ストーリー

ストーリー

EpicgamesStoreより

故郷と呼べる場所を探し求める流浪者の物語。
どれほど強く願っても、いずれは全てが去りゆく儚い世界で、
人間関係を築き、信頼できる者を己のキャンプへと導く。
仲間がいれば、希望が見えてくることもあるだろう。

あらすじ

アシェンと呼ばれた神を探しに行く光の第五紀の物語。

かつて老齢の末に死んでしまった光の神グレート・アシェンが
幾年かの年月を経て復活し、ジ・アシェンとなった。

オープニングムービー(原文)

バタランの語り

(黎明紀)
Among the stars Ashen fly
Bwneath, the nine realms move among the tree of world's many branches
proudly standing upon the darkness
its roots delving into caverns where light will never venture
It was when a single great Ashen flew down to rest upon her boughs
that the light woke among the Realms
After eons, the great Ashen grew weak with age and fell from the tree of worlds
resting upon the plains of darkness
drawing what few breaths remained
In the throes of death, the light dimmed
and the Ashen's final three breaths became the three golden ages of light
(第一紀)
The first age saw three creatures of the dark plain rise above all others
the Elder Dark fed upon the light and thrived
(第二紀)
The second marked the coming of the Listener Matriarchs
titans who revered the light
(第三紀・第四紀)
The third breath was the age of man
Gefn's children
When the final breath ended there would be a time of darkness
In that black age the cities of man fell into ruin
toppled by war and emptied by pestilence and famine
Proud Lathyrus drowned beneath the ash

バタラン

(第四紀)
Soon the Ashen will be reborn from the ruins of its old body and anew age of light will begin.
I served Ashen long ago, a Guardian to its waning light Even though it broke me with its brilliance.
Now, look to the mountain peak, for that is where fresh hope blooms.
The Ashen is reborn!
Behold the first glimmer of the light that will sweep the darkness from these plains.
(アシェンの光が戻る・第五紀)
There are those that thrive in perpetual night and would extinguish these fledgling rays.
We must find the Ashen and protect it from the Elder Dark.
What a sight! Our world once more bathed in Ashen light.
You have felt the power of the Ashen and survived. We will need that strength of yours.
The Ashen is still a sleeping child. Vulnerable. We must wake it from its slumber.

The Lore And Story Of Ashen

The Lore Of Ashen - The First And Second Ages Of Light

The history of the The Elder Dark and the Listeners

The Bral who were drawn to the dying Ashen and burrowed among
its plumage found the creature so vast as to be a world in itself.

ブラルは死にかけているAshenに引き寄せられてそれ自体が世界であるほど大きな羽毛のある生き物を見つけました。

They lived, bred, and died time and again in the age of one Ashen breath.

彼らはAshenの最初の息の時代に生き、育ち、そして死を繰り返しました。

They craved the light, even as it burned them and as their skins sloughed away, crumbling into ash.

たとえそれが彼らを燃やしたとしても皮がどろどろになって灰に砕けても彼らは光を切望しました。

They took the light into their bodies,

そして彼らは自分の体に光を取り込みました。

consuming it in the smallest fragments, reveling in the strength it gave when annihilated in the dark core of their being.

彼らの胸の中心で光が消滅したとき光が与えた強さを思い出しました。

There were among those races of the night individuals older and more powerful than their brethren,
dark ones who burrowed deep into the dying body of their host. Legends grew around those few,
and for three of them those legends hardened into faith, and thus were the new dark gods of Ashen born.

彼らの兄弟より年上で強力な夜間の人種の中には、彼らのホストの死にかけている肉体に深く潜んだ暗い人たち。
伝説はそれらの少数のまわりで育ったそしてそれらのうちの3人のために
伝説は信仰に固まった、そしてそのようにして生まれたAshenの新しい暗い神々であった。

In the long wars among the twisted descendants of the Bral,
the Listeners prevailed and drove their rivals back out onto the plains of night.

Bralと子孫の戦争ではリスナーは勝って、Bralを暗闇の大地へ返しました。

They kept little of their dark ancestors about them save a light-less core of melancholia, and three black gods:

彼らは彼らのほとんどをメランコリアの光なきコアと３人の神々を記録した。

Ukkoto Umberhand, Eater of the Light.
Ukkoto showed a near endless capacity for quenching light,
painting blackness in his wake. Wherever he laid his hand it would leave an indelible stain.
Servants of the Umberhand seek to extinguish the light so that the Ashen is brought wholly into darkness.

Riak, The Nightstorm.
Where Riak walked darkness rained from the skies.
Riak sought to find the Ashen’s heart and bring it
into the shadows so that the new incarnation would be a creature of the Bral.

Sissna, Spinner of Shadows.
Sissna spun her webs of night-stuff out across the land,
catching and snuffing any free particle or spirit of the light. She was subtle,
understanding the power of lies and winning over the minds of those about her.
Some say Loki dallied with her mother and Sissna is one of the daughters he seeded among the Bral.

Power and wisdom are both sides of the coin of knowledge,
and for knowledge one must listen. Darkness or light may colour the whispers of the universe but neither can silence them. The only true death is silence.

The Listeners’ enemies have always underestimated them,
thinking that to listen is weakness, thinking that by listening they give space
within their minds to the words of their foe and may be swayed by them or tricked or intimidated.
But the Listener hears more than words. The Listener hears the beat of your heart,
the flutter of your breath, and sometimes … the content of your soul.

There was a golden age when the Listeners reveled in their power having driven the Bral
and all their spawn from the Ashen or into deep hiding. Some held that among all Bral only the Elder Dark had remained,
rooted in the Ashen’s cooling extremities where it sprawled across the plains onto which it had fallen.
But on the surface the Listeners held sway and rejoiced in the light that had given them the strength to defeat their enemies,
for alone among the descendants of the Bral the Listeners could endure the brilliance of the light and hear the beauty of its song.

They built temples to the light where their prayers to the Ashen were intoned so that they might be heard by their great benefactor.
The light burned most fiercely in the Ashen’s veins and so they carved their holy places into the flesh about them.

A priesthood grew and the secrets of the ash were learned, for in this mix of darkness and light both elements were
held in harmony and could be shaped to many purposes. With the right handling they could wake both night and day from the ash or mould it to construct wonders,
even golems that seemed to hold a life within them though without soul or purpose.

But as the light faded a change fell upon the Listeners,
a cancer of despair, for without the light the ash would become dark-tainted, a tool their enemies could shape,
and the exiled Bral would start to crawl back from the plains of night to renew their old conflicts.

The Listeners dug ever deeper, mining dungeons,
following the Ashen’s dry veins, trying to follow the light as it retreated. But in the end they found only sorrow.

As the light failed the Elder Dark emerged from their lairs amid the Ashen’s ruin.
Some wrought destruction and were in turn destroyed,
but the Elder Dark priestesses of Sissna spoke with soft voices,
whispering of betrayal, and of abandonment.
They said that light had shaped the Listeners then fled,
leaving them as prey for their old enemies among the Bral.

Enemies who would surely return with vengeance in their hearts.
The Elder Dark offered alliance to their prodigal children.
They claimed only the right to be worshiped and in return they
would stand with the Listeners to claim the Ashen’s corpse when
full night descended, and hold it against all comers.

In the near darkness of the last breath men came,
another treachery heaped upon the Listeners.
This one by the foolishness of just one of their number who bred
with Gefn allowing her to spawn a race in the Listener’s image but with a very different soul.
Men multiplied and prospered even as the echoes of Ashen’s brilliance died away.
Outmatched the Listeners retreated into the last of their strongholds, and splintered into factions.

The Ashen died, the light fled. Darkness washed over the Ashen and even the great cities of man
were laid low. Nightmares from the black and endless plains swarmed across the Ashen’s corpse.

By the time the first glimmer of light returned little remained that was not in ruin, few survived among men or Listeners.
But the light did come, and the worst horrors of the night fled before it, abandoning the Ashen once more.

The Lore Of Ashen - The Third Age Of Light - Humanity

'''Humanity came to Ashen in the third age.'''

人類はAshenの第三紀に生まれました。

'''Gefn took the seed of a Listener and birthed the first man, but whether the child was wholly her design, or patterned on something she encountered on her age of roaming, has never been made clear.'''

ゲフンはリスナーとの間に「最初の男」を産みました。
しかし生まれた子供は本当に彼女の子であったのか、また彼女がいつ生まれたのかは知る者はいません。

'''Certainly Gefn swam from the Ashen in its dying breaths, losing herself in the seas of night and finding herself on many a strange shore.'''

ゲフンは死にかけているアシェンの息の中泳ぎ、夜の海で自分を見失い奇妙な海岸へ辿り着きました。

'''Some say she swam to the very roots of Yggdrasil and gazed upon the worlds that hang from its branches.'''

彼女は世界樹の根本まで泳ぎ、その枝からぶら下がっている世界を見つめた、という人もいます。

'''Men, shorter of stature and of shorter of days than their Listener ancestors, lived and died across the great expanse of Ashen, conquering territory, mining their host’s body for resources, and building cities where they dwelt in teeming hordes.'''

人間はリスナーの祖先よりも背も寿命が短く、資源の山を掘り都市を建設し、都に人が溢れると土地を征服しながらアシェンの広大な大地を渡って生きてきた。

'''The truth of man’s origin became lost in the centuries that crowded behind them and they happily wrote their own myths,
'''building on fragments of tales found in ancient stones, or the words of strange Bral that began once more to roam Ashen’s margins.'''

人類の起源の真実は何世紀にも渡ることで失われたが、彼らは喜んで人類の神話をもう一度書き綴り、
また、アシェンの空白をさまよい古代の石に奇妙なブラルの言葉で歴史の断片を築きあげました。

'''Although humanity would never match the ashsmiths of the Listeners, there were mages and sorcerers among their number who gained some mastery over the ash and were able to work a variety of wonders with it.'''

人間はリスナーの灰鍛冶には及ばないが彼らの中には灰を熟知しそれを使って不思議な術を使える魔術師がいました。

'''Some held that there are sentences within the ash, others that it is a repository of memory and that nothing touched by it is truly lost.'''

灰の中には文章があるという人がいれば灰は記憶の保管庫であり、それに触れば何も失われないと考える人もいました。

'''Sometimes what is held within the ash escapes into a living form, where it dwells within the flesh directing its host like a puppet or even reshaping them into something new.'''

しばしば、灰の中に保持されているものは生きているように逃げ出し、そして肉体に宿ることもあります。

'''Humanity gave itself gods in their own image and stood on the balconies of tower and castle watching the light die.'''

人間は自らに神々を想造し与え、そして塔と城のバルコニーから光の死を見ました。

'''The ash drifts that had once been a vital part of the cycles that sustained men, animals, and plants, turned sour as the light faded and the ash became unbalanced, blotting up darkness as paper takes ink.'''

灰の流れはかつて、人々、動物、そして植物を支えてきたサイクルの重要な部分でしたが
やがて光が消えて灰が不均衡になると紙がインクを吸収するように闇が光を吸い取ってしまいました。

'''Strange patterns and flows appeared in the ash. Travellers reported monstrous forms rising where the ash lay deepest, only to struggle to maintain their shape and collapse again. Crops failed and ash dunes swallowed villages.'''

灰にも奇妙な模様や流れが現れました。旅人は灰が最も深い場所に隆起した巨大な造形があることを伝えました。

'''Seas that had been clear turned black and the fish within them grew strange.'''

澄んだ海は真っ黒になり、海の魚は奇妙な形に成長しました。

'''The last and greatest of man’s cities, the many-spired Lathyrus, fell,'''

swallowed by a flow of ash that needed no wind nor gradient and seemed to contain with in it many great serpents made of the ash itself. So many humans died that the piled heaps of their bones grew larger than the homes they had once lived in.
そして最後に偉大な男の都市であろうラシュリスは灰の奔流に飲まれ多くの人間が死に大量の骨が積み上げられました。

'''Full dark came and the remnants of man foraged across Ashen, hiding from the Bral,'''
'''seeking shelter in the temples and labyrinths abandoned by the Listeners.'''

完全な暗闇がやってきて残された人々はブラルから隠れアシェンを越えて探索し
放棄されたリスナーの寺院や迷路に避難できる場所を探しました。

'''In the age of night the ash grew black and spirits haunted it.'''

夜の時代になると灰は黒くなり霊がそれを困らせました。

'''Sometimes it would form in imitation of lost cities, raising walls and towers in a matter of hours and maintaining them for moments or for years.'''

あるときは失われた都市を模倣してほんの壁と塔を建てて何年もそれを維持しました。

'''Sometimes the ash would wrap old bones in night-flesh and set them walking, black simulacra of the original owners, either echoing through memories of lost routines or stalking their descendants across the face of Ashen.'''

時々灰は古くなった骨を夜の肉で包んで歩いているようなもので
アシェンの顔の向こう側の彼らの子孫は記憶を介して反響するルーチンを失い徘徊した。

'''Great libraries fell into decay, the ink spreading to turn each page black.'''

偉大な図書館は崩壊し、インクが各ページを黒くするように広がった。

'''The history of men shrivelled from a thousand volumes of academic study to a handful of tales repeated at the fireside to stave off fear.'''

人間の歴史は数千冊もの学術研究から恐怖を食い止めるために篝火のそばで語られる一握りの物語へと下落しました。

'''Stories of the first man whose family sprung from the ash where his tears of loneliness fell.'''
'''Tales of the heroes who first wrested Ashen from the Listeners’ rule.'''

「最初の男」の物語は孤独から彼から落ちた涙の灰から生まれました。
最初にアシェンをリスナーの支配から奪った英雄たちの物語より。