Lecturer: Thalia O'Carroll
Legacies of the Old World
Given that I was the final Dragon Legacy, they thought I'd be the best option to explain this, but it's really not like we know that much about Legacies beyond Victoria's conjectures, so don't expect anything excessively professorial. What we do know is pretty depressing, though. Legacies were conceived many, many thousands of years ago, far before the Unearthing, and before faith in the gods died completely. The trend was decreased faith, however, which we suspect may have been the reason this happened in the first place... To put it simply, humans were spreading at an alarming rate, and a majority of them were hunting down other sapient species, such as phoenixes, merfolk, dragons, centaurs, unicorns... I could keep going. The less human you looked, the more persecution you would face, and eventually, they turned on one another as well, bringing civilizations like dwarves to the brink of extinction. Humans grew into a much larger problem than anyone could have anticipated, and they always aimed to conquer. More, more, and more, until there was nothing left. They would exploit every resource, leave no stone unturned. This resulted in one of precious few manifestations of the Primordial Light.
Unlike the gods, the Primordial Light is not bound by sacred law. It was the first ever star, the Sidereal's first creation, and where all light in the universe originates from. All light is its birthright, and it has been worshiped as a primal deity since the dawn of time by countless societies. It is said to live on the horizon itself, unreachable by mortals or immortals, and of course, humans coveted this might. They foolishly thought they would be able to ravage the sky like they had ravaged the earth, and they forged their iron chains in an attempt to trap the Primordial Light and syphon its power for themselves. This, needless to say, did not go well. The First Star was furious to witness such insolence, and declared humanity would be punished for their hubris. It returned to its home at the edge of the horizon only after taking back all sources of light from the humans, sending them into a Dark Age unlike ever before. We have no human records of the time, but ancient tablets carved by other species report that wherever a human would roam, nothing but darkness would follow, and so, a majority of civilizations moved far, far away from humans. Many thought it would be their final hour, that humans would die off once and for all. Fortunately or unfortunately, the Dark Age did not last forever. We are unsure as to how, but a star was entrusted to a human, and that human made her way to the temple at the top of an old tower erected in honor of it, then managed to convince the First Star to return light to humanity. Before returning to its private pocket of the Seven Realms, however, the First Star granted to the other sapient species who had always been respectful of its gift a special ritual, to call upon it in their time of need if humans were ever on the verge of ending them again.
Our little tangent here was important because of that last detail. Humanity behaved, for a time, until they forgot about the Dark Age. It's little wonder that they did, considering the amount of records of the time was none... They ramped up again. There were fewer and fewer other sapient species by the day, and the Unearthing only made it worse, with humans now seeking to desecrate their corpses in laboratories in search of some kind of cure or resistance to the magical disease that ailed them. A meeting was held between all remaining leaders of these other sapient species, and it was agreed that they would gather their people into areas where the flow of magic was undisturbed by human machinery and prepare for the ritual once gifted to them by the First Star. This is how Legacies were created. Each species took a small amount of human families that they trusted, volunteer humans who had lived among them for generations in spite of their differences. Once they were in the right places, they sealed their entire populations, now made up of only a thousand or less individuals, into special chambers constructed for this specific purpose, and committed the largest magic ritual suicide in history, bestowing the essence and genomes of their kind upon their trusted human allies. These were Legacies. They could only ever be inherited by blood, and as long as at least one human bearing a Legacy still drew breath, they would be able to return it to these chambers, with their occupants turned to stone, in order to restore the species. For a long time, this knowledge was forgotten, and it was only rediscovered thanks to the efforts of the Zerzuran Crown in the late 7000s A.U., after which resources began to be diverted to a project that would assist Legacy bearers in their newly regained mission.
I hear you. "But Thalia, what does bearing a Legacy even mean?" Well, that's honestly very simple. A human who bears a Legacy will have traits from the species that entrusted it to their family, enhanced magical skills, and the ability to either partially or fully transform into the species in question. These cool powers come with a cost, of course. My wife Nora, for example, bore the Merfolk Legacy, and she had a need to consume raw human flesh straight from the source up until she returned her Legacy. Once a species is restored by their Legacy, however, the last human who did so will receive the gratitude of that species, which means, biologically, that they will become complete members of the species while at the same time retaining their human selves and characteristics, and socially, that the species may defer to them for leadership. After all, being 'asleep' for thousands of years means that the world is practically brand new to them.
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