Post by Ravager Zero on Nov 9, 2014 17:47:05 GMT 12
In the beginning, was nothing. From the nothingness sprung the Elder God. His name has now been lost to the mists of time, but it was he who was responsible for creating the firmament, and it was he who brought the world into existence. But, the Elder God's powers were not without limits. He could create, but his creations always lacked vitality. As time passed, he grew lonely. So, he created company. A bright star, whom he called Seia.
What he did not realise, was that in his loneliness, he gad given Seia a spark of his own power, just enough to Quicken her form. With this spark of power, Seia became a radiant goddess, blanketing the world in a golden haze. The Elder God looked down upon his creation and realised that if his power was spread, his limits would vanish. So it was that he created Jin, goddess of the moons.
Still, the world was lonely. It had day and night. The moons waxed and waned and the seasons passed without change. Seia looked upon the world, and breathed out but a fraction of her Essence. Seeing her only sister give up power for no reason puzzled Jin, and in her puzzlement, she breathed a little of her own Essence into the world. From Seia came Rai-Tane, the god of rock and fire. From Jin came Kyron, the god of chaos and confusion.
These five became known as the old gods, the Elder God, Seia, Jin, Rai-Tane and Kyron. Between them, Firma was shaped. Seia's light warmed Firma during the day. Jin's daughters—the moons—watched over Firma at night. Rai-Tane's passion wrought volcanoes across the land, forever changing the face of Firma. Kyron shifted and changed, moving the lands while touching nothing. His influence separated the continents and spread the ocean.
Soon Firma looked like it does today. One large continent with many people, and many small continents with no people. But in this time, the people had not yet been born. The world was shaped, but it was devoid of life. Rai-Tane's volcanoes had made the land fertile, but there was nothing to grow. Yet. The oceans were devoid of life, and the lands were barren deserts.
As the earth began to turn around Seia, a new god, unknown to the others, was born from the oceans and the sky. Her name was Eryje, and her nature tempestuous. From the churning of the oceans she rose, and found the sky calm. This would not do, for to her, the churning currents were the natural state of the world. All around, clouds began to gather, and lightning forked the sky. With her birth, a great storm descended upon the oceans, lightning striking the waters again and again.
From this energy, the oceans were changed, things that were broken re-formed, and as they reformed, these strange things were quickened to life. In time they came to dominate the ocean, absorbing Seia's warmth, and simply growing. But Eryje's stormy moods often broke them apart, or destroyed them utterly until one day, these tiny quickened lives learned that they could work together, that even if some died, the greater whole would survive.
And thus it was that life spread throughout the oceans. Sometimes on the surface, sometimes in the deeps, drawing energy from Rai-Tane's oldest volcanoes. Seia saw this, and smiled upon the world. She saw only what was good, the fact that Eryje had brought life into the world. Jin saw the storm goddess's rages, and that she was destroying her own creations. Those touched by her thunder died instantly. So Jin spoke with Seia, the moons telling the sun what was happening beneath her.
Jin and Seia wept for those creations merely brushed aside by Eryje's wrath. Together, they made a promise—those only brushed aside by the storm god would survive. So it was that the celestial goddesses, joined once in body and mind, gave unto the world the goddess Shaya. When Shaya came unto the world, the injured began to heal, and the sick grew healthy once more. When one particular creation was thrown inland by a violent storm, gasping for breath, Shaya took pity upon it, and intervened directly. The fish—as it had been—found itself changed, its fins becoming short legs, and its tail growing in length behind it. Gills still sprouted from its neck, but it also gained the ability to breathe in the open air.
In time, this creature had offspring, and as it died, the flora inside it burst forth onto fresh soil, becoming the first plants seen on land. Much time passed, and Firma became a vital, fertile land. While Eryje's moods had ruled the oceans, there was nothing to halt the progress of life upon the land. Creatures lived until they were eaten, or suffered a fatal accident. None died of age.
Rai-Tane and Kyron noticed this, and saw that in time, it would become a problem. Their solution was not to intervene, but establish a new law, one that would forever separate the beasts from the gods. Gods could live forever. Beasts could not. And so, joined in body and mind as Seia and Jin had before them, Rai-Tane and Kyron gave unto the world Morrde, the god of death. When beasts reached the end of their allotted time, this new god would claim them as his own, dragging them down to his realm.
In the realm of Morrde, beasts would live on, in a rough facsimile of their old domains. None questioned this, for the realm of shadows was the sole dominion of Morrde himself, and none of the other gods could enter. This did not concern them, as Morrde could not enter the mortal realm or the ethereal plane where the other gods resided. The natural order of the world grew, and at the same time, the realm of shadows grew more complex, more real.
In all this time, man had yet to exist, and so, there was no magick in the world. None of the other gods realised it, but the realm of shadows was beginning to touch upon the mortal world, and in time some of the beasts that Morrde had taken returned to the world. But, when they had returned, they were not the same, they harboured great anger towards the living, and wished to make them suffer as they had. Thus, the first daemons had come into the world. Their stay was brief, but violent. So much so that Eryje grew jealous of their power, and wished to find a way to halt them.
In her rage, she exhaled across the oceans and blew great storms onto the lands. Her Essence suffused these storms, and magick came into the world. Then came an event that shocked all the gods, for such a thing had not happened since the existence of the Elder God himself. A being came into existence in the ethereal plane, unbidden, created not by other gods, but from itself.
That god was Deaze. His domain was not the mortal world, nor the ethereal plane, but what lay between. Essence, the tempest of the gods, had been tamed. Magick began to move throughout the world, shifting on tides that were not born of natural events. Time passed, and special creatures began to appear. Creatures attuned to the ebb and flow of this mysterious new substance. Some could even manipulate the skeins of Essence to their own purposes.
And so it was ready. The world could now begin to live and grow beyond the gods' control. Great aeons passed, and the lands shifted upon the oceans. Then, man suddenly appeared. His origins were uncertain, perhaps he came from something that already existed, something that grew too used to magick. Perhaps, as the universities and learned scholars say, he was borne into existence by a long process of evolution. Or, perhaps he arrived from some other place, and called this land of magick his home.
Man had come into the world, a world of gods and magick, and as is the way of man, he tried to change it. To shape the world to his own ends. The first men knew of the gods, the old gods, and worshiped them as the True Gods. As the other gods and goddesses watched, they saw that this devotion brought power to the older gods. In this sole act of man, the pantheon became divided. Brother and sister fought against father and son. Mother and daughter were pitted against each other, fighting for supremacy.
For as the story went, if one god could claim power from followers, then all of them could. If a young god gained enough of a following, then they might have power enough to supplant the older gods. Perhaps, some whispered, even the Elder God himself. Like the gods they worshiped, man soon became divided. Many countries, many lands, many voices. All wanted different things. As man spread apart, he began to invent. To adapt. To tell stories. Stories not just about man, but about gods. The facts were often wrong, but the gods could not intervene—they had fought for too long.
These incorrect facts became accepted as the truth, and as man accepted them, the heavens, and even the gods themselves, started to change. The first to change was the Elder God. His followers were now so diminished and so rare that no others knew of his existence. Soon—as the gods reckon time—the Elder God vanished. At first the other gods did not notice. Then, when the fighting grew fiercest, Seia went to beseech his aid. In his place she found… nothing.
Weeping, Seia approached the other gods and goddesses under the flag of truce, calling upon them to lay down their arms and bear witness to what their strife had done. The pantheon was rocked to its core. The gods were eternal. Nothing could harm them. Or so they had thought. In secret, Seia descended upon the earth, making a pact with all men. So long as one man—or woman—were to believe she existed, then she would do everything in her power to help that person succeed, no matter the cost. What Seia did not know was that by taking mortal form she had created an avatar.
The other gods could not fail to notice a lone woman, wandering the wilds, imbued with the light of Seia. When they asked the sun goddess of what she had done, Seia refused to speak of it, saying that it was the only to ensure they were never forgotten as the Elder God was. So it was that the other gods made their own avatars, and from each avatar sprang a nation, a religion, a way of life well suited to the region where the avatar lived.
Man had noticed these exceptional people, mages, but imbued with the true power of the gods. Some were hunted, and some became great kings and queens. Some wandered the world, and some chose one place to live in life eternal. It was then that the stars changed, the heavens grew black, and the Eternal Winter began. For almost a century it was night across the earth, and noon was marked only by a dim twilight. Man, not having the true knowledge of the heavens, knew that the Eternal Winter must have been the work of an angry god. They did not know which god. Indeed, when each avatar was questioned at the Conclave of Midnight it was revealed that each of the gods and goddesses was fighting just as hard as man to lift the darkness from the world.
Sure in their knowledge, man asked if they had angered a new god. Though they did not know it, their collective belief had, in fact, created this self-same god. He bore the name Skol, father of cold. His wrath was said to be terrible, and that he sent great beasts of ice to punish those who crossed him. Skol's avatar arrived at the conclave ten days later. No one survived his appearance, and all the other avatars were destroyed, forcing the gods to abandon the world—at least, for a time.
But, beneath the world there was one god, a god with no avatar. No ability to enter the mortal realm. A god of darkness. As man began to dwindle, he sought aid from any that would listen. The old gods ignored them, but there was one who saw the darkness as an invitation. His name was Morrde, and in man's darkest hour, he would be their saviour.
And in the north, past the Blackfang range, at the foot of Karn's Razor, sat the first city. Hygar, fortress of the north. In this city were many mechanisms, clockwork dials and gears, pulleys and ratchets, systems for moving water under the ground. The people of Hygar, the people of the north, knew that these inventions were likely to anger the god's whose magick had been used in their creation, so they prayed for forgiveness, and for the machines to continue working.
Their prayers were answered, during the Maelstrom of Great Fall's heart, in a way they never thought possible. One man, an inventor, had made a body of light metals, bronze and brass, detailed with silver. Inside were a myriad gears and pulleys to move this body. As he was about to place the final gear in position, something beat at his door. Being a kindly person, the man opened the door, not wanting whoever was outside to freeze to death in the cold.
It was not a person on the far side of the door, but a shadowy beast, a daemon that had somehow broken through from the realm of shadow. The man had no weapons, nothing to fight with, nothing to protect himself. He did the only thing he could think of—he prayed for salvation.
A fist with silver knuckles turned the demon into a cloud of ash. The man looked up in awe. His creation had moved, unbidden, without the final piece in position. It moved strangely, its motion coming in small jerks, not smooth transitions. Despite this fact, the man knew his creation was undoubtedly alive, somehow driven by magick perhaps. The creation had no name, and the man could not stop it as it left his home.
It is said that not a single daemon survived to the end of that week. The city began to venerate this strange creation, to pray for its assistance when confronted by impossible situations. In time, it learned to speak, Essence animating the metal, making it flow smoothly where it had jerked and started before. Soon enough, the creation had been given a name: Nyrvan. It meant "the built one" in the northern tongue.
All noticed that around Nyrvan, devices seemed to spring to life, mechanisms worked better, and tinkerers gained sudden inspiration. It was not clear exactly when it happened, but Nyrvan had become an avatar, a physical being with the power of a god. And yet, what all the men of Hygar found strange, was that there was no god for the miracles Nyrvan performed. The next year, Nyrvan fought the daemons once more, but this time, it was not so lucky—Morrde had sent Ruin, his chosen lieutenant, able to corrupt all he touched.
Nyrvan fought the daemon to a standstill, but with each strike, lost a little more Essence, found its body corroded and weakened a little more. The creation fought until the daemon had destroyed both its arms, reducing them to piles of dust and scrap. With one final blow from his mighty hammer, Ruin smashed Nyrvan's body into a million pieces and scattered them on the winds. Making sure the upstart avatar was truly dead, Ruin went searching for its face. The metal lips seemed to smile at him, a benign smile that aggravated the daemon beyond belief. No creature could be so calm when facing its end. Nothing.
That was when the deamon bore witness to Nyrvan's true form, a hulking giant composed of a myriad plates of steel and driven by clockwork gears of the finest bronze. One hand bore a greatsword inscribed with the rune of banishment. The other bore Nyrvan's Thunder. By destroying the avatar, Ruin had unwittingly allowed it to undergo apotheosis, creating the god of artifice. A god that knew nothing but contempt for daemonkind.
No record remains of what happened to Ruin, but the daemon has never again been reported within a hundred leagues of Hygar.
What he did not realise, was that in his loneliness, he gad given Seia a spark of his own power, just enough to Quicken her form. With this spark of power, Seia became a radiant goddess, blanketing the world in a golden haze. The Elder God looked down upon his creation and realised that if his power was spread, his limits would vanish. So it was that he created Jin, goddess of the moons.
Still, the world was lonely. It had day and night. The moons waxed and waned and the seasons passed without change. Seia looked upon the world, and breathed out but a fraction of her Essence. Seeing her only sister give up power for no reason puzzled Jin, and in her puzzlement, she breathed a little of her own Essence into the world. From Seia came Rai-Tane, the god of rock and fire. From Jin came Kyron, the god of chaos and confusion.
These five became known as the old gods, the Elder God, Seia, Jin, Rai-Tane and Kyron. Between them, Firma was shaped. Seia's light warmed Firma during the day. Jin's daughters—the moons—watched over Firma at night. Rai-Tane's passion wrought volcanoes across the land, forever changing the face of Firma. Kyron shifted and changed, moving the lands while touching nothing. His influence separated the continents and spread the ocean.
Soon Firma looked like it does today. One large continent with many people, and many small continents with no people. But in this time, the people had not yet been born. The world was shaped, but it was devoid of life. Rai-Tane's volcanoes had made the land fertile, but there was nothing to grow. Yet. The oceans were devoid of life, and the lands were barren deserts.
As the earth began to turn around Seia, a new god, unknown to the others, was born from the oceans and the sky. Her name was Eryje, and her nature tempestuous. From the churning of the oceans she rose, and found the sky calm. This would not do, for to her, the churning currents were the natural state of the world. All around, clouds began to gather, and lightning forked the sky. With her birth, a great storm descended upon the oceans, lightning striking the waters again and again.
From this energy, the oceans were changed, things that were broken re-formed, and as they reformed, these strange things were quickened to life. In time they came to dominate the ocean, absorbing Seia's warmth, and simply growing. But Eryje's stormy moods often broke them apart, or destroyed them utterly until one day, these tiny quickened lives learned that they could work together, that even if some died, the greater whole would survive.
And thus it was that life spread throughout the oceans. Sometimes on the surface, sometimes in the deeps, drawing energy from Rai-Tane's oldest volcanoes. Seia saw this, and smiled upon the world. She saw only what was good, the fact that Eryje had brought life into the world. Jin saw the storm goddess's rages, and that she was destroying her own creations. Those touched by her thunder died instantly. So Jin spoke with Seia, the moons telling the sun what was happening beneath her.
Jin and Seia wept for those creations merely brushed aside by Eryje's wrath. Together, they made a promise—those only brushed aside by the storm god would survive. So it was that the celestial goddesses, joined once in body and mind, gave unto the world the goddess Shaya. When Shaya came unto the world, the injured began to heal, and the sick grew healthy once more. When one particular creation was thrown inland by a violent storm, gasping for breath, Shaya took pity upon it, and intervened directly. The fish—as it had been—found itself changed, its fins becoming short legs, and its tail growing in length behind it. Gills still sprouted from its neck, but it also gained the ability to breathe in the open air.
In time, this creature had offspring, and as it died, the flora inside it burst forth onto fresh soil, becoming the first plants seen on land. Much time passed, and Firma became a vital, fertile land. While Eryje's moods had ruled the oceans, there was nothing to halt the progress of life upon the land. Creatures lived until they were eaten, or suffered a fatal accident. None died of age.
Rai-Tane and Kyron noticed this, and saw that in time, it would become a problem. Their solution was not to intervene, but establish a new law, one that would forever separate the beasts from the gods. Gods could live forever. Beasts could not. And so, joined in body and mind as Seia and Jin had before them, Rai-Tane and Kyron gave unto the world Morrde, the god of death. When beasts reached the end of their allotted time, this new god would claim them as his own, dragging them down to his realm.
In the realm of Morrde, beasts would live on, in a rough facsimile of their old domains. None questioned this, for the realm of shadows was the sole dominion of Morrde himself, and none of the other gods could enter. This did not concern them, as Morrde could not enter the mortal realm or the ethereal plane where the other gods resided. The natural order of the world grew, and at the same time, the realm of shadows grew more complex, more real.
In all this time, man had yet to exist, and so, there was no magick in the world. None of the other gods realised it, but the realm of shadows was beginning to touch upon the mortal world, and in time some of the beasts that Morrde had taken returned to the world. But, when they had returned, they were not the same, they harboured great anger towards the living, and wished to make them suffer as they had. Thus, the first daemons had come into the world. Their stay was brief, but violent. So much so that Eryje grew jealous of their power, and wished to find a way to halt them.
In her rage, she exhaled across the oceans and blew great storms onto the lands. Her Essence suffused these storms, and magick came into the world. Then came an event that shocked all the gods, for such a thing had not happened since the existence of the Elder God himself. A being came into existence in the ethereal plane, unbidden, created not by other gods, but from itself.
That god was Deaze. His domain was not the mortal world, nor the ethereal plane, but what lay between. Essence, the tempest of the gods, had been tamed. Magick began to move throughout the world, shifting on tides that were not born of natural events. Time passed, and special creatures began to appear. Creatures attuned to the ebb and flow of this mysterious new substance. Some could even manipulate the skeins of Essence to their own purposes.
And so it was ready. The world could now begin to live and grow beyond the gods' control. Great aeons passed, and the lands shifted upon the oceans. Then, man suddenly appeared. His origins were uncertain, perhaps he came from something that already existed, something that grew too used to magick. Perhaps, as the universities and learned scholars say, he was borne into existence by a long process of evolution. Or, perhaps he arrived from some other place, and called this land of magick his home.
Man had come into the world, a world of gods and magick, and as is the way of man, he tried to change it. To shape the world to his own ends. The first men knew of the gods, the old gods, and worshiped them as the True Gods. As the other gods and goddesses watched, they saw that this devotion brought power to the older gods. In this sole act of man, the pantheon became divided. Brother and sister fought against father and son. Mother and daughter were pitted against each other, fighting for supremacy.
For as the story went, if one god could claim power from followers, then all of them could. If a young god gained enough of a following, then they might have power enough to supplant the older gods. Perhaps, some whispered, even the Elder God himself. Like the gods they worshiped, man soon became divided. Many countries, many lands, many voices. All wanted different things. As man spread apart, he began to invent. To adapt. To tell stories. Stories not just about man, but about gods. The facts were often wrong, but the gods could not intervene—they had fought for too long.
These incorrect facts became accepted as the truth, and as man accepted them, the heavens, and even the gods themselves, started to change. The first to change was the Elder God. His followers were now so diminished and so rare that no others knew of his existence. Soon—as the gods reckon time—the Elder God vanished. At first the other gods did not notice. Then, when the fighting grew fiercest, Seia went to beseech his aid. In his place she found… nothing.
Weeping, Seia approached the other gods and goddesses under the flag of truce, calling upon them to lay down their arms and bear witness to what their strife had done. The pantheon was rocked to its core. The gods were eternal. Nothing could harm them. Or so they had thought. In secret, Seia descended upon the earth, making a pact with all men. So long as one man—or woman—were to believe she existed, then she would do everything in her power to help that person succeed, no matter the cost. What Seia did not know was that by taking mortal form she had created an avatar.
The other gods could not fail to notice a lone woman, wandering the wilds, imbued with the light of Seia. When they asked the sun goddess of what she had done, Seia refused to speak of it, saying that it was the only to ensure they were never forgotten as the Elder God was. So it was that the other gods made their own avatars, and from each avatar sprang a nation, a religion, a way of life well suited to the region where the avatar lived.
Man had noticed these exceptional people, mages, but imbued with the true power of the gods. Some were hunted, and some became great kings and queens. Some wandered the world, and some chose one place to live in life eternal. It was then that the stars changed, the heavens grew black, and the Eternal Winter began. For almost a century it was night across the earth, and noon was marked only by a dim twilight. Man, not having the true knowledge of the heavens, knew that the Eternal Winter must have been the work of an angry god. They did not know which god. Indeed, when each avatar was questioned at the Conclave of Midnight it was revealed that each of the gods and goddesses was fighting just as hard as man to lift the darkness from the world.
Sure in their knowledge, man asked if they had angered a new god. Though they did not know it, their collective belief had, in fact, created this self-same god. He bore the name Skol, father of cold. His wrath was said to be terrible, and that he sent great beasts of ice to punish those who crossed him. Skol's avatar arrived at the conclave ten days later. No one survived his appearance, and all the other avatars were destroyed, forcing the gods to abandon the world—at least, for a time.
But, beneath the world there was one god, a god with no avatar. No ability to enter the mortal realm. A god of darkness. As man began to dwindle, he sought aid from any that would listen. The old gods ignored them, but there was one who saw the darkness as an invitation. His name was Morrde, and in man's darkest hour, he would be their saviour.
And in the north, past the Blackfang range, at the foot of Karn's Razor, sat the first city. Hygar, fortress of the north. In this city were many mechanisms, clockwork dials and gears, pulleys and ratchets, systems for moving water under the ground. The people of Hygar, the people of the north, knew that these inventions were likely to anger the god's whose magick had been used in their creation, so they prayed for forgiveness, and for the machines to continue working.
Their prayers were answered, during the Maelstrom of Great Fall's heart, in a way they never thought possible. One man, an inventor, had made a body of light metals, bronze and brass, detailed with silver. Inside were a myriad gears and pulleys to move this body. As he was about to place the final gear in position, something beat at his door. Being a kindly person, the man opened the door, not wanting whoever was outside to freeze to death in the cold.
It was not a person on the far side of the door, but a shadowy beast, a daemon that had somehow broken through from the realm of shadow. The man had no weapons, nothing to fight with, nothing to protect himself. He did the only thing he could think of—he prayed for salvation.
A fist with silver knuckles turned the demon into a cloud of ash. The man looked up in awe. His creation had moved, unbidden, without the final piece in position. It moved strangely, its motion coming in small jerks, not smooth transitions. Despite this fact, the man knew his creation was undoubtedly alive, somehow driven by magick perhaps. The creation had no name, and the man could not stop it as it left his home.
It is said that not a single daemon survived to the end of that week. The city began to venerate this strange creation, to pray for its assistance when confronted by impossible situations. In time, it learned to speak, Essence animating the metal, making it flow smoothly where it had jerked and started before. Soon enough, the creation had been given a name: Nyrvan. It meant "the built one" in the northern tongue.
All noticed that around Nyrvan, devices seemed to spring to life, mechanisms worked better, and tinkerers gained sudden inspiration. It was not clear exactly when it happened, but Nyrvan had become an avatar, a physical being with the power of a god. And yet, what all the men of Hygar found strange, was that there was no god for the miracles Nyrvan performed. The next year, Nyrvan fought the daemons once more, but this time, it was not so lucky—Morrde had sent Ruin, his chosen lieutenant, able to corrupt all he touched.
Nyrvan fought the daemon to a standstill, but with each strike, lost a little more Essence, found its body corroded and weakened a little more. The creation fought until the daemon had destroyed both its arms, reducing them to piles of dust and scrap. With one final blow from his mighty hammer, Ruin smashed Nyrvan's body into a million pieces and scattered them on the winds. Making sure the upstart avatar was truly dead, Ruin went searching for its face. The metal lips seemed to smile at him, a benign smile that aggravated the daemon beyond belief. No creature could be so calm when facing its end. Nothing.
That was when the deamon bore witness to Nyrvan's true form, a hulking giant composed of a myriad plates of steel and driven by clockwork gears of the finest bronze. One hand bore a greatsword inscribed with the rune of banishment. The other bore Nyrvan's Thunder. By destroying the avatar, Ruin had unwittingly allowed it to undergo apotheosis, creating the god of artifice. A god that knew nothing but contempt for daemonkind.
No record remains of what happened to Ruin, but the daemon has never again been reported within a hundred leagues of Hygar.