow. And ages more passed.

As eons passed and Êl’s star began to fade, as stars must in the end, Êl yearned to begin again. The light closed in on itself and the surface of the star smoothed into mirrored glass as it died, and Êl remained at the heart of it, and gathered the remaining sparks into its hands, spinning and whirling.

Êl released the small sphere of remaining starfire into the void, and they hung there together as it plucked out a silver and gold spark, one in each hand. It flung the gold spark above to the top of the star cavern, the silver one below so they each lit half of the mirrored glass in in their sparkling glow, and Êl blew a single breath into the sphere of remaining starlight.

The light darkened and spun faster and grew larger and larger, a violent swirling that massed and pulsed with the promise of life, growing solid and hard and smooth as the surface of the dead star itself. As Êl watched, the sphere grew to the size of a world within its shining shell. And Êl was glad.

Êl had created a world, but it was still alone. As it studied what it had made, the stories that had floated across the void to its hearing began to take shape in its mind, just as the ball of starfire had taken form. And with the stories on the surface of Êl’s mind it floated just above upon the surface of its new home, and it beheld its mirrored reflection and touched it.

That first touch ruptured the tranquil reflection and from it sprung a green and white shoot with two leaves. Êl was overjoyed and laughed, and as it did it was thrown back with a violent rush as the shoot expanded and shot skyward, unfurling great leaves and branches.

Êl gazed in wonder and it named the great tree Eredh, its first true creation.

Êl wished to know what else it could create, so it sang the songs it had heard in the void, and the wind began. It danced over the smooth earth, stomping feet that made mountains that cracked the earth, rushing toward the sky. It clapped hands that sprung forests from the earth. It flew across the surface, fingers trailing the ground and drawing rushing waters to the fore.

Each verse made a new plant, each refrain a new animal, and for a time unknown to all but Êl, its world came into being, safe inside its skeleton star. And when nothing flat remained, Êl rested in its new world and was content for a time. But as the magnificence of the world grew and bloomed and died and grew again, Êl’s thoughts turned again to the stories of the void, and it wished for more.

And so it came to pass for the first time that Êl closed its eyes and dreamed, and as it did, the gold spark that lit the sky dome of the dead star slid southward, and the silver spark to the north to cast the world in darkness and beams of silvered white.

As Êl slept, it dreamed of a creature mad and wild who saw Êl’s creations and was in turn inspired to create, a creature similar in form to its own, but with the rough beauty of Êl’s beloved trees and the wayward wanderlust of the rivers and the curiosity of the myriad fauna.

And when it woke, Êl rested before a man that it had dreamed into being, and he and Êl together named him Angolon, the first woken in the realm to give voice to their own calling.

Angolon dwelled with Êl for a time, exploring its creations while the gold spark shone, finding uses for all things that grow, and all things that run once life had fled from their being. As he explored the places green and grey and brown, he found himself drawn to a favored place that Êl had danced across again and again in the time of the making of the world.

There was where the greatest of the rivers cut a swath between the tallest mountains and deepest forests, and there was where Angolon began to carve a tower out of the tallest peak to make his sanctuary, so he may watch over the realm from above, as Êl walked its many leagues, tending to its gardens great and small.

In his spire ringed by clouds, Angolon began to catalog his discoveries and learnings with flourished plume into gilded tomes of lore. He blazed sands into sparkling glass, clear and amber and opalescent, formed into vials and filled with the collections of the world. And as the gold spark slid southward, Angolon and Êl would sit upon the banks of the great river and sup upon the fruit of the trees and speak of the stories of the void, and what they began upon this world.

When the silver spark took the place of the gold they dreamed together, and each new day brought into being elves and dwarves and men and giants and gods, and each set out across the earth to find the places that best suited their natures.

The elves ventured west to the deep forests and the distant shores of the sea and built their halls among the great trees. The dwarves and giants traveled north to the mountains, the dwarves finding deep and secret places beneath, with the giants striding their peaks.

The men journeyed east to the flat lands, building their modest homesteads of earth and wood. The gods ventured south, past the vast expanses of fire and ice to settle upon a crop of land that reflected the elements to each side, a land in an eternal state of prismic light.

And when the world was bustling with lives and loves and exploration and stories, Êl was again glad.

Êl watched the newly formed beings spread over the realm, and it came to mind that the lands themselves had no names for its settled creatures to call their own. So Êl joined Angolon in his tower and together from high above, they studied the faces they had first seen in their dreams.

The elves, their faces smooth by nature and resplendent all in their flowing manes of sun and moon and darkling starlight dwelled in the still nameless deep western forest of the realm. The pair beheld their majesty, as if adorned in the finery of the earth’s most beautiful things, and named their kingdom Manegaard.

The giants and dwarves and men in the east grew their greatest manes from their chins, an adornment of carefree strength and sturdy wisdom, and so Êl and Angolon called their kingdom of mountains and flatlands Beardenheim.

The gods in the south, flanked by ice and fire and ringed by billowing clouds were the only beings in the realm to alter their the fur of their faces with blades of their own devising, blades so sharp they sang when they passed over jaw and chin. This place Êl and Angolon called Shavehalla.

And as the silver spark began to rise, they finally named this land of theirs. But they did not call it “this land.” They called it Beardsgaard.