It all began on a beach…
Twenty-one strangers suddenly awaken in the shallow surf on the shore of a mysterious country. The memory of their prior lives is masked in a vagueness–as if they had just awakened from a barely remembered, but disturbing dream.
They are bewildered, disoriented, and terrified by a looming vortex hovering over the water. Effused in bluish light it continues swirling and puncturing the warped sky behind them and seems to have dumped them into the shallows, but has moved back beyond the rolling waves over deeper water.
Further down the beach, a man and a young girl emerge over the rise of a sand dune, to join the bewildered new arrivals. The man following the child, claims he was sent here to lead them inland, for a purpose he is reluctant to disclose. Unlike the others, he seems to know where they are and claims to have returned only recently …after a twenty-one-year absence.
The stranger claims that each of them has been summoned here to join him in the completion of a quest to bring about order to this land beyond the shore.
The quest requires them to find one of three mysterious virtue stones and return it to its setting in a legendary golden crown. He claims the crown had been stolen in ancient times by a great beast now said to be sleeping somewhere in the high mountains to the west.
He will share no more details other than more will be revealed when they reach the mysterious site of an Ancient Marker Stone, said to reveal mysteries and bear the secrets to freeing this world. He assures them that each of them has been specifically chosen to join this quest, but refrains from telling them why or how they were selected. He only asks them to follow him, and promises they will learn those reasons in the journey ahead when the time is right for them to know it.
What he does not tell them, is that they are even now being hunted by a monstrous creature that secretly pursued them through the vortex and is intent on killing them all before they have a chance to seriously consider becoming part of the strange Stone Quest.
Legend tells of an ancient priest-king that long ago walked into this world by invitation and transformed himself into a great stone pillar bearing a crown set with three Eternal Virtue stones.
There is an oppressive kingdom now present in this land, ruled by a cruel monarch, that is threatened by the hope promised by the legend and the prospect that the ancient priest-king will one day emerge from the stone and awaken the sleeping beast in the high mountains.
Two prior attempts have been made to complete the stone quests: one successful, the other failing. The hopeful quests are attempted in pursuit of honoring the priest-king mysteriously calling and giving Him the full and complete lordship over these stolen lands.
The priest-king of the legend was said to have acquired the keys to open the hidden kingdom of Excavatia, a mythical place through this land but beyond its metaphysical borders. The priest-king’s return, it is promised, will usher in a new kingdom that will transform and heal this dying land, toppling the strongholds that keep its people under oppression. Some say the prophecy is a myth, a subversive scheme to plant the seeds of revolution, designed to make trouble for anyone foolish enough to believe in it. A thorn in the crowns of anyone who would seek to establish rule and order, whether with benign intentions or malevolent.
This land is not only populated by cruel rulers, and their ranks of violent soldiers, it also shares its wildness with hybrid creatures formed by the unholy blending of humans and animals into the cursed races of “Half-Men” that crossed over into this land centuries ago. Each of the factions seeks dominance, but no one ruler has succeeded in the bid to command full allegiance.
Into this land of contention, one man is called back.
The bewildered travelers’ reticent leader is a man secretly tormented by his own weaknesses and a past betrayal that led to the failure of the second quest. He believes he was brought back to this place to somehow make amends for his treachery and retrieve the one virtue stone he foolishly let fall into the hands of the dark king of the Half-Men. A being that swore that he would use the stone to destroy everything and everyone this man ever loved.
The one-stone quest that succeeded, ages ago, was the return and placement of the Praesporous stone into the golden crown now held by the monster that haunts the forbidding mountain range of stone. That stone is also known as “The Hope Stone”, and for those called to the quest, it serves as a beacon of blue light shining from the far horizon along the Walls of Stone. Proof that the prophecy is more than just a legend and that one of the three quests actually succeeded. Hope still lives, though fear and the forces of darkness seek to hide its promising light.
It is because of that lingering evidence, and the fact that he has been brought back to the Mid-World, that the man dares to hope he can find and convince the remaining friends he left here twenty-one years ago to help him in this pursuit of renewing the second quest, without leading the danger right to them.
Daniel 12:2 “And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.”
Background to the Story:
Long ago, an ancient dragon slithered out of our Surface World into another world (Mid-World) carrying a stolen, crown cast of the purest gold. It had been forged in the ancient world in the land of circles known then as Havilah. (The word Havilah [חֲוִילָה] means “circle” in Hebrew. See Genesis 2:11-12)
The Dominion Crown was a supernatural signet of world dominion, stolen from its rightful owner by craft, deceit, and treachery. The crown bore three magnificent gemstones–each one representing an eternal virtue confirmed and imbued with properties by the World Creator.
In the creature’s flight, the three virtue stones fell from the crown the beast had greedily clutched in its massive claws and were lost somewhere along the beast’s twisting and erratic flight path.
The dark creature was pursued over mountains and through valleys, but it eventually succumbed to the mysterious soporific influence of a massive mountain range called “The Wall of Stone,” where it fell into a millennia-long sleep in the stony heights.
While the beast slept, it dreamt dreams of its own grandeur and fiery violence, continuously breathing out a dense fog that masked the peaks of the mountain chain so that nothing could be seen beyond it. The fogs descended into the lowlands and eventually were carried out to sea, where they coalesced and formed dangerous, living mists that stole away or repressed the memories of anyone unfortunate enough to find themselves trapped within them.
The land is now under the oppression of warring kingdoms and shadowy creatures known as ‘The Half-Men’ under the tenuous rule of a creature that was once human.
There is an ancient prophecy on a mysterious columnar stone, called The Marker Stone, indicating that the land will not be set to cease from its strife and warmongering until the stolen Dominion crown is restored to its rightful owner. But the restoration of the incomplete crown is not enough. Its rightful owner will not reclaim the crown until the three lost jewels are found in a series of three successive stone quests, involving people not of this present Surface World, but from the land in which the crown was originally stolen. For it was a man and a woman from our world that despised the crown and permitted it to be stolen.
The stones must be recovered, secured, and restored back into the stolen crown before the Conqueror King will return to claim it as a successor and a precursor to the man who betrayed his birthright.
The stone quests have commenced. A mysterious, ancient man, who participated in the first successful stone quest, still roams the Mid-World, quietly attending to the needs of a people enslaved by their current captors. There had been a second stone quest, that followed years after the first, but it has failed due to internal divisions and betrayals. The land grows increasingly under threat, and the enemies of The Marker Stone and its attenuated legends, grow bolder, and more vicious. Determined to drive the fading memory of The Marker Stone and its quests, they have almost succeeded in driving hope out of those they oppress, for it has been twenty-one years since the last quest failed, and the remaining Surface Worlders still lingering in the Mid-World after the failure of the second quest have disbanded and gone separately into hiding. They are hunted by both man and sentient beasts. Their virtue stone is lost to them and betrayed into the hands of a dark enemy, whose hatred for humans of any sort knows no bounds.
But that is not the end. It is only the beginning of this tale. For now, the one from the Surface World who was a party to the former betrayal has returned to this land, to make amends and pick up the quest where it last fell off. He must make alliances with those he once betrayed and make amends for his actions if he ever hopes to renew the quest and join in carrying out the requirements for the prophecy to be fulfilled. Factions within the land of The Mid-World once willing to put their hopes in the promise of the prophecy, no longer believe in it. In fact, they have suffered much for their former beliefs, and are no longer interested in seeing these “other world” interlopers return. They still fear the oppressive rulers of these lands that have been gaining power over them since the failure of the prior quest, and they fear what might happen if the virtue stones are found, or ever placed back within the legendary crown itself–A crown still held by a dangerous sleeping dragon, who might very well reawaken and seek vengeance on the land once all the stones are restored to each of its magnificent golden tension rings.
This is the betrayer’s story–a tale of a quest renewed and a faith reclaimed. A story that may have more relevance to our own personal and real life faith journeys than we ever imagined was possible.
See the “Blog Chapters in Chronological Order” section to begin the adventure…
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Excavatia 