Ancestral Gardeners

When the seeds of magic on Earth bloomed once again, and witches across the continents uncovered forgotten gateways to worlds far distant, all but the most enthusiastic of fantasists were astonished to find the cities of strangers who had come before them. As we spread through the old network to more and more of their empty homes, gardens, and laboratories we came to understand who these people were and our shared history, touching the stars through their enduring example, but to this day the multiple mysteries of where they went in the millennia between remain unsolved.

Prehistory
Now we call the builders of the cities and the Portal Network “Ancestral Gardeners”, for we know that ten thousand years ago, when our kind first began banding into cities, they walked the same Earth that birthed us. They were us, or we are them, in many senses that matter. They lived without demanding too much of the land which nourished them, and they wielded abilities that would have been known as witchcraft by institutions that festered upon the Earth in their absence.

Through a profound connection with the Everything, through movement, mark, word, and gesture, the Ancestral Gardeners could conjure fire from the air, or influence the growth and disposition of the other creatures of the planet. Through movement, mark, word, and gesture, the Ancestral Gardeners carved pathways between the stars, to walk other spheres and experience their wonder as easily as crossing a meadow.

For all the love they had for the world that made them, they would consider themselves unable to stay. Through prescience and prophecy, the barefoot witches of aeons gone foresaw the coming of a comet, a stellar rock fashioned from a metal that burned the magical mind. No misdirection nor show-of-force could stop this beast of the void from colliding with Sol’s third planet, the choice of these dreamers was simple: leave our species’ home behind, or boil their minds in arcane static.

Hundreds of thousands of souls crossed through portals to worlds distant, but the baleful influence of the anti-magic stardust was fierce, and its effects were felt once it had barely crossed into the Solar system. The portals within Solar space all sealed, trapping Gardeners in their thousands on Ganymede, Mars, Io, Venus, and Mercury, and leaving millions of humans stranded on Earth, waiting for impact.

The blighted meteor struck the surface. This scorching scar would take millennia to fully heal, but the Ancestral Gardeners would not be around to see it. Portals on Earth would not be seen again until the Industrial Revolution was well on the way to decimating the planet, and our kind’s magical history would be lost to time. Those Gardeners that were left on other Solar worlds appear to have retained some of their capacities, but evidence suggests they did not remain there long.

Some of their claimed worlds, relatively close by to the Solar System in what we call Sector Sentinel, allowed them to observe the progression of history on their home world, the construction of vast citadels and the horrific abuses of one another as men lost their way. Other worlds served as proving grounds for expansion of magical talent, for sowing jungles and building marvelous things.

The Greater Gardens
The sagas of the Gardener Exodus were revealed to us in the lost library at Sailor’s Vision, but further exploration of the dormant Portal Network across the galaxy made clear that this apocalyptic event was far from the end for these pioneers. Even before the fall of Sol, the Ancestral Gardeners were accustomed to walking upon worlds thousands of light years beyond their home.

Travel to far stars is not trivial, but anything can become routine with practice. Compensating for air that cannot be breathed is the difficult part, cutting a doorway through the space between to somewhere the traveler can See is reasonably straightforward.

And with the power of the billions of suns in the galaxy, on a clear night a human eye can See a very long way indeed.

The Ancestral Gardeners that made it out of the Solar System settled on worlds as far as sixteen thousand light years away, and from there they claimed worlds even on the far side of the Galactic Core. While many of these colonies have been found and resettled by modern folk in the Portal Morning, it is clear that a huge and unknown number remain yet to be found, through dormant gateways or isolated in astral storms. The stars are far, far too numerous to check by hand.

Linking their new homes with grand multi-portal hubs, the Gardeners built centuries of their own history in enclaves all around the western hemisphere of Vintergatan. Sectors Sentinel and Garden are brimming with evidence of their terraforming strengths and grand constructions, breathtaking ranges of sculpted mountains, colossal arboreta, guided ecosystems drawn from the native wildlife of Earth, or perhaps elsewhere.

At the nourishing hands of the Ancestral Gardeners, life was brought to lifeless rocks in the trillions. Mighty jungles and alien rainforests remain the pride of Sector Garden, while powerful grasses and herds of roaming beasts dominate the worlds of Sector Sentinel to this day.

Calamities
Despite a dizzying multitude of enduring testaments to the arcane ingenuity and creativity of the Ancestral Gardeners, no living descendant of those who left Earth four thousand years ago has ever been found, nor any cooperative remains. Libraries and murals which tell of their histories on other worlds are all despairingly incomplete on the matter of how the Gardeners came to be gone from their homes, and some-hundred years hence there’s only so much that psychometry can do. Any answers that the Gardeners were able to give have either been hopelessly corroded, or remain hidden.

Some worlds show severe signs of physical devastation, perhaps there were wars. Others are plagued by mercurial magical storms, producing effects ranging to the nightmarish, perhaps there were dangers of a surreal extreme climate. Perhaps there was disease, or perhaps disasters of the wild dimensions akin to what happened on Mars befell Gardeners on worlds on the galaxy’s other ends.

There are almost as many wondered reasons for why there are no more Gardeners, as there are worlds that they touched.

Archaeology
Using their magic, the Ancestral Gardeners created physical structures the likes of which could never have been stabilized without sheer disrespect for the laws of physics. Many of these remain fit for unaided human habitation, even in atmospheres that are openly hostile to terrestrial life, such as on Venus or on worlds in toxic nebulae, not only providing shelter from the elements but also offering nutritious fruits grown in gardens which still thrive. The study of these extant structures and the methods used to create them is of prime concern to the Faculty, along with the histories of the Gardeners’ societies in general.

The first Gardener cities found in the Portal Morning were in Sector Solar, and, though remarkable, they were quickly dwarfed in size and complexity by those found in Sectors Serpent and Sentinel, which were in turn shamed by the metropolises in Sector Garden and the startling implications of Sector Midnight.

The technique used to create these marvels of arcana is a form of Grand Construction we call Overdrive Architecture. With it, halls and pathways can rise and bend above the ground fearless of gravity, twisting into wide, swirling shapes or hanging giant baskets of homes, public plazas, and flowerbeds. Numerous variations in the styles of these structures have been observed across and within the Sectors, so scholars can only speculate at the breadth of design that lays unknown in the stars untraveled.

Understanding the employment of Overdrive Architecture has enabled folk to somewhat restore or expand upon Gardener cities, and in the hands of sorcerer virtuosos it can today create the most intricate and effective of starships. Some governmental bodies prohibit folk from modifying the remaining Gardener structures, but a city blended from Gardener ruins, fresh Overdrive Architecture, and old-fashioned home building is not at all an uncommon sight on the Portal Network.

Living Legacy
But the Ancestral Gardeners did not leave behind only sculpted stone, bone, and questions. Almost every world they touched still bears life, even if the conditions or those lives are lethal to humanity.

Other than the vibrant meadows and colossal jungles representing uncountable floral diversity, fauna from Earth was enchantedly enhanced for more desirable traits, from practical effects for surviving other environments to cosmetic alterations. Descendants of the horse, the crocodile, the bison, the tiger, the toucan and the crane and many more can be found even beyond Midnight, and much of these exomorphs readily entered once again into a symbiotic relationship with humanity.

Some, it must be said, continue to be hostile.

A sorcerer’s magical capacity outstrips all others, and a sorcerer may wield the power to not only alter life in miraculous ways, but to create it directly. It is widely believed, and there is certainly strong evidence that it is sometimes true, that the monstrous xenodragons found guarding particular worlds are titans produced from the dreams and visions of the Ancestral Gardeners. Today, only the most accomplished of Cosmic Life Sorcerers could even hope to create any such like.

Some wishful thinkers hope that living descendants of the Ancestral Gardeners might one day be met.