Perched on lonely hills, rearing up stark and grey over wind-swept moors, tumbling apart as they sink into the dark mires of fens, or emerging, vine-cloaked, from jungle depths – scattered throughout the lands are hundreds of the strange artifacts known as standing stones, or stone circles.
In appearance, most of them are quite the same – huge stone blocks, always of the same greyish rock, set in a circle that measures roughly nine paces in diameter. Well-preserved stones stand twelve or thirteen arms tall, and are marked with odd runes. Most specimens, however, are very weathered, beaten by wind and rain, cloaked in lichens, and sundered by the slow but inexorable power of creeping vines.
Mages and majae know the circles as places of power, for magical energy is potent within their confines, so much so that artifacts of magic grow and thrive in their power, and spells rise up with uncanny swiftness and strength. But past this common view of the stones lie many mysteries. I will speak of a few of them here.
Students of the circles have long noted that each circle is essentially the same, bearing the same markings, dimensions, and properties. Other types of circles, megaliths, and dolmens exist, many of which have cultural or astrological connections, but the stone circles, no matter how distant they are from each other, remain fundamentally identical.
From The Story of the Stones, by Markus Velain –
I have seen them in Moraithe, in Jedda, in the Old and New Worlds, and tucked in the mountains of Rel Morde. Many lie in desolate places, or upon isles uninhabited. And all of them almost precisely like each other. How odd!
I expected, of course, to find ruins, also all of similar nature, nearby, but in the places I have found ruins, they seem invariably to be unrelated to the culture of the circle-layers.
So who made them?
They were obviously crafted by a people attuned to the feelings of magical concentration, or who possessed individuals among them that were so attuned. Furthermore, they probably had systems of magical practice, else why would they isolate locales which held magical concentrations?
Our current theories of racial origins state that three original races were born out of the Great Wyrms’ magics – the Fae, the Eldritch, and the Demons. From the combining of these three, humans were born. Adhering to this theory, might we attribute the circles to one of the three original races?
"The demons would seem unlikely." Or so believes Koren, a renowned authority on ancient cultures. "They shifted early from our realm, into the existence of the realm of Lorenai. And their magics do not harness the same energies as Caradorian magics. What interest would they have in our magical emanations? The Fae and the Eldritch provide more likely venues. The Fae possess a language that unites them, but their cultures and habits, as seen on different provinces, are quite diverse. Still, I would not think it impossible that a race of Fae, perhaps the Koreg (not to be confused with the demonic race of Coregg), created the circles. More likely than that, however, would be the Eldritch, who, wherever evidence of them is found, display a nearly identical culture, regardless of climate or locale."
Others, however, dismiss this argument, stating that it takes into account only the connection between the homogenous nature of the Eldritch culture and the homogenous appearance of the stone circles.
The Eldritch are marked by metal work more than stone work, and though they utilize the same magical energies we do, they did so in a notoriously chaotic manner. While Eldritch ruins do indeed show definite similarities in architecture and artifacts, any sections of ruins that housed magical laboratories are always exceedingly diverse. Indeed, modern magicians usually consider the Eldritch magicians to have been insane, creating spells and magical structures for the most terrible and bizarre of purposes. The Jurrad, discovered in the Taelhigh ruins near old Antara, is a prime example. From the journal of Koren –
I’m sitting before it, and still I find difficulty in describing it with any accuracy. The remains of the Temple Hall, visible out through the curved archway, are all of rotted timbers draped over the metal skeleton of the arched ceiling. But here, in the laboratory, ruin seems not to have come.
The Jurrad itself looms above me, a monstrous apparition built around thin, rounded ribs of Eldritch steel. It is obviously organic in form, with a bulbous, bubbled body and long, reaching spines that span the breadth of the room. The body of the thing, and the spines themselves, are of a muddy green-brown that darkens until the tips of the spines are a shining, smooth, glossy black. There is a scent, as well, musky and dark, with the hint of cheese or cream left too long. It stands as tall as three men, and below it, like roots, tendrils reach out and spread over the floor, slipping down through cracks and tracing haunting patterns over the walls and ceiling.
I would think it something alive, an intruder in this room that came after the Eldritch left, save for the fact that the room was obviously built to house the thing, and to my right, sprawled over a long table, some of the tendrils are bristling with small knives and other instruments of probing, as if the Eldritch, not moments before, where performing some bizarre operation upon the thing. One tendril lays bare open, glistening and wet, its layers pinned down and exposed to display anatomy that eludes my knowledge.
The thing could only have been of magical origin. I can say this not only because my mage tells me that oddly shaped magic pulses within the Jurrad’s heart, but because this room bears the marks of Eldritch magical work – jars with magic-born creatures preserved in fluid, books of Eldritch spells . . .
But if the Eldritch created the stone circles, then why do the runes, often found marking the stones, bear writing that shows no relation to any text found in Eldritch ruins?
The final theory that has been proposed by sages is that the circles were built by the original shapers of the world – the Great Wyrms.
These great dragons, presumably, came from a unified culture, and the unidentified markings on the stones could very well be the original Wyrmic writing. Is it possible that, as the Wyrms flew from isle to isle and created their own, unique lands, they first created the stone circles, which might have served as the ‘seeds’ that formed the lands themselves?
Although gaining in popularity, this theory, as well, presents problems, the most obvious being that each province has its own ‘flavour’ of magic, while each stone circle has the same ‘flavour’ of magic as every other. If the circles did, indeed, serve as seeds, would they not have a differing aspect from province to province?
Others suggest the presence of a yet undiscovered race, a singular, historical individual, or the deities themselves. But serious scholars continue to work on the mystery, attempting to decipher the runes and search for other connections between distant sets of stones.
For now, they will remain a mystery, and their locations will be eagerly sought out by practitioners of the magical arts, to whom the stone circles are an incredible boon. If you are not a practitioner, take the time, at least once in your life, to visit one anyway. If you have even a little of the capacity to sense magic, you will feel it within the circle of standing stones, and the smooth, full presence of the energy will be a memory you will keep with you always.
