Haven of the Angels

Mean Distance from Oma: 118,000 to 226,000 WA

Orbital Period around Oma: N/A

Diameter: N/A

Length of day: N/A

Gravity: N/A

Description:

Far beyond the last Fekxtah planet of Oma’s Family lies an enormous globe of celestial objects that surrounds Oma and the entirety of her children. This is the Haven of the Angels. The nearest parts of its physical extent begin further from Oma’s furthest planet, Chayffen, than Chayffen is from Oma, and its end reaches that far beyond its start. It is a magnificently vast area filled with celestial objects beyond count. They are formed from loose entanglements of rock, dust, and ice, and in some cases shards of one or more of the Six Energies. They vary in size from no more than a small boulder to the size of large moons.

The Haven of the Angels was first discovered by a small coterie of eccentric Elzheni scientists who were characterized by their peers as little more than religious zealots since they did not follow the fixed, methodical processes adhered to by the broader Elzheni scientific community. The members of this sect called themselves Astromentists since they considered their abilities to be an extension of their highly developed affinity with Mental Energy. Their peers called them the Como-ists, since they made heavy use of a powerful drug made from the como plant to trigger their “explorations”.

It would be impossible, and perhaps unjust, to present the story of this small sect without using their own words. Their writings convey not only their goals and achievements, but also give a proper portrayal of the mindset that drove them to explore the extreme distances far beyond the influence of Oma. It also reveals the manner in which they achieved their goals which is certainly outside all credible bounds of scientific thought.

The reader might be asking why we would include mention of such a strange group of Elzheni in this document. The question is well warranted, and there was much discussion of this among those of us who are responsible for the creation of this summary of ancient Elzheni knowledge of the greater Fekxtah world. In the end, two arguments convinced us to include the Astromentists in this brief tome. The first was that the Astromentists had persuaded a number of the most prominent Elzheni scientists of their day that their explorations, or “journeys” as they were fond of calling them, were true. How they validated their knowledge to their colleagues is unknown. The ancient texts contain no account of the discussion, or, at least, none that we can find. We felt that the judgment of these ancient masters could not be discounted regardless of the opaque quality of their decision. By itself that was sufficient justification to include the Astromentists’ experiments in this document.

That said there is a second argument which is also compelling and worthy of our attention. It centers on a strange, and unexpected, event. In the year SP~5,019, only five years before completion of this document, the Guild Division for the Science of Oma and her Fekxtah Family (SOFF) was confronted by a living entity, sentient in its nature, that claimed to originate from the Haven of Angels. At first the members of the SOFF believed the creature to be no more than an individual of a race from our own world that we had not yet discovered — it is accepted among current Guild scholars and scientists that there are many such unknown, and undiscovered, creatures living on and inside of Ethem. However, as Guild scientists interacted with this creature they discovered that it had knowledge that could not be known to any other than those who had studied the accounts of the ancient Astromentists. This could not be, though, as the ancient tomes are unknown to those outside the Guild, and, even within the Guild, are well-protected from any who have no compelling need to read them. When the Guild members confronted the creature with this unassailable reality, it calmly countered with information about several of the Astromentists mentioned in the ancient texts, and claimed to have known them. What it said was in keeping with our understanding of that time of the Elzheni in every respect and in great detail. It was, of course, an astonishing turn of events; one which we could not, in good conscience, disregard, and we were left in the precarious position of being unable to refute the thing it claimed to be.

With this short introduction we believe we have properly conveyed our rationale for inclusion of the passages below. It is now up to the reader to judge for themselves whether the excerpts here are believable or no more credible than the wild tales we tell our children at bedtime.

Below we will use several quotes directly from the Astromentist books of the ancient documents. These quotes are from an Elzheni Astromentist whose name was Eharria.

“I begin. The taste of the como is fresh and clean. It stings my tongue with its strange bitterness, and comforts me as I recognize my body’s familiar response to its effects.

I close my eyes and my inner eye opens. It shows another world to me, one that lives within the known world, but a world that reveals much more than our physical senses can detect. I am surrounded by tendrils of Energy.

At first I do not see them. I simply know they are there. I am patient, a patience I have acquired from much practice, and after some amount of time (a thing which is always hard to sense in this state) they become visible to me. Their tendrils writhe in constant motion, vibrant in colors of scarlet and gold and others I cannot name.

I reach out to touch them, to caress them, and then to gently hold them. They accept me and we embrace. I feel their cool grasp as the distinction between my own being and theirs disappears. We become a single entity, a wisp of life that is not bound by the physical, only by the boundaries of thought.

They carry me forward and we lift ourselves away from our home, my home, the Fekxtah planet Ethem. Soon it is far away, a tiny globe that sits in the vast space that fills the void that separates all Fekxtah from each other.

We travel in the firmament and beyond it.

The direction of our flight is sometimes my decision and sometimes theirs.

We rush through, and quickly pass, the floating shards of Seekrem’s Halo. As we go I see Ethem’s sister planets, Aldrem and Harrayem. They are far away, but are also near enough I can sense them and the life on their surfaces. Distance exists, but not in the way it manifests for physical creatures. The boundaries of distance are overcome.

We continue moving away from Oma. We glide past the small Fekxtah Illidreth and soon pass the great giant Dra Ag Ahaggalla and its many moons. We fly through the other Far Fekxtah of Oma; Moralastalla, Yunah, and Mammarrell. I recognize them for I have visited them all on previous journeys. Then there is a pause as we pass through a great emptiness.

We reach the Very Far Fekxtah. We pass the orbits of Cantoss, Tor, and Melladdin, and, at last we reach Chayffen, the most distant of Oma’s children.

We stop and with our Energetic limbs we probe what lies beyond. We, the Elzheni race, have no experience of any worlds beyond Chayffen. It is for us nothing other than a vast expanse of darkness, space filled with profound emptiness.

I have been this far before, but never further. I feel fear rise in my own self and this causes the connection with my Energetic companion to weaken, but she senses this and pulls me back into her embrace. He assuages my discomfort with her own sense of safety. He (for my companion is both he and she, and neither) can touch the Energetic sinews of Chayffen which lies nearby, and this gives her the satisfaction of having a familiar place near to us.

The moment of fear passes and we probe the darkness before us. For long minutes (or perhaps hours or days) we allow the deepness of this space to encompass us, and then we sense something. There is something there. Or do we believe that something should be there and only imagine it? Perhaps it is only the hope that the world cannot be entirely empty of the Energy that creates all of the living beings of the world.

I search my Elzheni self for long enough to remind us of our charge — to discover what lies beyond Oma’s family. I perceive a sense of delight that comes from my companion; an unusual thing to experience. It was almost as if she were a physical creature, at least for an instant. The sensation was of real, palpable delight and then it receded to a memory, but it was enough.

As one we arrived at the belief that something was there, waiting for us.

We launched ourselves out beyond Chayffen and flew into the unknown.”