Grey Folk

The story of the Grey folk1

I was there, long ago. I was there, when the grey people roamed. They weren’t called the grey people then though. They were called humans - like their descendants are called today (though they are but a shadow of their former selves). Let me tell you their story and after I will tell you what I am.2

They started out as furry creatures - primates they were called. They had the basic instincts of animals and that was all they knew. At that time there was no intelligent being to watch over them. This left a gap. In those times it was hard to live. They had no magic no tools only what their mind could give them. Life was tough - only the strongest and smartest survived.3

As the generations grew a group of them became separate. They learned to fight using stones and how to build houses and they taught their young what they learned. Gradually they grew to become a people. Their distant cousins continued to travel through the trees - unaware that the creatures who they watched had once been their family. As for the creatures who fought with the power of stone - they looked on the primates as animals - no skills at all.4

The creatures grew in knowledge and skill - discovering many things - things we would consider strange and wonderful today. But it was not for a while until they discovered the power of magic. The last, when they discovered it - changed things. All the knowledge they had found was no longer as important to them and the schools taught only magic and how to use it.5

The people grew in power and strength becoming one with the land that had given them life. They saw the spirits of the animals that lived and saw that each had a special beauty. The people also saw how animals would disappear over time and this made them sad. Using complex magic, they sealed the spirits of those animals into a great cavern deep below the surface, where they could be used to revive a race if the need ever came.6

But in every race there are the stupid, the cruel and the evil. As time past, it became clear that their race was full of these kinds of people. Forests would fall to the ground as a man decided that he wanted to play in that space. Women would cause mountains to erupt to relax in there warmth. Gradually, most of their race came to forget that this was the land that had given them a home. They forgot that the creatures they tormented had been their brothers and sisters. They became what stories of old had told of - Gods - Gods and Goddesses of unimaginable cruelty.7

All this caused the people who still cared for the land untold sorrow. Every day they would see the horrors that their people committed. They did their best to fix what was done but the damage got worse and worse. Until, eventually, there was only one option left; purge; return most of their race to the primitive existence that they had once had.8

Two hundred people came to complete the spell. They had long assured that the spirits of every animal was safe. Knowing this they cast the fatal spell - the word of destruction and with it destroyed all life on the planet, returning it to a blank sheet of earth, ready to be moulded into a new home. Next they turned their attention to the world each person changing a single piece of land to how they remembered it from when the place was young. As a final step, one hundred and fifty people of the gathering sacrificed themselves. Giving life to the spirits trapped and reducing the rest of their number to the mortals they had been.9

To prevent them attempting to regain that which they had lost - all memory of their time among the great was removed. Naturally, the people banded into groups that would become the different races of today. These races were always warring; fighting for land to grow food on and where they could raise their families. The fifty who had retained their power wished to stop the fighting - so they allowed the people to see them and set themselves off as judges and law-maker’s people who would show them how to live happily. That was their mistake, they joined with the elements of their race that had destroyed the planet and sought to help them. They, the guardians of the world, permitted themselves to mix and so be tempted.10

Their meddling failed to stop the wars it made them worse - each group fighting the others. That was when many of the group made another mistake. They joined in. Forty five of the guardians were killed - leaving only five. These five waited. Gradually, the wars stopped. Some of the people were ruined - changed beyond recognition from what they had once been. Some had been nearly wiped out - only a handful of their race left. The rest had retreated into isolation - hiding from the rest of the world and all the time drifting further away from their origins. Some of these folk kept records of what happened and from those records come all men know of the age before. 11

Many of those whose numbers had been reduced remembered the people of the sky and called on them for help asking them to make them stronger, better able to survive in this land. To do this, three of the five, sacrificed themselves giving their life force to bind their spells.  Last, the two cast great spells. The spells insured that the only way to use magic was by using one language and in that language you could not lie. They also separated mankind’s bond to nature - so that never again could disaster happen on the scale that had happened before.12

When this was done they retreated into the Earth. They became one with the force of life and waited for the creatures that had shrunk so low to once again reach for the sky and that is where they still wait.13

The races they had left behind gave these mysterious rulers from the sky a name. They called them the grey folk; a folk of mystery and huge strength. For only they knew the whole language - only they could rejoin the species that they had divided and that they would not do.14