A History of the Selenim
By Ian Young, copyright©1998

The story of the Selenim is known to few. Among those few, most view their story as one stained by perfidy. Fewer still see their story as one of sacrifice. Only the rarest few see their story in neither light, but in light of the natural cycle of the magical fields. Such is the way of the Selenim - what is not shrouded in mystery is misunderstood, and what is misunderstood is inevitably feared. Such has always been the way of the Selenim.

This history begins with the story of the Nephilim, then diverges, repeatedly converging then diverging yet again throughout the course of history. Sometimes the Selenim merely followed their kindred like pallid shadows, at other times, they plunged the world into the darkest night. Again, such has been the way of the Selenim.

Even the Selenim themselves do not possess a full accounting of their history, and what history is known by some is hotly contested by others. What follows is an abridged history, drawn and translated from one of the most complete and reliable documents possessed by the "Unnamed" Arcanum, hidden deep within the libraries of their grand sanctuary in Venice. The original text is a much-guarded set of volumes, written in an archaic Arabic dialect, collectively known as the "Kitab es-Selenimi", The Book of the Selenim. It is a most peculiar document in that it is still considered a work in progress - mysteriously, a new volume of the great history appears on the library shelves every century or two, chronicling the more recent events in the Selenim story. This mystery is most perplexing, not by virtue of the fact that the original author appears to continue scribing this ongoing tale, but that, despite the hidden and locked doors, despite the vigilant guards, despite the terrible wards, the new volumes continue to appear without disturbance, and none claim know their source.

Perhaps it is a great hoax perpetrated by the Arcanum itself to help establish their own sense of legitimacy, their own membership creating the new works and staging their "discovery." Perhaps it is the visitation of the great Lilith herself. Whatever the case, the histories contained therein continually prove a match to extant fragments of other records, to eyewitness accounts of surviving Selenim. Its pedigree unproved, "Kitab es-Selenimi" remains the most definitive document from which to draw. That said, so let us begin.

BEFORE ALL
We began as one. We were all KaIm, though unaware of our very existence. Then we were awakened. Ironically, the very power that liberated us from our ignorance was the same power that could destroy us. The power that would seduce so many of us and render us forever changed would also prove the power of our salvation. This power was the Black Moon, and though ages would pass before the first Selenim was "born," the wheels of inevitable change were set in motion.

From our lives as Nephilim, many of us are familiar with the stories of the creation of the Black Moon, and there is little to add herein. The great Saurians, in their might and arrogance, deemed themselves fit to create a new presence in the heavens. The Black Moon eclipsed the Moon that already hung in the sky, and threatened to crowd even the Sun's power from the Earth. While the Saurians basked in the power of their new creation, this disruption in the streams of the Ka fields jolted the KaIm from their harmonious bliss, striking the spark of consciousness within them. The KaIm looked up into the sky and saw the Black Moon drawing the Ka of the Sun into itself, transforming it, darkening it, forever changing it into...something other. The KaIm sensed that this otherness would choke them off from the Ka-fields that sustained them, for without the steady flow of Solar-Ka, the lesser Ka-fields would diminish as a stream drying to a trickle in a drought; and without the lesser Ka-fields, the KaIm would be reduced to naught.

What happened in due course is little understood, and none in existence claim to have been witness to the event (at least none of any reliable reputation). However, the result is quite certain: The wholeness of the Black Moon was shattered, and the sky yielded once again to the Sun, leaving the Moon forever blemished and diminished in grandeur. How this feat was achieved is stuff of legend and debate, but all of the magical races instinctively know that the KaIm's understanding of the Ka-fields would compare to ours like the light of day to a candle. The best surmise is that the KaIm were eventually able to focus themselves, en masse, upon the Ka-fields, each KaIm upon its own favored Ka-element, and set up a great harmonic vibration. This magical harmonic proved antithetical to the Black Moon, tearing it from the sky, shaking it to pieces, and reducing it to dust. The shattered remnants of the Black Moon encircled the planet, much of it enveloping the Moon, forever damaging the intensity of its mighty Ka-fields. The remainder settled to the Earth and pooled in sooty swaths here and there across the globe. The Saurians, long dependent upon the Black Moon for their sustenance, were decimated by the loss of its power. Those that survived migrated in massive columns - great, serpentine death marches - to the pools of Black Moon-Ka, where they led a dismal, vestigial existence until their slow, languishing extinction. Thus were the KaIm left supreme upon the Earth.

WHERE PATHS DIVERGE
The first great division within the magical race arose from dissent regarding the ultimate goal of the KaIm - Agartha - and the path to achieve it. Some of the greatest visionaries of their kind, the Sun Lookers, proposed a grand scheme whereby Agartha could be reached by harnessing Solar-Ka where it pooled most readily - in the corporeal bodies of the creatures roaming the Earth. Candidate species were chosen, and their evolution would be guided carefully, until a useful tool was bred that provided a suitable pathway to Enlightenment. The proposal received overwhelming approval among the KaIm, though it was not without its detractors. Among the dissidents, arguments were put forward that to artificially affect the natural order of the Ka-fields, and the vessels that bore them, simply reduced the KaIm to the same arrogance and hubris that the Saurians displayed.

Despite strenuous objections, the Golden Path to Agartha was adopted by the majority of the KaIm. Those who disapproved most seriously accepted a self-imposed exile, resettling themselves in the most obscure regions of the planet in protest. Over the millennia, others would follow suit, becoming disillusioned with the results and questionable implications of the experiments, particularly when the upstart humans achieved full consciousness at the misdeeds of the cursed Prometheus. From these dissidents, Nephilim of curiously divergent traditions would arise. Most importantly, however, from among these dissidents would the first of the Selenim be born.

The millennia came and went, and the dissident factions each developed a wisdom of their own, characteristic of their own, divergent paths. None can guess what would have become of the world and the magical races were it not for the great cataclysm that befell the Earth. Perhaps it was a random collision of heavenly forces. Perhaps it was the magical backlash of nature in response to the unnatural spark of sentience among humanity. Whatever the cause, the effect was felt worldwide as the Orichalka Meteor plunged through the atmosphere and deep into the planet itself, obliterating the flow of the Ka-fields everywhere.

THE RISE FROM RUIN
The toll of ruin was terrible. Everywhere, the KaIm were decimated. Those that survived were invariably crippled, their ties to the Ka-fields sundered, their own Elements stripped and tattered. Only the mightiest and the luckiest had survived, and they were now only pallid shadows of their former selves. Gone were their instinctive mastery over the Ka-elements and their ability to shape new physicalities for themselves. Forced to lock themselves into a single, permanent material form, bereft of any magical mastery, they fashioned a new name for themselves: Nephilim, those who have fallen. Dazed and helpless, the Nephilim were unable to control their already unruly thralls, the humans. The newly-conscious slave race seized upon the new, destructive Element, recognising the deleterious effect Orichalka had upon their former masters and fashioning it into weapons capable of slaying them. The Nephilim fled or fell before the onslaught of the humans. Their numbers decimated, it appeared that their doom was certain. Were it not for the exuberance of these Orichalka Men in their frenzied pursuit of the Nephilim, pushing across the Bering land bridge that then connected Asia and North America, the Nephilim might have been annihilated entirely. Their relentless hunt brought them into the sanctuary of those who did not wish to be disturbed...and whose wrath would prove the undoing of the Orichalka Men. The humans had encroached upon the domains of the most ancient dissidents of Atlantis. They had no way of knowing the harrowing course of events they would set in motion.

Some among the almost-forgotten Atlantean exiles had long expressed an interest in Ka-fields beyond those commonly associated with the magical race of the KaIm. Indeed, their curiosity led them to explore the foreboding remnants of the dread Black Moon. Their experiments and knowledge served them in good stead after the fall of the Orichalka Meteor; those who survived were quick to note that, unlike the rest of the Ka-fields, which were drastically damaged by exposure to the new Element, the pools of Black Moon-Ka appeared unaffected. When the ravening hordes of Orichalka Men fell upon them, armed with their terrible tools of destruction, the implicit usefulness of the Black Moon fields was not lost on the brightest and most ruthless among them. Many saw this as an opportunity to survive the imminent apocalypse brought about by the meteor, and an opportunity to reverse the tide against the humans and rescue the survivors among their kind. The singular visionary among them who actually harnessed the Black Moon for their benefit would be remembered in awe and infamy for ages to come. Her name was Lilith, the Devouring Messiah.

In the times that followed the Great Fall, there were certain doomed souls among the Onirim, who, without the steady strength of the Ka-fields to guide them, unwittingly fell prey to the dark, tainted side to their favored Moon. The insidious force of the Black Moon crept upon them, doing subtle battle with their other Ka-elements, gradually stripping them of their power, and slowly eclipsing their Moon-Ka. They were pitiful, mad beasts, little more than wild monsters, but they withstood the brunt of Orichalka without harm or fear. The surviving dissidents who occupied the inner reaches of what is now known as the Americas observed these wretches with keen interest. Lilith was the greatest among them, and it was she who created the first of the rituals we all know so well now. She was the one to forge the first of the terrible shadow blades that can cut through the Ka-elements like a hot knife through cold fat. She was the first to dare the Sundering, literally stripping away first her Ka of Fire, then of Air, then her Ka of Earth, then of Water, leaving only the Moon, which became clouded and eclipsed in darkness. It was she who first trod the Path of the Sarcophagus, creating the sepulcher that would sustain the tenuous fields of the Black Moon. Through devotion of purpose and application of sheer will, Lilith was the first among us to nurture the Black Moon within herself and become Selenim.

Hushed rumors have circulated, however, that Lilith was not truly the first of her kind, that she had bargained dearly for the secret of the Sundering from those who had embraced the Black Moon long before the advent of the Orichalka Meteor. The merest suggestion that there may be Selenim born of KaIm origin, surpassing even the great Lilith, causes even the most powerful and sublime among the Cult of Lilith to shudder, considering it a heresy worthy of excruciating torture.

DARK VENGEANCE
Whatever the source of their liberation, Lilith guided the transformation of countless similarly-minded Nephilim to assume their new Selenim forms. Their birth was like a spark flaring to life in the tinder of dry grass - the Selenim stormed forth from the nether reaches of the globe and descended upon the humans with an unholy wrath, destroying all that stood before them. Shielded by their immunity to the Orichalka weapons held against them, and armed with the new-found terror of their Imago forms -the power to re-cast their very physical forms - the Selenim forced humanity into retreat, granting their kin, the Nephilim, a desperately needed reprieve. They first turned the tide upon their home soil, scattering their enemy like chaff before the wind; their counter-assault pushed the Orichalka men back across the Bering land bridge, branching both south and west. The approach of the Selenim heralded destruction, not only for the Orichalka Men who had raised arms against the magical races, but for all humanity. Soon, Lilith and her Selenim were poised upon the verge of world domination, their magics granting them pre-eminence over the beings and creatures that shared the world with them. It was at this very point that the eventual fate of the Selenim was turned against them, not by the might of some bold opponent, but by their own hubris.

The Selenim had driven the humans back into submission, and, surveying the world about them, saw none to challenge their dominance. There were the Nephilim, their former kind, but they were weak and struggling to regain some measure of strength themselves. Furthermore, when the Selenim revealed themselves to their protectorates, most among the Nephilim recoiled in horror at the sight of what they had become; deformed and stained by the vulgar Element, the Selenim were monstrous in their eyes. The few who did not turn in disgust expressed little thanks for the great sacrifice committed for their sake - or so the conquering Selenim thought. Lilith and her minions returned the looks of disgust, pitying the Nephilim for their weakness and helplessness. The Selenim themselves turned their backs upon their kindred and looked to the lands that they had conquered, and those still to fall.

Humanity faced the very real threat of annihilation at the hands of the Selenim. Pushed back into isolated pockets of terrified survivors, they found solace in the only hope they had - the teachings of Prometheus. The legacy had lived on, both among the humans and among the Nephilim. For mankind, Prometheus was the granter of knowledge, the one who lifted them above the state of mere animals. His teachings were passed on to new generations of humanity through the mystery cult that kept his ideal alive - that humans could be the masters of their own destiny, to forge their own path to a greater reward than the Sun Lookers had designed for them. Among the Nephilim a small faction had likewise maintained a secretive cabal of those who saw their path not as one of deliberate dominance over humanity, but as one of indelible inter-dependency - each possessed an Element that the other needed to rise beyond their fixed state. It is uncertain which party first approached the other, but as their mutual fate as thralls - or worse - to the eminent supremacy of the Selenim became apparent, humanity and Nephilim were drawn together in another act of fate that would set the course for millennia to come.

A bold alliance was struck between the two beleaguered races, and they entered into an unprecedented agreement to share their knowledge and strengths with one another in order to cast off Selenim oppression. The first great innovation of the new alliance was based mostly in principle, and partly in form, upon the Sarcophagus of the Selenim. A Nephilim whose name is remembered as Hern created the first of the Stasis objects to help stave off the dissolution that faced many of the Nephilim's deteriorating physical manifestations. By mutual agreement, sublime rituals were invented that allowed these Nephilim to emerge from Stasis at the invitation of powerful humans, temporarily possessing their physical bodies. This mystical alliance of Promethean traditionalists granted the Nephilim much-needed stability in the face of inevitable magical decay and physical freedom, while providing humanity with access to the gifts of the Ka-fields. Together, the Prometheans possessed the might to rise up against their Selenim overlords.

Word of the new Promethean rituals spread outward from northern Asia, cautious emissaries carrying the knowledge to enclave after enclave of Nephilim and humans, acting as diplomatic envoys between the races. These early pacts between the two, former master and rebellious slave, sworn enemies, led to the first of the paths of the shamans, primitive alliances that bound Nephilim to the wandering tribes of humanity. With their combined strength to buoy their efforts, armies of humans rallied about their magic-working shamans possessed by Nephilim. Striking first from the hinterlands of Asia, the shamanic army harried Selenim of Europe, catching the cruel lords at unawares. None had been prepared for an organised onslaught of this magnitude, and the initial attacks were largely successful. Though mostly immune to Elemental magics, the vast tide of Ka energies, including the human's Solar-Ka, brought to bear upon the Selenim was able to disperse the thick pools of Black Moon-Ka they tended, and upon which they depended for sustenance. The shamans stormed their holdings and tore their Sarcophagi open, revealing them to the Promethean Light, and the Selenim were vanquished. Seeing the victory of the shamans and their followers, rejoicing humans swelled the ranks of their army, and more than a few Nephilim fell in step with the march toward liberation. The first engagements of the War of the Giants had been joined, and won in favor of the Nephilim and humanity - Northern Europe was theirs.

The front of battle radiated south throughout Europe. The shamans were flushed with their early successes, driving onward mostly by their own momentum and drawn forward by the crumbling resolve of the confused and dismayed Selenim. Kingdom after kingdom of the Black Moon fell before the shamans, and soon all of Europe had been liberated. Only when the march reached Africa and the Middle East did the fervor begin to ebb. Perhaps the Selenim began to develop some sort of resolve; perhaps the humans and Nephilim paused to organise their conquests. Whatever the case, the relative peace did not last long, as the shamans, armed with an ever-more powerful arsenal of magical spells at their disposal, pressed their offensive upon the Selenim once again. While the resistance was more spirited this time, the minions of Lilith were increasingly out-numbered, and the only real alternative to destruction was retreat. Moving east across the Asian continent, the Selenim were pursued doggedly by the shamans' armies. Only a very few Selenim, including our dark "messiah", Lilith, escaped the campaign of annihilation, fleeing to the most remote and desolate mountains of Central Asia, immuring themselves in hidden Sarcophagi, content to let the world outside pass them by.

Eventually, the shamanic offensive pushed north and across the Bering land bridge, spilling into the Americas, the oldest stronghold of the Selenim. There, the pursuit of the Selenim ended in a bloody resistance in the mountains of what would one day become known as Mexico, at the very feet of the oldest Sarcophagi. Selenim of unthinkable power held their own on that ground, drawing upon deep wells of Black Moon Ka to repel the humans and Nephilim. Try as they might, the shamans could gain no ground against these heroes of the Black Moon, and the cost, both in human life and Nephilim Ka, was simply too great. With the Selenim finally penned in only the most remote corner of the globe, the Nephilim and their shaman allies accepted the defeat of their age-old enemies. Thus, the great age of the Black Moon drew to a close leaving the Selenim to brood in hiding as their once-mighty empire slipped into a dark age that would last thousands of years, from which our kind would never recover entirely.

THE LONG NIGHT
After defeat at the hands of the shamans, the Selenim retreated into a long night of hiding, a dark age following the age of Selenim rule. Withdrawn into isolated pockets across the globe, the Selenim nursed their wounds and bided their time until the world might provide a more hospitable environment for them.

The Selenim of Central America, calling themselves the Xibalbans, dwellers in the underworld, were the first to re-attain some measure of their former glory. Even after the withdrawal of the shamanic armies, the incursions of human populations continued to encroach upon the Selenim territories. Without the immediate guidance of the Nephilim-guided shamans, the humans soon found themselves turning to the subtle assistance and prodigious knowledge of the Selenim. Adding allure to this relationship was the unprecedented and inexplicable association that had developed between the indigenous Nephilim and the Selenim of the mountain Sarcophagi. To this day, little is known of the true nature of this relationship, but rumors have filtered through the millennia of a natural, cyclical progression from the natural Ka-fields to the Black Moon, transformation from Nephilim into Selenim, and back again. These rumors are considered heresy by Nephilim and Selenim alike, and likely account for the uneasy, often outright violent, reaction they have received from outsiders of all parties. Still, essentially safe in their isolation, the Xibalbans were able to recreate their empire, leading eventually to the Blood Dynasties so profound among the Olmecs, the Mayans, the Toltecs, the Zapotecs, and finally, the Aztecs. For many millennia would they rule undisturbed, until they again faced the incursion from outside forces.

In Asia, the Selenim slumbered more quietly, until the legendary destruction of the Imperfect Mountain that supported the space between the Earth and Heaven. A great tumult in the earth shifted the land so that the lowlands of the south and east flooded from the rivers and seas. Fleeing the cataclysm, many humans migrated to the north and west, where they came upon the mountains that served as the resting place of Yen-lo, among the mightiest of the old Selenim. Yen-lo wakened in response to the distress and fear the refugees carried with them, and came down from his Sarcophagus to walk among them and feed upon their emotions. Yen-lo and his Xixiegui, as the Selenim became known in China, once again assumed the roles of great lords, establishing for themselves vast holdings among the fields of Black Moon Ka that they gathered for themselves. Eventually, the Xixiegui would be adopted by the Xian-ren, or Asian Nephilim, as the Yama Kings, lords of the many hells, and their leader assumed the title of Yen-lo Wang, the emperor of hell.

In the west, a similar cataclysm, resulting from the rebellion that destroyed and submerged great Tarshish under the waters of the Mediterranean Sea, forced human populations to radiate outward in a great diaspora. Like those who discovered the Xixiegui in the Tien Shan, wandering tribes chanced upon the mountainous hideaway of dread Lilith herself. Still weak in her lassitude, and loathe to emerge from her realm of Black Moon Ka, Lilith bid her few remaining minions to seduce the nomads with their power and knowledge. Supplying them the barest fruits of technology necessary to grant them tactical advantage over their miserable and frightened neighbors, yet leaving them hungry enough to desire the prizes to be won from the settled lands, the Selenim became the guiding spirit behind a succession of peoples who would sow terror wherever they travelled. Their influence shall always be remembered in the infamous names: the Scythians, the Huns, and Mongols. Millennia of invasion and terror travelled across Asia and Europe on the hooves of the nomads, feeding the dreadful tastes of the Selenim. Thus was their slow spread into Western history borne.

A BLACK MOON RISES OVER THE MIDDLE EARTH
The role of the Selenim throughout Western history has always been that of the monster or trickster, lurking in the shadows, guiding humanity into conflicts that heightened the emotions that they find particularly delicious. In ancient Sumeria, Selenim lurched on the peripheries of the walled cities as terrible giants and serpents to sow fear and trepidation among the citizens, yet prowled the markets and homes of the same people in more subtle forms, reaping Solar-Ka from the discord they inspired on a daily basis. In Mycenae, Selenim worked hand-in-hand with the mad Eris to engineer the Trojan Wars, simply to appease their appetites the flood of emotion that accompanied the chaos, discord and destruction, caring nothing for the terrible cost to human civilisation. At their bidding, the Scythians swept down from the steppes into the Middle East, spreading terror among the settled kingdoms as they rode. In Assyria and Phoenicia, Babylon and Carthage, Selenim assumed the mantle of leadership, levying a rule of blood and fear upon their subjects. Even in Greece, where the Nephilim ruled from on high, shadowy vestiges of Selenim influence remained - the tale of Pandora and the cult of Hecate both bear our mark. Inevitably, our campaigns among humanity were met with opposition, but like the hydra, where one head was cut off, more would sprout in its place.

Perhaps the greatest achievement among the Selenim, the most elaborate and exquisite feast of human pathos, was the decline of the mighty Roman Empire. Most certainly, the great Empire was an institution of human achievement, much as the magical races might wish to claim credit for its glory. Many Nephilim did rise to greatness within the ranks of its Citizens, perhaps even as several Emperors - though such claims are always hotly contested. But even as the Romans reached the very height of their civilisation, it was our kind who tuned them to the hideous strains that would eventually prove their downfall. The two magical races vied for the resources that the Empire brought home to their very feet from across the world, while the greed of humanity reached ever farther afield for world domination.

The great turning point in this contest would occur under a particularly auspicious star that hung over the distant provincial town of Bethlehem. While some among the Nephilim Arcana dreamed of throwing the gates to Agartha open wide by preaching the new Path of the Fool, the Selenim, forsaking their more overt efforts from times past, countered their aspirations by supporting rival cults from behind the scenes. On one front, they bolstered the human-dominated cult of Mithra, the god of the soldier, to enforce the Pax Romana upon the most rebellious provinces; on another front, the Selenim lent the support of their cult of Hecate to the Sisterhood of Isis. Amid this maelstrom of contention for the hearts and souls of the citizenry, the Selenim played subtly to the ear of the nobility, fanning their greed, their extravagance and excess, their lusts and perversions, as they became jaded with their positions of privilege. While no Selenim has ever claimed the mantle of such likes as Caligula or Nero, few doubt that the shadow of the Black Moon hung over the Roman capitol, urging the emperors to greater excess with sweet promises of ever richer rewards.

The Roman Empire was awash with every specialised taste of human emotion that the Selenim could possibly desire, and many Selenim grew rich with stolen Solar-Ka in this tumultuous environment. However, the very influence that allowed them to feed so freely proved a destabilising force in an empire that grown vast, diverse, and decadent. Feeling their grasp over human society unraveling within their grasp, the Selenim resorted to older, tried-and-true methods to fan the flames of passion and suffering through the sacrifice of their unwitting subjects - they goaded the nomads of the steppes onto the march once again. As the Huns drove west, they brought terror with them as they rode, and in so doing, they lit the spark of conquest beneath the barbarians at the periphery of the Empire. While commonly decried as a return to the crass and inelegant taste for emotions born of fire and destruction, rather than the heady, rarefied flavors cultivated at the height of the Empire, there was no doubt that the Solar-Ka of humans flowed freely for all Selenim to reap as they so chose. Soon, the civilised lands of the Mediterranean and beyond were plunged into the Dark Age, even as the Selenim once again stalked the countryside as monsters from the shadows.

UNDER THE SHADOW OF THE DARK AGE
The Roman Empire had collapsed, a victim of the slow, agonising blood-letting we committed upon its people. While overt Selenim efforts to create a global Realm under the renewed Black Moon had met with rabid opposition, our more subtle attack, the undermining of an entire hemisphere, was an outstanding success. With a fair measure of their former strength regained, the Selenim of Europe faced the imminent collapse of Western civilisation with great anticipation. Following the trails of the humans who survived the Empire, they established dozens of fortresses dedicated to the Black Moon, small Realms unto themselves that began to spread their darkness throughout the impenetrable forests that covered the Europe. For centuries Selenim ventured forth from their forest and mountain strongholds to follow the violent rampages of mankind, as one barbarian tribe raided another civilised settlement, as one kingdom ravaged another, as fledgling empires rose and fell in a human lifetime. And between the raids and the petty wars, Selenim prowled the wooded countryside, assuming new monstrous forms to prey upon the fear and isolation of the humans.

Often, where life became too simple, and emotions ran perhaps a little too cool for the tastes of the Selenim, we brought the blood of mankind to a boil, and poured them forth from their cauldron. The Vikings were a fine example of those who unwittingly served our agenda. Some historians of the true occult would like to attribute their veneration of two races of gods as evidence of competing Nephilim and Selenim influence - though they would be correct only in part. In fact, while many would readily associate us with the malign beings of Norse mythology, we donned many mantles during those times, some quite fair, while the Nephilim themselves were not always seen in the role of human allies. Speculation aside, where the Vikings roamed, we followed, and where they brought terror and strife, we fed. And the Vikings were only the most prominent of such travels we made on the heels of those we goaded into campaigns of blood and lust.

Certain staggering events even the Selenim did not need to set in motion, as the fear and avarice among the humans and Nephilim crafted terror entirely of their own accord. The great Inquisition of the Roman Catholic Church was one such windfall for our kind. Like the great witch hunts that followed it, the Inquisition was focused upon the exposure of Nephilim who worked among humankind, and while certain Selenim fell prey to the inquisitor's scrutiny and wrath, on the whole, we profited from the fear, hatred, greed and agony it inspired.

The so-called "Dark Ages" were, however, the last of the ages in which our kind would be able to travel so boldly and feed so freely.

THE LAST EMPIRES
The Age of Reason brought light to the forests as well as the halls of man. With the Nephilim-driven Renaissance, humanity began to seek each other out, to cut great swaths through the woodland for farming, cities and roads, to trade both goods and ideas. As their fear and superstition began to subside, so did the vigor of the Selenim realms. Bit by bit, many of the most powerful Selenim began to slip into a lassitude, finding their otherworldly Realms a more suitable environment in which to indulge their rarefied tastes. When the urge came over them, they might venture forth just long enough to drag some poor soul back to their kingdoms for company, or, more likely, as a brief amusement. Whatever may have occurred in these Realms, the influence of the Selenim upon Europe and the Middle East was on the wane, and now it was they who found themselves increasingly isolated in a hostile wilderness.

The 14th and 15th centuries were an auspicious time for our kind, however. While the Black Moon appeared to have been on the wane throughout Europe, our brethren in the Americas seemed to have been on the verge of piecing together key elements that would raise the Black Moon back to the heavens, rather than grounded to the Earth and the Moon. This time marked the ascendancy of the last two visible Realms of the Selenim - Transylvania and Mexico.

The Ottoman Turks were a force on the rise, their desire for conquest carrying them throughout Central Asia and the Middle East, eventually spilling across the Bosporous into Europe. Having taken Byzantium, their sights were set upon dominion throughout the eastern regions of the European continent - into some of the most active strongholds of Selenim influence. After reveling through decades of armed conflict and mayhem that accompanied the back-and-forth battles between grasping empire and struggling principalities, a small group of Selenim gathered to become king-makers. Their pawn was the second son of a usurper-prince of Wallachia, an embattled crossroads of the Ottoman invasions - Vlad Dracula, Son of the Dragon, the Impaler. Given political and mystical support, and with little encouragement necessary, Vlad proved his value beyond the dreams of the Selenim, playing political loyalties against one another, waging war upon his enemies, and showing no mercy to his opponents, foreign and domestic, as he tortured them to death. Among his own countrymen he would be remembered as a great patriot and hero who staved off the tide of invasion. Those who fell under his rule, however, those who met with his armies on the field of battle, and those who would hear the tales that drifted out of the mountainous valleys, would remember him as a butcher who took delight in maiming and torturing his captives, who worked and starved his political opponents to the death, who hoisted whole forests of captives upon the impaling stake, all for his amusement and satisfaction. Vlad Dracula was a rogue who traded loyalties from one side to the other, a terrorist who raided his neighbors without mercy, a scoundrel who ignored his own trade laws and pillaged churches when it met his needs. And throughout it all, the Selenim walked unhindered, feeding to their hearts' content, increasing the wealth of their Black Moon Realms.

Dracula's empire of terror was only to be short-lived, however. While his reign represented a brief, terrifying ascendancy of the Black Moon, the Selenim behind him had made the error that many of our kind had in times past - they acted too openly and drew the wrath of others. This time, retribution came in the form of an invasion force with the Nephilim-inspired Radu, the younger brother of Vlad, at their head. Outnumbered and out-maneuvered with no allies to aid him, Vlad was forced into retreat while his kingdom fell. And as the realm of Dracula crumbled, the Selenim enjoyed their waning feasts, while the Nephilim fought to rout their influence upon the region. Faced with another defeat in payment for their overt efforts, still more of the great Selenim of times past retreated into the dark worlds of their own device. Years later, Vlad the Impaler would stage a brief return to the rule of Wallachia, though without the arcane and devious support of the Selenim, his seat upon the throne would remain an uneasy one. After less than two years in the regency, facing military pressures from without, and dissidence from within, Vlad met his death at the hands of an assassin. Thus ended the last great Selenim kingdom in the waking world of Europe.

As the Black Moon flared briefly into sudden prominence in Eastern Europe, these events heralded a foreboding event on other horizons. The Wheel of Fortune had long been investigating a disturbance in the Ka-fields, originating from beyond the western horizon, the land where the Sun dies. We commonly surmise that this was a major impetus for the Wheel to lever their influence upon the Spanish royalty to underwrite the Templar-planned expedition of Columbus. One of the many discoveries that Columbus and the Nephilim investigators among the crew made during their visits to the New World was that an ancient force was at work, piecing together the shards of magic that had long since been shattered. The explorers brought back confirmation of one of the greatest fears of both men and Nephilim - the Black Moon was readying its ascent to the sky once again.

Extracting information from the natives living throughout the Caribbean, Nephilim and Templars alike were able to learn of the inexorable spread of warfare throughout the Mexican valleys, and the toll of terror and ecstasy levied upon the peoples near and far. All the signs pointed to a dark magic with which they were only vaguely familiar, but on a scale unknown at that time. An expedition to stem the tide of the Black Moon was mounted by the Nephilim.

Hernand Cortés, in truth an incarnation of the Wheel of Fortune Snake, Kushiet, and presented himself before the awe-struck peoples of Mexico. With him, he brought the might of the Strength and Tower Arcana as well. Extracting intelligence from the natives through terrible magics and torture, what the discovered chilled them to the very marrow of their mortal bones. The Selenim held sway here, calling themselves the Xibalbans, immured in their great Sarcophagi, living in a perverse co-existence - even a symbiosis of a kind - with the unfamiliar Nephilim of the region. The shock was intolerable, but nothing prepared them for the horror they would feel as they marched inland - a thin, but waxing, sliver of the Black Moon hung low over the Mexican plateaus.

Cortés, seeking an advantage over the exotic Selenim he encountered, assumed the prophetic role of Quetzalcoatl, the Feathered Serpent, and played into the mythology of both the indigenous humans and the magical races alike. Though the Xibalbans and native Nephilim alike braced for confrontation, their human subjects viewed the newcomers as the fulfillment of prophesy, and the next stage in the cycle of the gods. The Arcana-led expedition garnered popular support of many small states that lived under the shadow of the Blood Dynasties, and collected an army to march upon grand Tenochtitlan. The temporal leader of the great empire, Motecuhzoma, defying the wishes of his Selenim masters, hoped to placate the rival "gods" and opened the city before them, even walking out to meet them face to face. Cortés and Strength and Tower cohort let no opportunity slip past them, seizing the human ruler hostage and occupying the lordly palaces of Tenochtitlan by force of arms.

Once in place, the Arcana Nephilim lost no time applying the exotic occult sciences of Summoning and Alchemy to the task at hand, heightening the reverberation of local Plexii in opposition to the shard of the Black Moon that hung over the city. As organised opposition to their machinations mounted, their armies resorted to the slaughter of the people of Tenochtitlan with the awesome aid of the Tower Nephilim, while the Strength Nephilim turned their magical attentions to the Sarcophagi of the Xibalbans themselves. The Tower displayed their wholehearted contempt for the grotesque compact between Nephilim and Selenim displayed there by finally slaying the emperor of their human subjects. Strength brought their might to bear upon the blood-stained temples, and the Wheel brought the vibrations of the Ka-fields to such a pitch that the fragile sliver of the Black Moon came crashing back to earth. However, Cortés and his cohort soon found that they had wakened a power far beyond their ability to contain - the fury of the Xibalbans, as they rose from their great Sarcophagi, overwhelmed the Arcana Nephilim even as the people of the city finally rose in outrage against their conquerors. By the dead of night, as the oily pools of the shattered Black Moon fragment spread across the city, the Arcana Nephilim and their allies attempted to flee Tenochtitlan across the long stone causeways. The carnage that fell upon the expedition and its army at the hands of the Xibalbans was horrifying, including the demise of many Nephilim, dragged off to the Black Moon realms of their pursuers, cut off forever from the Ka-fields that sustained them.

However, the light of a new dawn broke upon the night of the Xibalbans and their peculiar compact with the people and Nephilim of Central America. The restoration of the Black Moon, into which they had poured so much of their power, had been destroyed. The Arcana Nephilim returned with replenished armies and slaughtered their subjects, even as a more insidious enemy -- small pox from Europe - decimated them. Taking what sustenance they could from the rage and suffering about them, most Xibalbans let themselves slip into an uneasy slumber within hidden Sarcophagi, while many retreated to the ultimate security of their Realms, whole worlds which would forever keep them safe.

And so did the last of the great Selenim empires pass from the pale of this plane.

INTO THE MODERN DAY
The later days of the Selenim influence upon Western history have been less momentous, but we have been there, wherever the excess of human emotion festered to a head. The constant warring across the continent of Europe kept many of us well-nourished for centuries. The witch hunts, which borrowed much momentum from the Inquisition bore rich fruit for many centuries on two continents. Cabals of diabolists periodically infiltrated every level of society in a variety of places and times, bringing corruption, decadence, and debauchery wherever they cropped up - sometimes under the guiding hand of our erstwhile allies, The Devil Arcanum; sometimes by our human sycophants and their cults of blood; even, on occasion, following the lead of that gushing font of extravagance, The Lovers. A great coup for the Selenim was scored in the person of Madame de Montespan, the former mistress of King Louis XIV of France; her affiliation with the Cultes des Ghoules - in truth, yet another incarnation of our ancient cult of human worshippers - allowed both ourselves and the Devil access to the highest circles of European society. For a fleeting time during the latter part of the 19th century, we held the whole of London in a grip of fear, as Jack the Ripper stalked her streets with impunity. If truth be told, so many have claimed responsibility for his reign of terror, both Selenim and our human minions, that there is still no certainty precisely whom can genuinely accept the credit for Jack's actions. However, regardless of who was truly responsible, there is no doubt that for a deliciously brief moment, the city glowed with a terrible light that attracted Selenim like moths to a flame.

The most recent century has been marked by the continued decline of the Selenim upon human events. The two World Wars supplied us with conflict and bloodshed on a scale heretofore unknown. While many of our kind were able to take advantage of the outpouring of hatred and agony during the conflicts themselves, increasingly we have found ourselves melting into the background of humanity's stage, ever more wary of showing our hand to those who would thwart our ambitions before fruition. We work toward the steady increase of the Black Moon fields, making the humans feel secure in their belief that they possess mastery of their world, subtly fomenting dissent among their own ranks, and between them and the Nephilim. Where their pride, their ambition, their fear, or anger, or self-loathing grows strong, so do we follow. While so many of our race have perished since the first Selenim rose from the ashes of its Ka-elements, we still grow in numbers - ever so slowly, but patiently. We have our purpose, and we have all of eternity before us.

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