#Lore24 – Entry #358 – Sci-Fi Month IV #23 – Seeking What Lies Hidden in the Sands of Time
Transcribed From the Personal Recording Implant of Andra Ganim, Chronicler of the Codex Infinitum
AG: “I hope that I’m not delving into a topic I shouldn’t here, but what steps did you take to further your research once these special individuals began to show up again?”
RV: “I won’t give you all the dirty little details, but will admit that I have used methods which most would find very questionable at best, downright ruthless and monstrous at worst. I have faced no few attempts upon my life since I renewed my research, and I am something of the galaxy’s boogeyman because of them. But as I’ve stated before, I don’t care what others think of me. Most of them are beneath me and could not begin to fathom what it is I seek.
So, once I started to recognize these individuals again, I moved swiftly to secure them for myself. You’ve heard rumors of some of the methods DSM employs, no doubt. Some are completely true, others only slightly so. I directed my AR&D division, in accordance with some of the secrets gleaned from the ancient draconic relics, to enhance the creatures known as doppelgangers, greatly enhancing their psychic abilities and their ability to duplicate their victims, without need for consuming them; all my particular breed of them require is a blood sample and time to psychically analyze and copy their targets innermost thoughts. This made acquiring some of the more public and prominent test subjects much easier when I could simply replace them with versions that were loyal to me, and would further ensure that DSM maintained its position at the top of the power structure.
Don’t look so shocked, my dear. In the grand scheme of things, this is on the minor end of the scale when it comes to the terrible things I’ve done in pursuit of my ultimate goal. You needn’t worry about being replaced yourself, nor should you worry about meeting an untimely end upon leaving here. Believe it or not, I do have a great deal of respect for what is you’re doing, however roundabout your methods are. It’s a dodge worthy of Marcon himself, really.
Now, with a few new subjects to study, I would finally see my centuries of research bear fruit, would finally begin to unravel what it was that lay hidden within the sands of time by the dragons.”
AG: “May I dare ask what it was that was so well hidden?”
RV: “Why, the dragons themselves, of course. Or, at the very least, their knowledge and experiences, stored in a way that only someone like me could manage to uncover. There have been a few others over the course of the many millennia who have began to follow the road I have but have never taken the steps required to actually reach its end, for one seeking this knowledge cannot allow themselves be dissuaded by little things like common decency or a few lives along the way. Take Lila Darius, for example; she has been something of a treasure hunter and historian in many of her incarnations, but try as she might, she is simply incapable of attaining the knowledge that she too seeks, because she has not allowed herself to see others as I do, to study them as I have.
I’m speaking of the very nature of advanced life as we know it, of the many sentient races who populate this galaxy. At some time or another, we were all created, more or less in our current forms, by the dragons, our civilizations cultivated, changed, and ultimately left to fall to ruin in the wake of these beings who apparently vanished from whatever worlds they had played with, vanishing into time and space.
But they didn’t vanish; no, they evolved. Evolved into an existence that the pathetic little brains of the average being cannot begin to fathom. That’s why most religions were formed, to make sense of these great beings that had evolved beyond common ability to understand. Their evolution was what drove them to their experiments with the lesser races, what fueled their travels from one world to the next, trying something different each time, seeing what additional knowledge they could glean from their work.
Not all dragons were that way, certainly. Some sought simpler existences, were content to continue ruling over their followers as gods in the flesh, while others seemed to grow discontent with their creations, attempting to destroy them only to find out that they had grown beyond their ability to handle, through various factors like the mastery of arcane magic and the formation of “divine” connections, and simple tenacity to survive. Still other dragons would take different paths along their evolution, seeking to become more like their creations, to live amongst them or even to become them.”