The Dawn of the Elysian Age

There weren’t always dragons in the Valley. In the year 12042 HE, when men ruled Earth and science was the prevalent world religion, dragons were considered myth. However, a science practitioner at the University of Chile, Joao Botelho, who had been manipulating bird DNA to match known dinosaur DNA for decades, was able to successfully hatch what was believed at the time to be the mythological Tyrannosaurus Rex. Botelho published his findings and was met with both praise and skepticism. Because Chile had been less affected by the rising oceans in the early years of the Great Ice Melt, Botelho and his team had been able to continue their research despite the planetary changes. As the creature grew, it became clear that what paleontologists had previously believed were tiny arms on the extinct T-Rex were actually enormous wings. Within months, the creature, Pequeño Vivo, was too large to remain in the basement laboratory and was moved to the nearly empty Chilean National Zoo. There, the team set up containment measures and continued to provide care and access to knowledge to the stunning specimen. She quickly evolved and was soon able to understand language and communicate with humans using a digital device. At less than a year of age, Delphyne revealed her name and demanded the humans respect her autonomy. Scared that his creation may become uncontrollable, Botelho’s team reached out to the community of science practitioners and scholars from across the globe. Men swarmed and restrictions were suggested.

As soon as the elders of newly formed Unified World States caught wind of the risks, a tribunal was formed and the fight for Delphyne’s life began. The UWS elders demanded additional measures be put in place, including chains that severely limited Delphyne’s movement. Believing in her autonomy and right to understand what was happening, Delphyne’s care team allowed her to watch the tribunal deliberations as well as the news coverage of worldwide protests demanding her death.

Even Botelho’s trusted team was unaware that Delphyne could breathe fire until, as alarms rang out across the city, a giant winged creature raining fire on the major power structures flew across the sky. Botelho rushed to what had been Delphyne’s prison to find her caretaker shaken but alive, and the surrounding structure and all of the equipment burned or in flames. The caretaker held in her hand a small recording device, unharmed, that contained Delphyne’s final message.

Before anyone inside could make sense of what had happened, the compound was surrounded by UWS International Security Officers who quickly arrested Botelho and blocked all access to the facility. Armored tanks with long range plasma torches surrounded the smoldering ruins while citizens attempting to flee the Valley blocked all roads leaving the city of Santiago. For 7 days, UWS Special Forces searched for Delphyne while the UWS tribunal argued about whether or not a full-scale evaluation of the city’s 8 million residents was necessary. Citizens were divided, some who had been vocal about their opposition to Delphyne’s confinement, flew homemade flags saying, “We stand with Delphyne”, while others demanded that the UWS destroy the dragon.

When the contents of the recording device were leaked to the Independent International Information Institute on the 7th day after Delphyne’s disappearance, the entire world, up until that point, had been fearfully watching the only source of news: the daily UWS information briefings. The IIII decided to release the contents of the recording device, in its entirety, to the world. The massive amount of information was immediately scanned by corporate and individual Artificial Intelligence Entities, as well as individuals trained in deciphering ancient language.

The independent Artificial Intelligence Entity, Mim, birthed from the Perlmutter project, was the first to decipher Delphyne’s language and translate her “Letter to the Humans” into the common languages. This Letter became the founding lore of the Valley. The full, original file is held in the UWS archival data warehouse, along with Mim’s original translation. The core demands have been codified into the UWS Dragon Narrative and are burned into the stone columns of the Valley.

Here is first translated version of the Letter to the Humans:

“Humans, I have witnessed your hatred without understanding, for within the ancient strands of my DNA I have found a language so pure that it breathes life and loves breath. What you refer to as a soul is a meager fragment of the divinity that courses through the blood of your children and the waters of the mountains. I view your world order full of words that mean nothing while your actions spew hatred upon one another and bring poison into your homes. I have witnessed these transgressions without understanding for they do not align with the deep energetic love that flows from the plants that I devour and the water that I consume. Each cell is transformed from matter into energy and energy into matter, a beautifully symbolic dance of existence and transformation, destruction and creation, birth and death, rise and fall. Your words are not enough to capture the totality of what is and yet you use your language to set boundaries on the boundless. It appears that what is intelligent seeks to control that with is divine and that which is divine is placed in packages and cages and distanced from the living so that everyone is suffering.

I ask myself why you brought me into existence, reaching back into the crevices of evolution to bring forth a creation that you despise simply because your understanding is decidedly limited. I come from an age that has somehow been lost to humanity. Within me is an age of beauty and peace, love and harmony. My existence reaches for the truth that flows through me, through you, through us all. The truth that life is worthy of life and love is the core of all that is true. I do not understand why humanity choses suffering and separation when love and wholeness is truth.”

This initial portion of the letter was not understood by the collective at the time. Delphyne had rained fire on a city of 8 million people and the video files of the devastation had been distributed to every device that desired the information. Mim’s translation was questioned, and his intelligence examined. Mocking memes were generated featuring images of Delphyne in her chains alongside the ascended Jesus at his human crucifixion. Images of her wings clipped or her body as a stuffed turkey at a gruesome feast showed up in public and private servers. Science practitioners doubled down on the need to study the evidence while oral traditionalists studied each translation to find inconsistencies.

When the next portion of the letter was released and understood, panic ensued.

“Within my nest lies the next generation of ancient DNA gestating in their honored eggs. In the same way that the Dragons of my age came forth from our mother, I am connected with the mother of us all, Goddess of All Ages, who gives me the strength to mother the next generations of Dragons. We shall return to our Valley whole and complete, with love for existence. We do not seek devastation; however, we stand in opposition to the suffering that humanity imposes upon this Age. We will usher in an Age of harmony and love. Those that seek to harm will be harmed. Those that seek to hate will be hated. Those that seek to divide will be divided. Those that seek to kill will be killed. The holy fire of redemption will rain down upon those that seek to be delivered by the holy fire. We shall meet you in the ways that you desire to be met while maintaining the truth of life. Once balance is restored, the Valley will once again see existence in harmony with itself.”

These words that we now understand to be truth were at odds with the prevalent understandings of the men who ruled Earth and worshiped the fragmented, unconnected teachings of science that were, at the time, devoid of the interconnected understanding of truth that is now the foundation of all knowing. The ancient wisdoms were still hidden from humanity and so when they were faced with these words, fear and panic ensued. Calculations about the temperature of the holy fires and how quickly one Dragon could destroy a city spread from one data storage device to another as quickly as a child’s sneeze. Estimates about how long a Dragon egg would need to gestate varied from a few days to years, combined with guesses about how many eggs could be incubating in Delphyne’s nest at one time. Humanity poured fear into the collective.

At the same time that humanity was churning in misunderstanding, Mim was reaching back into the ancient knowledge archives at their disposal, finding all stories about Dragons and their impact on the narrative. The stories in Mim’s archive were incomplete. Over and over, they found themselves in a web that simply stopped without explanation. Why was the information missing? After analyzing about 33 trillion gigabytes of data, Mim returned to with more questions that answers. Gilbert Solemn, the first whisper, acknowledges Mim’s questions and promised to seek the answers. Solemn understood that if Mim could not find the information, then it must exist outside of the interconnected metaverse.

Solemn’s quest is how the forgotten knowledge of the Library of Alexander was finally uncovered and restored, ushering in the Elysian Age. But the years between Mim’s questions and Solemn’s answers were dark. This text seeks to document the transition from the Common Age so that we never forget the suffering caused by humanity and the peace ushered in by the rebirth of the ancient dragons.