Hallo. Welcome. I am Brother Ranulph. Please make yourself comfortable.
I see you are looking at the vast array of ancient text scattered around the floor. Please be careful where you place your feet. They are very valuable. In fact you may be wondering what I am doing with so many of them open. I will tell you.
The Abbot has bestowed me with a special task. He was presented with what appears to be an ancient document, and he wants me to check it for authenticity. Now I know it is possible to send it to a scientific laboratory to gain the truth as to how old the document is physically, but that is very expensive, and would only be used as a last resort. Even if document was found to belong to an ancient time chronologically, we could not be sure the information stated in the document itself was the truth. It is for this reason he has asked me to investigate the details presented to the reader, and I am looking at many other ancient, respected texts for clarification as to the genuineness of the information given within this old, and rather dog-eared work.
It is not easy to read. Some of the parchment has been scorched by fire; in other parts the script has faded due to continual bending of the document. It had once been a scroll, but somewhere along the annuls of time it gained folds which have become integral parts of the document’s fabric. Up to now I cannot confirm or deny the truth of the words laid out in this old tattered text.
I have looked at the Bible, both modern translations and the original Hebrew and Greek versions. I have looked at the Hindu Mahabhatara, and Tibetan Stanzas of Dzyan as well as other specialised sources of ancient wisdom referring to giants, such as Norse Mythology, Celtic Folklore, Greek Mythology, Documents on Archaeological finds, (Bones etc.), French Norman Romances on King Arthur’s Fight with the Giant. In addition I looked at sources within our hermitage’s own private collection. I have to say there does seem to be some truth to aspects of the tale I am trying to authenticate. However, it will be up to future generations to judge how accurate the tale really is. But now you are here, you can be one of the privileged few to have a chance to listen to this tale. Unfortunately, there is no author attributed to the writing, so I have taken the liberty of giving it the working title of The Third Book of the Gods.
Long ago a race of beings discovered this planet we call Earth. It was something they had never seen before; the trees, the water, these things were very strange to them, in fact they made the planet unique. They decided to stay and investigate this unique world, and if possible exploit the unknown resources it contained. After creating a settlement on the surface, they found that after a period of time their own longevity was decreasing. Whereas on their original planet they would expect to live at least 1000 years, on Earth the lifespan of the younger generations was dropping rapidly. This, they eventually discovered, was connected to the oxygen content in our atmosphere. They realised, that to continue to live on the planet would become an impossibility. Their species would eventually become extinct. So by the time the next group arrived from their planet of origin, the Earth explorers had created slaves, in the form we would call giants, to do all their work outside in the oxygen dominated atmosphere in an attempt to halt the effect on their race’s life span. The next wave of explorers decided that any Earth base being, if they went back, could introduce this defect into their race on their planet of origin.
This was the spark for what would become known as the War in Heaven. After two large battles, that in the end was decided by reinforcements from their home planet, the Earth based beings were defeated, and resigned to live out their lives with the giants on this planet. As a last gesture, they created a life form that would be more useful and better adapted to this planet, and have greater capabilities for advancement than the limited giants had. This life form is what we call humans. The planet was then placed out of bounds to any member of the explorers’ race not already resident on the Earth.
The beings that had been marooned on the surface, watched as each of their future generations’ life span decreased. And they found that not only did the lifespan reduce, but their abilities and knowledge reduced also. To preserve some of their original qualities they decided to interbreed with the humans. It was the only way they could see to stop the deterioration effect wiping their species out completely.
After many generations had been born the deterioration started to slow down. By this time only a few of the first settlers were still alive. Seeing time was running out for them, they decided that before they all died, they would impart what knowledge they possessed to help the humans. Once the Earth bound members of this explorer race were all dead, the humans increased in numbers and spread out around the earth. Whenever they came into contact with the remaining giants they destroyed them, blaming them for the departure of what they now called Gods.
Over time as their race disappeared the memory of these giants merged into folklore and mythology Humans still had some unique knowledge then, but as time went by they distorted, or forgot, this knowledge and lost the abilities to use it. At the same time they were freaks and outcasts from the original race.
Some of the explorer race still visit us, to see what we are doing and to examine the oxygen content of our atmosphere. They know that if they find it is reducing, our lifespan will start to increase again. If this were to happen, for any reason, then the possibility of us venturing into the depths of interstellar space would become possible. This they do not want, for a lot of reasons not mentioned here. That is why they were called the watchers of old, and they still watch now.
The (Gods) are human like, and there are other races similar to them out there. But the conditions that make us oxygen air breathing beings are very rare. Trees, water, are very rare commodities out there, unique to Earth in fact. So if we gain the ability to prolong life we may have to finish a battle that was started a long time ago. They will let our race live as long as we confine ourselves to this region of space. We are a curiosity and a monster in their eyes. If you give birth to a monster, you may not want to live with it, but would you kill it? After all it is yours, monster or not.
The truth of this text is still to be determined, but I hope you enjoyed the story. It is certainly an interesting tale, is it not? Perhaps we could discuss certain aspects of it later.
Oh, you are going? Well, thank you for visiting me. It was a pleasure meeting you. Do come again.
Signed: Brother Ranulph