Ozzy sat across a booth table in the dead silence of the late night of Farheim’s Defender’s Guild headquarters from a man as big as the mountains he was raised in. Gunn the Barbarian, a name fitting of a man who seemed to carry a gun show with him everywhere he went, took up the entire half of the semi-circular booth he brought his listener to. It was further from the idling guild manager at the desk, and from the door. Far from where uneager ears might hear them.

Ozzy was promised a glimpse of the world he did not know. Despite being born into it and made useful to some, he was still very much a stranger to all the customs and particulars of the new fantastic realm. A land of talking skeletons, muscular scholars, and vanishing caravans. And he’d already messed up quite a few times, not knowing where seemingly key locations were based in the world which rendered him suspicious. He had to fix that. Asking strangers about current events was one thing. Asking about the history of the world and his place in it - a faux pas at best.

“Where shall I begin?” Gunn said in a narrative, ponderous manner. Ozzy waited to hear him out. Whether it was all myth and speculation or the oral history of a lineage of observers, he wanted to take in what knowledge his astute associate would divulge. Gunn looked over at Ozzy and slowly lowered his head. “Do you have a preference?”

“Oh, sorry,” Ozzy said. “Uh…You mentioned the end of the world. But it feels wrong to start there. Maybe we can work back from that to the beginning. Or near there. Or maybe the skeletons?”

“I will start with the earliest tales of my people,” Gunn said. “They are the most familiar to me and easiest to explain, and will give me time to learn how you best interpret my words.”

“All right,” Ozzy said. “Is there a formality I should know about? Like, should I save all my questions for the end?”

“You will not have any questions,” he said, “for my story shall encompass all. This is the story of the Insmen, our ancestors, and the progenitors of all humanity in this world, whom we Barbarians have taken after in the most direct manner.”

Ozzy nodded along occasionally to confirm he was listening. He tried to focus. He was never great with lectures before. Necessity propelled his need to hear people out and learn from them as much as possible in recent outings. He wasn’t sure what to expect, but could not have anticipated the true test of will it took to hear Gunn speak for as long as he wanted.

“The Insmen were the original humans. Before the Dividing Times - when the many Insmen were scattered by the movements of dark forces - they reigned as supreme beings that walked the earth in great strides and used incredible powers born in their spirits. The Insmen were made with purpose, as were all who were Created: to defeat the Dragons.”

I have so many questions but Gunn is going at a pace where it feels like I can’t interrupt him.

“The Insmen were successful, but not only by their incredible strength and skill and divine luck. They were aided from the dark by the Urgods. Those who are themselves Creators, but after seeing the apex of Creation which were the Insmen, turned their hands to make monsters which they would enviously rule as their own surrogates to humanity. This was folly, as none could equal let alone topple the Insmen. And thus hatred brewed, and the Urgods then commanded their monsters to take lives and kill the Insmen, to drive the world to darkness as the Dragons once attempted.”

I feel like I should be writing this down. Maybe I can stop him politely? Like, a hand? Is that a safe signal or is it way more rude in this world?

“The Insmen were clever, their minds as powerful as their bodies, and so they knew how best to counter the rising tide of evil that spread throughout the world. They split themselves into many tribes and faced the Urgods in their domains. There they built great works to keep them driven from the world and imbued them with their spiritual power, thus deposing the Urgods from much of their strength, but this did not stop them entirely. The Urgods still exist to this day, hidden away in dark pockets beyond this world, in the realms they made and rule with impunity, raising hordes of horrific beings made only for the purpose of killing all humans; we, the descendants of their enemies, so far removed from that former grace yet not powerless from the distance drawn by history.”

“Is that what -.”

“The Barbarian cla -.”

“Oh, I’m sorr -.”

“No, it’s fi -.”

“I -.”

“Plea -.”

They both went silent. Ozzy raised his hand to speak first.

“I know you said I wouldn’t have questions, so I will instead say that I have never heard of the Urgods before.”

Gunn looked surprised. “I have found that everyone I have spoken to has at least heard of them. The word Urgod is very much entwined within the nature of the work you do here, as told through myths and legends not unlike my own.”

“Uh,” Ozzy stuttered, “maybe I haven’t heard it that much. But like…the origin of monsters? I…was never taught to care about that. Just to avoid them or, if I could, because it would help others, destroy them.”

“Indeed,” Gunn nodded. “The old prophecies have not withstood time as well as the old mountains where they originated.

“What prophe - sorry. That’s a question.”

“I can explain to you the prophecies,” Gunn said, gladly. “In fact, they are already a part of the story I was telling! This is the story of my people, the Barbarians - but their origin lies with the Insmen, and the great work they did. For it was that very work which then led to the curse of my people and how we have come to live our lives to this day.”

I guess I won’t have any questions about the Barbarians in this world once he’s done. I think that’s what he meant.

Gunn continued, uninterrupted, for a while.

“The Insmen who went to cordone off the Urgods in their native lands underwent change to better suit their roles against these agents of darkness. As they changed, so did the creations of the Urgods, and the tactics to fight the Insmen who sealed them. The Insmen who thus fled to Barbary, the land of many mountains, were untainted by these trials of combat. They carried with them the honor and pride of victory over the Dragons as their final triumph, and sought peace in the world with assurance that their kin would restore balance and claim the world on their own. These Insmen, thus, because the first Barbarians. Though they did not fight for their way of life, they did still change, a change brought on by the prophecies of doom.

“When the first true clan was founded, the elders sent a young one into the world to meet with the many leaders of their distant kin and receive the news of how their stave against the Urgods went. This young man returned many years later, and though he was not gone for so long, he seemed to age to be one hundred or more. He was taken in and thus recited what he said, the first World Reader, and as well the first Doom Speaker. What the clan expected were tales of triumph and great battle against the dark forces sealed away. What they heard was very different.

“This Barbarian had spoken directly to the Urgods. He traveled to each seal, to each monument, to the places which the old Insmen had forgotten or neglected, to where great battles were fought and then paved over for cities and buildings, and to where the seal between our worlds was weakest, and the Urgods found him there. He, a true Insmen in blood and spirit, was their mortal enemy, and though they were weakened they still sought to damage his mind and his spirit any way they could. And so they told him of their plans, words of such incredible evil that it sent the youngling into fits of madness. His hair went grey, then white, then fell out, then regrew sporadically across his body like burs, then fell out again and left blistering wrinkles in his skin. This was the power of the words he heard. And those words were -.”

Ozzy visibly braced himself. Gunn stopped his story short with a grin. “You are so invested in my words! This makes me happy, Ozzy. Thank you for listening so well.”

“Oh, sure,” Ozzy said. “You’re not going to say the skin-wrinkling words to me, are you?”

Gunn snickered. “Those words were toxic like swamp air not from their content alone, but from the mouths which bore them! I could not kill with words. Words are a tool of understanding and peace. Even words of vitriol and hatred are meant to communicate our feelings to one another and create distance between those who would hide from harm with a barrier of words before them.”

“Okay,” Ozzy said. “But…you still know what those words were?”

“All Barbarians do,” Gunn said. “As do the Doomsayers remind us each time they channel the dread knowledge of the Urgods who are so quick to taunt and tempt them with their wickedness. The Urgods hate humanity, all of whom descended from the Insmen. They wield the same force of creation as that which made the world and all that dwells on it, including them and the Insmen themselves. The Insmen had the power to create new forms from the world, to build and construct and invent, and to think as well with new ideas. The Urgods have remained the same ever since, changed only with contempt.

“The Doomsayer spoke to all the Urgods, and learned from them their secret plans. Because they were sealed away, none of them could conspire together, and the distance made them grow hateful of one another as well. As they all held the same evil in their hearts, they all made the same assumption: that if any one of the destroyed humanity, they would go on to replace it, and be at risk of destruction all the same from the rest. And so it was, each Urgod did indeed make those plans to take humanity away and replace it with their own sick revision of it. In doing so, they would change the world to their own liking. If any one vision would come to pass, the world the Insmen made would be destroyed. But the world they lived on for so long before would remain.

“Thus did the Barbarians find solace through these doomed words. Our homes are far from all others, making them difficult to invade by any force, even the inhumane. It is cold, and so beasts which lived in warm lands would be weakened. The mountains are high, and beats that need to breathe more air than normal would suffocate. The mountains are steep with secret ways that are easily guarded, so the tireless and bodiless could not easily make their way to us.”

Sounds like they’re skeleton proof.

“All manner of calamity, natural or not, which could befall the world, we are safe from. The Insmen were clever. They found the one place even the end of the world could not reach. And so we have lived there, in waiting, for the day the Urgods seize the world and lead it to destruction. If any one prophecy comes true, if any one of their plans succeed, we shall remain. We, the true Insmen, shall live to fight again and bear the world anew from the chaos, for as many times as it takes until all of the Urgods have fallen.”

Gunn leaned forward with a satisfied look on his face. “That is the story of my people.”

“It’s…fitting,” Ozzy nodded. “Strength and hardship and…that body. I do have no questions about how your people came to be. It’s just all the other things, which are obviously different stories.”

“Indeed,” Gunn said. “That is the joy of being a World Reader. For every story, ten or more may be told. And in the course of any one story, I may be told another to add to it, or to replace it, or correct what I did not know from before. All people have these stories. They tell tales of the Insgods - the Insmen who they came from - with such different reverence and joy. The Tartarians, who you costume as, speak of the Wanderer, one of the Insmen of a clan who would walk across the Tartary Plains to the edge of the world to chase down a fleeing Urgod, yet would wander still away from his goal to a path untrodden and started a culture all his own that is followed to this day - but without the same purpose.”

“They did mention that,” Ozzy said. He tilted the veil over his face just a bit so he could see it. Then snapped it back down when he thought his jaw might be visible beneath it. “They - they said this was ancestral garb for important travelers but…sold it to me anyway.”

“They are clever folks,” Gunn said. “They value their stories as they value their wares. As well they should. All the people have such stories. The Tahlmen and Zandanians, the Lohrm and Pollers, the people of Croaton and the furtive Amazons -”

Wait, them too!?

“- share a common root with the Insmen. But,” he sighed, “their tales often intersect with a different history than the truths of the ancient era. And none are willing to give credit to the Barbarians who have passed on the words since before the Dividing Times when all words were one.”

Ozzy thought up a question which might lead to a new story, and to a new answer. One he probably already knew, but wanted the confirmation to it.

“The skeletons in the lichyard,” Ozzy spoke. “Were they made…by an Urgod?”

Gunn nodded. “The Lord of Ruin. He who shall render everything bare and to its least parts. He who oversees creation at its end. He sees in the living no purpose if in death they are all made the same. He would level all that has been built, forget all that was learned, erase all that was written, and leave humans as nothing but bones. For all men one day become nothing but their bones. He would rather not waste the time to see them live if death is always the same result.”

Ozzy got up from his seat. “Thank you, again. I…I hope we can do this again, but I must retire for the night.”

“Yes,” he nodded. “And I now agree. It was nice to meet you.”

Ozzy nodded and marched over to the desk where he waited for a moment until the tired clerk came by. “Uh - do I stay here? Are there rooms in the back or -?”

“Hmm,” the clerk huffed. He produced a large, wooden key with a letter carved into the side and pointed Ozzy to the stairs. Ozzy made his way over to the far side of the room and went up into the loft hallway to find his room of the hostel where Defender’s stayed free of charge. All the while thinking - dreading, even - what he learned.

He knew his name meant to be Nothing. Ozzy was a word of a language he somehow didn’t instantly understand. What then did Gozzpek mean, if not Lord of Ruin? Had he stood in the spiteful presence of a God already? And yet lived to tell about it?

Would he live if he dared cross into that crypt a second time?

It was so worrisome that Ozzy, who did not need to sleep, felt exhausted for the first time in days and fell into a hay mattress until the darkness of thought took him away….