Chapter 1 - In the Beginning

Before there was the world, there was a dark ashen shell. From a crack in this shell sprang a great bird with plumage of light itself and wings that spanned over all of time. The heart of the bird became the world; its feathers, the stars; its wings, the sky; and the shell blew away into dust and became the darkness in which we take refuge. We are but a single light aloft in the darkness.

As does the world, the heart of this bird burns brightly - so bright, and so hot, that not even the bird can bear its own heart. The world heard the cries, and saw the fire, like blood, bleeding red from within the heart.

One man approached a river flowing with the bird's fiery blood. He stooped down and washed his hands in this river. As he stood up, the fire licked at his body and enveloped him, and rather than die he began to shine with the bird's heart. His people followed him, then his people's people, then their people as well, until thousands upon thousands washed themselves in the river of fire.

They each became beacons, bearers of the bird's blood. As they walked away, they carried with them fragments of the bird's heart, fragments of the world itself. With these fragments, the bird's fire was spread out across the breadth of the world, and no longer burned through. With the help of this man and his followers, the bird was once more able to bear its heart and give warmth and light to the world without destruction.

It is our duty today to spread bird's fire to warm the world without burning it through, as countless others have before us. It is in their memory, and in the spirit of the man who first washed himself in fire, that we don the red cloth and reach across the world.

We are the Rangers.