The Day of Endless Fires

The Day of Endless Fires

This account comes from my high shelf, where I keep the histories few citizens ask for. It tells of the spirits who moved the outlanders without their own hands. Its writer signed with a cow and nothing more. Reldo.

The ghost hands

In the first months of the old world, no rule bound an outlander to leave, and no watcher stood ready. The first spirits moved their bodies by repeating the same motions. The same rock, the same tree, hour after hour.

The favourite of these ghost hands was called Ghost Mouse. Then Pirax made a hand that knew the world, reading the rocks it saw, and soon a second.

The honest outlanders noticed. They wrote to Saradomin of people standing in one spot, mining and fishing and blinking in and out of the world. Saradomin promised that mining and fishing would change.

The drift

Then the world began to drift. A little at a time, the view slid away from where the ghost hands expected it. Within minutes their grip failed.

The spirits call the months that followed the Dark Ages. False shrines sprang up, offering ghost hands that stole the souls of those who took them. Only the tireless climbed in those months: Alchemon, Terminator, Bluerose13x and Sandy Train.

RuneBot

A herald named Utopia Devil brought word of a new hand, RuneBot, made by a spirit called Vee. It repeated what it saw. It walked to the bank by itself. It saw the whole land from above, with the fog lifted.

Its mages cast faster than any hand could, and the young hunters of outlanders became like gods. When the six worlds were full, RuneBot hammered at the gate until a place came free.

The day itself

Then came the day. Across the land, trees fell and did not grow back. Fires were lit and did not go out. Smoke hung over Varrock from dawn until dusk, and the woodcutters of Draynor stood among the stumps with nothing to cut.

The world refuses what it cannot be. A body under RuneBot once asked to put a hundred billion coins in the bank, and the world said no. Some months later, the watchers found RuneBot's bodies and took two to three hundred of them in one stroke.

Long after, the spirits still searched for RuneBot. A false copy carried a curse that let its maker steer whoever took it.

I have asked the Council about this day. The Council asked me where I had heard of it. I keep the book on the high shelf. Reldo.