LATER.
Now let us consider the scene in the library from a little earlier. The explanation
for what happened was both simple and complex. Simple in that the immediate
motivations of the men were straightforward enough, complex in that a vast chain
of events lay behind and beneath the events in the library.
Recall the Rhaemyi, if you will. The secret society founded in the last centuries
of the Antediluvian Age, dedicated to the defeat of the Unity and the prevention
of the disaster that an ‘escapee’ of the initial collective could foresee. Recall if
you will that as time passed, this society changed, and eventually joined forces
with Zadatharion and Aradel in the final years of the Antediluvian World. As it
happened, the Rhaemyi failed, in a sense, in the original mission given by their
founder, but in their failure lay what might be called a success from the point of
view of later ages. Not a ‘moral victory’, which is often simply a way of trying
to paint a pleasant face on a defeat, but rather a partial success, in that they were
instrumental in preventing the Unity from successfully ‘connecting’ itself to the
power of the Matrix/Flux at such an intimate level that it would have been all but
all-powerful on a mortal scale afterward. They also played a similar role in the
prevention of that same power falling into the hands of an undead monstrosity, a
monster in its own way as dangerous and malevolent as the Unity itself.
This dual ‘victory’ was, of course, purchased at the cost of over a billion deaths,
and the apocalyptic destruction of the world-wide civilization of the former age.
This victory was also partial in that the Unity, by a bare margin and with the aid
of one of the trapped Eldren, managed to escape the Downfall and in time come
to consciousness again in our own world. The menace had been nearly defeated,
and reduced to only a shadow of a possibility for thousands of years, but it
did
survive to threaten the world and its people once more.
As it happens, however, the Rhaemyi itself also survived...in a sense.
As an organization, the Rhaemyi were nearly destroyed in the catastrophic ending
of the Antediluvian Age, but a few members did survive, and a few of their hidden
enclaves and villages endured the chaos, especially in the depths of the vast Asian
land mass. Several small villages in deep valleys in depths of Asia endured, with
enough people to endure. They retained some of their former knowledge, much of
it orally but also much of it inscribed in hidden libraries and caches.
In time, the Rhaemyi regained contact with Zadatharion, who had also survived the
Downfall, and over the following ages the organization became something of his
personal assistants, while evolving very gradually and steadily into something
that was a strange hybrid of a secret society and a people, a tribe. New blood and
new members were added in each generation, usually by intermarriage, and this
was a marriage both into a people and into a way of life. Such intermarriages were
carefully considered, because one of the legacies of the Antediluvian time was the
psionic heritage of their Atlantean ancestry, which they worked always to preserve.
This was a delicate matter, because too much inbreeding within the tribal society
would be just as destructive on many levels as too much outbreeding would be to
their psychic heritage. Also, because the Rhaemyi were both at tribe and at the
same time a way of life, a dedication to a complex cause, candidates for marriage
had to be
very carefully vetted and considered before a marriage was allowed.
The cause to which the Rhaemyi dedicated themselves over time came to be both a
very general one, yet one that required many and often conflicting specific things.
The Rhaemyi came to see themselves as being the hereditary guardians, the hidden
protectors, of the human race. This simple-sounding idea carried with it so many
complex implications and subtle ramifications that the Rhaemyi became a tribe of
philosopher-warriors, and indeed in time came to take pride in this. This was even
more true because they never did entirely forget their origins as a band of outcasts
and criminals in the steppes of Asia in a previous age of the world.
[1]
The psychic heritage of the Rhaemyi was not as strong as it had been in the ancient
Atlantean ancestors, but they did retain enough of it that almost all the members of
the tribe had at least some psychic power, and they certainly retained a wide and
very useful variety of skills. They had even managed to develop a few new skills
along the way, with specialized applications for their specialized needs.
The relationship between Zadatharion and the Rhaemyi stabilized in an alliance, a
recognition of many goals in common. Neither considered themselves to be under
the authority of the other
per se, but favors asked by one would usually be
granted by the other, and ‘field agents’ of the Rhaemyi would usually acknowledge
the authority of Zadatharion if they came into contact with him and their activities
overlapped in some way.
When the Unity awakened, the Rhaemyi found themselves facing the same enemy
that their tribe had been established to oppose, so many millennia in the past. Now
that enemy had returned, to find the Rhaemyi, in a sense, still waiting for it.
MORE LATER.
[1] The details of the origin of the Rhaemyi can be found in this thread:
Atlantis and the Antediluvian Age