Mythi came into existence less than a score after the First Cal-Elo War. The conflict between the two might city-states resulted in casualties and destruction across the region. Some cities became embroiled due to alliances with one side or the other, but many other cities suffered indirect losses as the conflict spread. Innocent travelers were collateral damage, crops and livestock were ransacked as supply trains stretched thin, and unaffiliated towns found themselves transformed into battlefields.
The origins of mythi can be traced back to a single event: the Concordat at the Periphery. A gathering occurred at war’s end with representatives invited from every city, town, and village that experienced losses during the conflict. Calibar and Eloria were not invited. The First Cal-Elo War was also the first organized use of magi in war. Whole battles were fought by magi. Many of those that attended the gathering were magi, and perhaps due to the sheer number of funerary rites performed in the region, many of those were the well-regarded magi of the souls: necromancers.
The gathering discussed how to stop the destruction of unaffiliated locales and the deaths of innocent bystanders the next time a war broke out over a large region. The gathering may have been prophetically inspired as, of course, the Second and Third Cal-Elo Wars were even more devastating. These debates ended in an agreement between the various represented municipalities and the necromancers in attendance. This agreement was the Concordat at the Periphery, and its hundreds of pages detailed the responsibilities of the necromancers in limiting deaths during large-scale conflicts. The Necromantic Oath also traces its origins to this document when later generations rebelled against it and sought a return to the idea of a “natural time of death.”
After the Concordat at the Periphery, huge numbers of necromancers sought to make good on the pact through the instantiation of a complex, permanent working that was powered by the energy released when a soul passes into Endscape at death. The working is imbued with a base morality that judges the nature of the deaths. Too many violent deaths of innocent people in an area, with innocence primarily being determined by not reciprocating violence, and a nearby living soul connected to the deaths in a positive way, such as a family member or close friend, is empowered with some of the collected energies. Such a person becomes a salvus mythus, the first type of mythus to walk the orbs.
The mythi legacy is much more complex all these compositions later. Other types of mythi have formed, organically or through manipulation, and artificial mythi further pollute the characterization. The beginnings clearly show that mythi were intended to be a force for good, and so perhaps the tavern tales of heroic mythi can be believed… to an extent.
Kristofor Loren Carlson 