Tale of the Cloak of Rainbows

He tells of the first days of the People of the Rainbow, before there was a cloak. He tells of Ilios the Bright, who fell through the world when he was just an infant, not yet chained to Thark’s will, and grew strong in the Fey realm of Amberglow, under a sunset sky free of Thark’s influence. Ilios, it is said, had a Fey energy that could not be contained. His eyes shone with moonlight, and his swords flashed silver. He began to raid across the foothills of the Sentinels, where small, disorganized groups of Orcs, families and tribes hidden from the Drankorian patrols lived. Ilios stole the unchained babies from these tribes, and brought them to Amberglow, where The People of the Rainbow grew in secret, protected by the Cloudspinner.

And then Azagar speaks of the blackness that tore out the sun, the rift through which darkness leaked. The invasion of Amberglow by a far distant evil, something of no world. Ilios leapt through this blackness and severed the cords that held this rift open, trapping himself to an unknown fate, but saving Amberglow. In honor of his sacrifice, the Cloudspinner wove the Cloak of Rainbows, each thread plucked from the immortal sunsets of Amberglow, each thread grasping the essence of the Riving, the long pause, the splitting of the planes that created the Feywild, and wrapping that energy of pulling, separating into a cloak that cut the wearer from the divine.

Azogar’s voice shifts, and he tells the story of the days in the world when the People of the Rainbow ventured forth, the quiet days, living lives of fields and flowers. In the story of their history, this was a remembered time of peace and happiness, but it could not last, for Azogar turns to the tale of Cha’mutte, and Apollyon.

*Cha’mutte, it is said, traveled among the Orcs, teaching them, preaching the fate he sought for all the people of the world: freedom from the divine, as the People of the Rainbow had found. But then betrayal, whether intentional or not, telling Apollyon of the dream, of the cloak. And then the war, and loss, and defeat as Apollyon turned on the Orcs and stole the cloak. That this because Apollyon’s downfall, as Cha’mutte turned on his former ally, was no comfort, and Azogar speaks bitter words as he tells how the cloak was lost and the People of the Rainbow scattered to hide in small groups where they could.

Until, after the Great War, the hero Uzgash found the cloak unexpectedly amongst the ruins of a Dunmari fort, and with the cloak proclaimed the safe haven of Xurkhaz, the land of the rising sun, a beacon of hope for the scattered People of the Rainbow.