- SCP Standard Resignation Form
- Iloquim, Creator of All
- Xundiqua, Sender of Dreams
- Builder of Beasts
- The Janus Gates
- Soul Extractor
- Spectrology: A Guide
Mother Earth
As with many cultures both real and imaginary, according to the Lantec mythos, in the beginning, there was darkness. From this primordial nothingness, the Mother arose, and she gave birth to many children, the first of whom were the Day and the Night, who shared their role as Sky-Kings. The Mother's Children would go on to create the plants and the animals, and eventually humankind. The time when Mother Earth was alive were known to the Lantecs as the Days That Were, and in these times, men did not age, and there was no famine or plague. Mother Earth's final children represented these concepts, and they were therefore imprisoned, to prevent them from wrecking havoc upon humankind. The Day overheard the dark gods plotting to escape their jail, and informed the Mother, and was therefore rewarded with a single eye (the sun), that he might gaze upon the world's beauty. The Day's brother, the Night, grew jealous.
The Archer
In the Days That Were, a single city of gold thrived at the centre of the world. Two brothers (both archers) lived in this city, and the elder brother would often boast to his younger brother about his talents. One day, the younger brother bet his arrogant sibling two rabbits (common food in the Empire) that he would not be able to strike an eagle perched upon a branch a distant tree. This was no ordinary tree, mind - it was the tallest tree in the forest, and the bird was perched atop one of its highest-up branches. Th archer's first arrow struck a rabbit. The second a bear. But the third arrow struck the great tree itself.
Just then, the great tree descended underground, and great grey clouds appeared in the sky, spewing ash across the land, killing many in the Golden City. Unbeknownst to the two brothers, this great tree was in fact the heart of Mother Earth. The Mother was dead, and both the Day and the Night, and all of her children, wept. The Day demanded to know who was responsible for Mother Earth's death, and the younger archer was quick to point out his brother. The eldest archer was therefore banished to an underground room, where the tree, along with the eagle perched on its high branch, was now located. The Day promised the archer his freedom if he could strike the eagle, but the archer soon discovered that the eagle could teleport between branches. To make matters worse, the faces of the foes the archer had killed in life manifested as painful growths all over his body, laughing at him as he faced his difficult task.
After the Mother's death, the Days That Are began. The Golden City was abandoned, with the few survivors founding a new city. The gods of ageing, famine and plague escaped their jail, meaning Lantecs were no longer almost immortal. It is believed by modern anthropologists that this myth was inspired by a volcanic eruption in the region (hence the grey clouds and ash). The Lantecs sacrificed women twice yearly - after a thousand years, they said, the Days That Are would come, where the Mother would return to life, and the gods of plague, famine and age would once again be imprisoned.
The Night/The Dreamfather As mentioned above, the Day was rewarded with a single great eye for preventing the escape of the gods of ageing, famine and plague. Yet after the Mother's death, the Night grew envious, longing to behold the world's beauty. But his brother assured him that he wasnt missing much - after the Mother died, the world was nowhere near as beautiful as it once was. But the Night did not care, and so sought out the advice of a travelling god, a shapeshifter who would often ride down the River to Heaven (the Milky Way) to run errands for the gods… for a small fee, of course. The Night agreed to give the traveller god his thirteen children on the condition that he find him some eyes to behold his Mother's beauty.
The traveller god visited an island, inhabited by a terrible giant, who had stolen the eyes of the many travellers who had become lost, and washed upon its shores. The Lantecs believed the eye to be a source of knowledge (for with eyes one can read books). The traveller god had only needed two, but he realised that the Night would be overjoyed with hundreds of eyes, possibly granting him an even greater reward. The Traveller asked for half of the Giant's eyes, but the Giant refused to grant him even one. The traveller therefore challenged the Giant to a duel - if the Giant won, the traveller would become his supper, while if the traveller won, the Giant would give him his eyes. The Giant laughed - a minor god was no match for a being of his immense size! Yet the traveller had a plan, and ran to a ledge located at the very edge of the island, and the Giant followed. The traveller then became a fish, jumping into the sea, while the ledge crumbled with the weight of the Giant, who fell into the ocean, where he sank to the bottom, and drowned.
The traveller god (still in his fish-form) swam back up to Night, overjoyed. The Night eagerly accepted his hundreds of eyes (the stars), and gazed upon the world. Yet he hated what he saw. All the plague, famine, and death in the world disgusted the Night, and so he refused to grant the traveler his thirteen children. The traveller god, infuriated, stormed off, to live in a cave outside the New City. The Night decided to to give the Lantecs a gift, and created a great forest (the Moon) of dreamplants: huge, silver flowers, which produced a golden pollen that, when sprinkled over the eyes of sleeping humans, created dreams, marvellous realms where the sleeper became a god of their own domain.
The Night (who took on the new name of the Dreamfather) raised his thirteen children to became dreamgivers, who, every night, would travel down to Earth, and sprinkle dreampollen over the eyes of sleeping humans. Yet after many years, one dreamgiver grew tired of granting humans dreams, and yearned to try some dreampollen himself. After tasting it however, the dreamgiver suffered from terrible nightmares. Unfortunately for him, the dreamgiver had taken rotten dreampollen. When the Night found out that the dreamgiver had stolen some dreampollen, he was punished by having to give rotten dreampollen to bad humans.
And what became of the traveller god, you might ask? Every month the traveller emerges from his cave to throw a huge rock at the moon (lunar phases), knocking out a chunk of the dreamforest. Yet the Night hardly notices, and the Dreamforest simply regrows after a short time. It should also be noted that the Lantecs believed in a very special type of dreampollen that grew from the tallest dreamflower found on the Moon - this was given only to kings, granting them foresight. Lantec gods have appeared in much later fiction - in one novel, a detective learns of a legendary substance allowing access to a land of dreams that presumably inspired the Lantec legend, while another series makes mention of an alien race that stays in controllable dreamscapes when their planet wanders too close to its sun when they hibernate - an alternate name given to the Dreamsmiths is the "Children of the Dreamfather".