Making Sense Of It All

We have entered the Second Age of Fastheld's History; the First Age having been defined by the raising of the Aegis. We're not going to changing the calendar or anything though, as it's purely symbolic this time.

So, what just happened?

Well, it was discovered back in 625 ATA (when Talus decided that he'd had enough of Fastheld and got kidnapped by an undead Dragon Avatar) that once a Kahar got beyond the Aegis, the previous afflictions that they were apparently *born* with vanished. Where once Talus Kahar had weak lungs while in Fastheld, he could breath with the best of them beyond the Aegis.

This lead Talus to conclude that the birth defects (the ones that weren't a disfigurement) and impairments that the Kahar males suffered were caused by an active element of the Shadow, rather than by Talus Kahar I being poisoned by a Wildling and that causing a defect in the Kahar geneology.

Talus later came to the assumption that it was the AEGIS itself that was cursed, and that the curse had been left there by the Shadow Mages who had built it, and who had been forcefully kicked out of Fastheld soon after.

This theory was confirmed by the Archmage Zanorin Drakesfire a few months later, who had actually been there to help build the Aegis, and who had been kicked out of the Empire and then written out of Fastheld's history even though he was originally part of the group now known as the Tribunal.

He told Talus that the Aegis had been cursed by those Mages as retribution for being forced out of Fastheld by Talus Kahar I in order to appease the Shadow-Fearing Nobles and Freelanders that now made up the citizenship of a newly born realm.

However, what he did not know was this: The Aegis Curse not only tainted the Kahar bloodline, but also had greater consequences and effects.

It is well known that those who are Sunkissed in Fastheld is highly limited. Though those who are Shadow Touched may count in the thousands and still be considered rare, the number of those who were - at any one time - Sunkissed reached into the mere hundreds.

For some reason the spark of the Light could not blossom into a flame. This is what we use to explain away the highly restrictive policy that previous Church Staffers brought about that dictated that a person *had* to have been discovered as being Sunkissed before they were six years old, lest that person lose the ability to channel the divine powers of the Light.

It was unworkable, it was restrictive, and it meant that - in all of Chiaroscuro's history - we've only ever had TWO PCs that were Sunkissed.

Though I'm not going to reveal Serath's part in all this before and up to the removal of the curse in tonight's event, I will say that what he and Marrokamir have done is remove that which was causing this smothering of the Light and permitted those sparks to burn brightly like they were originally meant to.

If you became Sunkissed tonight, then that isn't something that just happened randomly by proximity to the event. If I set you as Sunkissed then we're to assume that you were BORN Sunkissed, but that the spark was never able to ignite. Tonight that spark has been ignited and awoken. Wootness abound!

There are now no requirements or hoops to jump through to become Sunkissed. No previous service to the Church. No nonsense about having to have someome 'discover' you. You are born Sunkissed, much as you are born Shadow Touched, and the awakening of that power is equal in both.