This is but a glimpse, a glimmer of end and beginning, exordium and terminus. For to understand Nuala, the word and all the nuance surrounding it, is a lifetime in itself. Nuala is many things—a solar system, a planet, a religion, a language, a people, a way of life familiar, and yet unfamiliar, to the senses of the human species. If you understand nothing else after you have heard this tale, understand this: Nuala means “survival.” Survival against all odds, all enemies, all fortune. Survival.
—From the words of the Mythmaker, in the reign of the 167th Atare.