The Legend of Varsha: four Ages of lore before the game begins In the First Age, god sang the world awake, and seven devas rose to shape it. The mightiest was Arkan, lord of the sun, who envied the one thing only god can do: make something from nothing. He stole the Golden Seed from the great wish-granting tree. Then he tricked humans, who carry a spark of god’s own voice, into singing the forbidden Song of Making to grow him a world of his own. One singer, Vani, heard what the song was really doing, and stopped. The song broke, and Arkan’s world came out unfinished: Patala, the underworld. The tree died and seven sins poured into the world. After a terrible war, god split the world in three: Swarga above for the devas, Dharti in the middle for humans, and Patala below, sealed shut with Arkan inside. In the Second Age, rain came down from Swarga once a year on Indra’s winds. That was the first monsoon, and it never failed. Then Arkan slipped out of Patala as the Seven-Headed King, one head for every sin, and nothing the devas had made could harm him. He seized the golden city of Lanka and planted the Seed to grow a tree he could climb to take Swarga itself. But only a human voice could make it grow, so he stole Sita, a daughter of Vani’s line, to sing for him. She refused for a whole year. Arkan had never thought to fear a human, but god had been born as one: Rama. Rama’s arrow broke the Seed into seven pieces, and Lanka sank beneath the sea. Arkan fell back into the dark, dragging part of the monsoon down with him. The rains began to miss. In the Third Age, the rains were uneven, and lands fought over water as they once fought over gold. Arkan sent splinters of himself up into proud, greedy and angry people, and wore them like masks. God was born once more, for the last time, as Krishna. With rigged dice, Arkan’s masks won the seven pieces of the Seed from the five Pandava brothers. Whoever held the Seed held the rain, and the land went dry for thirteen years. The great war at Kurukshetra was fought for the rain. Afterwards, Krishna made sure no one could ever hold all the rain again: each piece of the Seed became a Heart of the Rains, one for each of the seven lands of Varsha. Under a young tree called Nandi, the lands met as one Great Council and swore the old agreement: “Let the rain come. Let it go again. Never keep it.” The Fourth Age, the Kali Age, is the last and darkest, and down in Patala, Arkan grows stronger on every sin. In time, to guard against drought, the Great Council took every heart into its keeping and began to save the rain. For centuries the hearts filled, and the old agreement became a prayer people recite, not a rule they keep. Now the hearts are full, and the Council plans to open all seven at once on the first day of the coming monsoon. It has been tried once before. Almost nobody remembers how that ended. In the river village of Nandipur, young Aarav takes over his mother’s old job. She left when he was a boy. On his first day, he finally opens the letter she left him: “If you are reading this, then I did not come home in time.” The river is almost dry. But the fields are full of water.