by Terry Brooks
Nothing should have survived, but somehow—by some miracle of the Word, perhaps—there were survivors. A few vestiges of humanity managed to live through the horror only to be faced with an all-but-uninhabitable world. For the next thousand years, these survivors of the holocaust struggled to endure its aftermath.
Many were irrevocably changed by the struggle. Some survivors lived by escaping into large underground caverns. They fed on the animals that lived underground, crawling and climbing through their harsh, dark environment. Over time, their bodies began to change, as survival favored shorter, stockier bodies, more powerful musculature, and eyes that could see well in the darkness of the dimly lit caves. By the time they emerged to live above ground, hundreds of years later, they had become very different from Men, a separate Race, and had evolved their own language and culture. They became known as Dwarves, after a mythical creature with similar attributes.
Many people did not manage to find underground shelter. Most died, but a few unusually strong individuals managed to survive the poisoned air and the mutated land. They escaped to the northern mountains, evolving into a fierce tribal culture of nomads. Only the largest and strongest were able to procreate. The few children who survived were forever marked by the poisons their parents had endured. After a thousand years, their offspring evolved into huge, muscular people with barklike skin, bearing almost no resemblance to their Old World ancestors. These people became known as Trolls.
Some people fled to the forests and hills, finding what shelter they could, but not enough to protect them entirely from the holocaust and its aftermath. Only those who were small, quick, and cunning survived. But they had only slight protection from the toxins. Their bodies were changed by it, until they too no longer appeared quite human. Their offspring, like those of the Trolls, carried the legacy of their exposure as well as their survival traits. Some believe that their minds were damaged as well, though that has yet to be proven. They became known as the Gnomes.
Demonic Influences
The official causes of the Great Wars did not survive them, but there is now reason to suspect that there may have been demonic influences involved. Although Man did not believe in magic and certainly did not use it, magic, and the demons that have been a plague to the world since the time of Faerie, were always present. There is no question that the destruction of this otherwise powerful civilization would have been to the demons’ advantage. This cannot be proven, but if true, it explains the sudden escalation of the global conflict from such innocuous beginnings.
A small number of the survivors were virtually untouched by the worst of the devastation, primarily by virtue of living in remote or protected areas. Lacking direct exposure to the damaging influences that created the Trolls and Gnomes or the conditions that caused the Dwarves to evolve, they emerged physically unchanged. Their civilization, however, was completely destroyed, and they also reverted to a life little above that of animals. They were the Race of Man.
When Man emerged from barbarism to begin to rebuild a semblance of civilization, he discovered four other Races, and named them to fit their attributes: Dwarves, Trolls, Gnomes, and Elves. Though the Elves were not descended from Man, they emerged to rejoin the survivors and were accepted among them. The differences that had kept them apart from Man throughout most of his history were no longer as apparent with the mutations of the new Races. They were accepted as also having descended from Man, and for many years they kept the facts of their true heritage a secret from the other Races.
With the death of the Old World, something even older than Man was reborn into the new world: magic, all but dormant since the age of Faerie. Even Druid scholars are unsure whether the cataclysm triggered the reawakening of magic or whether it was always there but became more potent once the technological world was gone. Perhaps the combination of the man-made poisons and the latent magic was responsible for the powerful arcane forces that arose within the earth. The only certainty is that magic appeared within the land as a force that could be tapped for both good and evil. Creatures born of magic populated the remote areas of the lands. Technology and physical science had been all but wiped from the world, but magic promised the same Pandora’s box and could save or seduce and destroy just as certainly as the weapons of science had done in the last age. In many ways, the Races would face the same deadly choices that had undone their ancestors, only this time they could not hope to understand the power inherent in the forces they faced within the magic.
Paranor:
The Druid’s Keep
Within the walls we are a community, a family … engaged in a single course of action—to gain knowledge of our world and its workings. —Athabasca, High Druid of Paranor
hroughout the ages, a legend has survived among bards and storytellers, a story of a massive magical citadel built as a crown atop a great volcanic cliff within the heart of the Four Lands. According to the tales, this keep housed the ancient magicians known as Druids. From within its impregnable walls, they controlled all learning and all magic. The castle was called Paranor, and it was said that at the height of the Druids’ power it was the central repository of knowledge within the Four Lands. But for three hundred years those few intrepid souls who journeyed to the site of the legendary keep, intent on proving the tales, found only a spruce forest, an empty stone bluff, and a few stone blocks remaining of what might have been outbuildings but could just as easily have been the remains of a herder’s holding. The legends were accepted as fanciful stories and the Druids themselves as little more.
Then, sometime in the last century, Paranor reappeared. The Rovers who first spotted its return found it standing in silence atop its cliff base, as if it had never been gone. It was an unreachable enigma, closed off to outsiders. Those who ventured too close told of being stalked by a ghost beast, a spectral moor cat that appeared long enough to warn off trespassers.
For eighty years after its discovery, the Druid’s Keep stood solid but out of reach, a stone specter. Then, within the last few years, something changed, and the keep was opened to approved visitors. Some of its vast libraries and artifacts were made available to scholars. With this new knowledge, the legends were given substance, and the truth of Paranor and its mysterious designers was at last revealed.
To understand the Druid’s Keep, it is first necessary to understand the history of the Druids themselves. After the Great Wars, civilization no longer existed. The remnants of Men lived as animals for almost two thousand years. Books and advanced knowledge were sacrificed to the more immediate needs of survival. What little of the Old World that had not been destroyed by the wars or the cataclysms that followed gradually succumbed to ignorance and neglect. Only a few survivors recognized the need for safeguarding knowledge in hopes of rebuilding some of what had been lost. These few were also mindful of the need to keep such knowledge from any who might be drawn to re-create the mistakes that had led to the catastrophe. They safeguarded the knowledge, often with their lives, and secretly passed it on to their descendants in what became a family tradition.
Paranor, fortress of the Druids.
Galaphile,
FIRST HIGH DRUID,
FATHER OF THE DRUID COUNCIL
Built to be both a revered cultural center and an impregnable fortress, Paranor was the result of the work of craftsmen and scholars from all the Races. Elves, Gnomes, Trolls, and Men all had a part in her building. But she was the inspiration of one man, a brilliant Elven philosopher and historian known only as Galaphile.
Galaphile, Father of the Druids.
The actual dates and circumstances of Galaphile’s birth have been lost to history, but it is almost certain that he discovered or was entrusted with knowledge from the Old World at an early age. What is known is that Galaphile saw the emerging Races struggling toward a semblance of civilization, only to lose that struggle as they began to focus more on conflict with each other than on growth or progress. He realized that the bits and pieces of knowledge that had
survived the wars were the key to regaining any semblance of a civilized society, and that those fragments of information were at risk of being completely lost if the barbarism continued among the Races. His solution was to collect the wisest men and women from all the Races into one place where they could gather and protect the remains of the knowledge of the past while seeking solutions for the future. In honor of an Old World term for learned men, he named these men and women Druids. Their council became known as the Druid Council, and Galaphile was named as the first High Druid.
The priceless information was sometimes written in ancient books or fragments of text, but more often, to keep it from the wrong hands, it was passed via a verbal tradition, subject to the gradual discrepancies of memory. At this time, there was no central place where the knowledge could be collected. Most toiled in their sacred task completely unaware of others who were doing the same. Some small, isolated groups attempted to gather their fragmentary knowledge and even to begin to write it down, but the growing distrust between the Races made even such small attempts at consolidation impossible. Many small libraries full of priceless knowledge were painstakingly collected only to be lost to a raid or burned during battle. By the time the Elf Galaphile began collecting his own library, untold thousands of artifacts from the Old World had been irredeemably lost.
Galaphile realized that only a concerted effort from all the Races could save what remained. He dreamed of a place where those who were entrusted with the legacy of the past could share their burden or work to further their knowledge. He set about creating a council that would be focused on gathering and protecting the relics of the past while working for the betterment of all the Races. He sent a summons out to all the lands and was gratified to find that many answered. The best and brightest of all the Races were willing to join with him to form a council that would promise a path out of the stifling darkness of ignorance and hate that was threatening to suffocate the world.
But Galaphile needed more than a council; he needed a place to house them while they worked. And that house would have to provide protection for the priceless artifacts and defense of the people who lived and worked there. He needed a place that would be impregnable to attack, since most in the lands did not share a dream of uniting the Races. It also had to be a structure that would create awe among any who looked upon it. It had to stand alone as an example of the grandeur that the combined talents of the Races could achieve.
Galaphile gathered his followers, the first Council of Druids, in the caldera of a dormant volcano near the Kennon Pass. Within the outer caldera was a large central cone forming a cliff of volcanic rock and obsidian that rose above the first. This was to be the site for the keep he would call Paranor. There are no clear records to tell how long Galaphile searched for the site for his keep. Some writings suggest that he may have found the site as a boy, and that it was the image of the massive up-thrusting stone standing defiant above the forest floor that helped him to conceive the idea for his council.
However he discovered it, the choice was carefully made. The large outer calderas formed a gentle crater, probably created during an earlier eruption around the time of the Great Wars, possibly even caused by the pressures of that cataclysm. The main vent had obviously remained active, building a cone of magma and ash in the center of the larger outer crater. That younger cone had also erupted at some point in its past, as the cone was topped by a smaller caldera, measuring some three hundred feet across. The volcano’s upthrust stone heart created a naturally impregnable base, while the caldera at its top was ample enough to hold the main fortress and all its outbuildings as well as a defensive wall. There were three fissures opening to the surface; one was apparently inactive, but the other was an active vent reaching to the magma far below that allowed a method for heating the building. A natural artesian spring, forced up through a third lava vent, ensured an uninterrupted supply of fresh water. In addition, natural lava flumes within the mountain, created when venting lava escaped during a partial eruption, left a maze of easily traveled natural passages. This allowed several levels to be built below ground with relatively easy access as well as providing for a method for venting lava if the volcano became active once again.
Those first Druids and the assembled craftsmen must have felt daunted looking upon the smooth stone of the volcanic cone rising over a hundred feet above their heads. It would make a fabulous fortress, but it would also be the greatest engineering challenge since before the fall of the world. The few surviving records are in conflict about how many years it actually took to build Paranor. But they agree on the fact that it took the combined army of the council’s best masons, carpenters, architects, sappers, and craftsmen at least ten years to build the main body of the keep. This accomplishment is all the more amazing when it is realized that they first had to rediscover or invent the skills and sciences needed to complete the work.
The Druid’s Well
Galaphile may have had more than natural defense in mind when he chose the Paranor Mountain for the home of his new council. At one point, there are indications that he banned all the workers from the mountain and sequestered himself with his most senior Druids for a week. When the workers returned, the mysterious fissure known as the Druid’s Well and the tower that covers it were complete. The actual contents of the Druid’s Well have remained a secret known only to the Druids themselves, though there is no doubt that magic of some type lurks there. Some say it is something that has been there since the time of Faerie, one of the few doorways that connects the worlds of life and afterlife. Some say it is a shaft that channels magic from realms no living soul has ever visited, containing power that no creature would dare to challenge—perhaps even a channel to the dead.
Whatever the source, its power is immense, as it is undoubtedly this magic that allowed the entire fortress to vanish from the world for so many years. Within those parts of the Druid records that have come to light, it is clear that only a few of those within the Druid order knew anything of the nature of the well. Whether intended for defense or to power more arcane studies, the magic within the well served to save the keep on at least one occasion, when it was used to destroy dark forces that had infiltrated Paranor during the time of the Druid Allanon. It apparently cannot be completely controlled, however, as it did not protect the keep from falling to the renegade Druid Brona at the outset of the Second War of the Races.
The well itself appears to be a bottomless shaft cut or burned through the heart of the mountain. Its depths are cloaked in impenetrable blackness. The tower built above it rises several hundred feet above the ground level to become the highest point in the keep and is constructed of large blocks of masonry six to eight feet thick. The stairway within ascends to the sanctuary, a small round room at the top protected by various traps. This chamber probably served the builders as a retreat, or lab, but it has remained empty for many centuries.
Those who have been to the Druid’s Well and survived to tell of it report that the darkness below seems to move. Some report hearing a sound like the scrape of scales on stone; others have heard harsh, unintelligible voices. There are tales that tell of how it was used over the years and of the terrible things it has swallowed. One recently discovered manuscript believed to have been penned by the Druid Bremen claims that the well was used to contain all the Druids’ arcane discards:. “… Magic and science, the living and the dead, mortal and immortal have gone into its depths.”
All who have walked within Paranor agree that the keep is alive. If so, its soul is deep within the Druid’s Well.
During the construction, Galaphile and the rest of the Druid Council lived in a makeshift village near the site until the actual living quarters were complete. It was during this time that the work of compiling the Druid Histories was begun. As soon as the living quarters of the central keep were livable, Galaphile moved the council and its retainers into the greater safety of the protected site. Paranor officially opened its doors to the world almost e
xactly one thousand years after the Great Wars had ended. With pennants from the Races who had shared in its construction flying from its glowing white battlements, and the banner of the hand and torch, symbol of the Druid Council, flying from the top of the Druid’s Tower, the new fortress greeted those who made the journey through the Kennon Pass with the promise of an age of enlightenment.
Elit Druin
The crest of the Druids, used to represent their order and all they stood for, was the image of a hand holding forth the torch of knowledge. Their credo was “Through knowledge, power” (“elit druin” in the Elven tongue). It also translates as “Through truth, power.” Early in the first days of the Druid Council, Galaphile was gifted with a medallion molded in the form of the hand and torch to wear as a badge of office. It was called the Elit Druin, possibly in homage to his Elven heritage and the fact that the Elves were the dominant Race involved with the creation of the Druids.
The Elit Druin was forged of gold strengthened with some small amount of alloys and laced with silver trappings. According to legend, it was imbued with magic during its forging. It was passed down from each High Druid to his successor until the fall of Paranor during Athabasca’s tenure as High Druid. The outcast Druid Bremen managed to rescue the medallion before it could be captured. He used it to forge the legendary Sword of Shannara. The hand and torch can still be seen on the pommel of the sword.
When the second Druid Council returned to Paranor, a new medallion of office was made in the hope that Allanon, who had re-formed the order, would accept it. He never did. The new medallion never had the beauty or the magical properties of the original. Ironically, the original medallion did eventually return to Paranor. As part of the Sword of Shannara, it was on display in the Vault Room for many years.