Soleria, and the world of Astoria on the whole, has endured through a variety of different eras of discovery, calamity, rebirth, and reconstruction. Across the disparate cultures of the continent, there exist distinct interpretations and understandings of these eras, and of the history of this world. Beneath it all, there is some truth, some legend, and much lost to time. We will explore this history here;
The Creation Myth
In every culture, on every world, there exists a myth of the creation of everything, and Soleria is no different. Across the continent, and most of Astoria, there exists a generally accepted recollection of the formation of the world.- known simply as the Creation or the Creation Myth. It is an ever-evolving history of the world, steadily built and rebuilt as scholars, archeologists, and the like work to uncover the hidden secrets of the past.
The Myth dates back to the origins of everything- in darkness, the first stars filled the vast emptiness of space. From these stars, came the Najmi- an ancient peoples who spread across the universe, living in the space between the stars and born of them. They settled planets, and were the first sentient creatures on Astoria. Little is truly known or understood of their existence or culture, as what little we have today comes from what little has been drawn out of the notoriously reclusive Plasmoids- a species of sentient ooze which traces it's lineage directly to the last of the Najmi.
The story of Astoria truly beings, however, with what are known as the Primarchs. As the story goes, the remainin essence of the Najmi created two things- the Plasmoids, who were born of literal Najmi bodies that decomposed after death (per the Plasmoid Oracles own retelling, at least). The magical essence of these creatures, however, is believed to have suffused into the very earth itself. It became a core part of the very fabric of Astoria, and magical scholars believe this to be the cause of the spontaneous appearance of the Primarchs- the first real divine beings in Astoria.
This aspect of their story is highly debated. A leading counter theory is one that supposes that with the Najmi gone, Astoria was opened up to planes of existence beyond the Material Plane, and divine beings from those realms traveled here with intent to rule. Regardless, they came to our plane, and made the world what we see it as today. One by one, the Pantheon was formed;
- Shifa, God of healing, life, and the sun.
- Alma, God of death and fate.
- Diios and Diias, the Twins, Gods of the Wilderness and the Seas respectively.
- Clockwork, God of time and change.
- Quetzalcoatl, God of the skies and the heavens.
- Typhestus, God of storms and inclement weather.
- Leini, God of creativity, craft. and the forge.
- Andeira, God of art and beauty.
- Judgement, God of peace and justice.
- Goron, God of competition, conflict, and war.
- Möbius, God of knowledge and learning.
- Khaza, God of civilization, law, and order.
These Gods were responsible for the formation of the natural world, the creation of the mortal races, and much of the formation and organization of the initial ancient cultures and societies of Astoria. They watched their creations explore, discover, learn, and build upon the land, and gifted them the first divine magics to aid in these efforts.
Much of the specific history of this era is lost to time and conflict, particularly to the destruction endured during the period that followed- the Daechon War.
The Daechon War
The Daechon War was a millenia spanning period in Astoria in which an anti-Primarch cult rose to power, ascended several of it's leaders to godhood, and effectively destroyed the Pantheon of Astoria.
The Daechon Cult originated in Soleria, where several sinister and opportunistic folk took advantage of the free will and anti-authoritarian sentiments present in the mortal peoples of Astoria to foment discontent with the rule of the Primarchs. This cult grew in secret across the continent, to the point that it became too large to truly fail without direct intervention by the Primarchs.
What happened next is still highly contested to this day. The Daechons made a concerted effort to erase as much history and knowledge as possible, seeing it all as corrupting influence of the Primarchs encroaching on mortal lives. We do know that of the original twenty cult leaders, only thirteen survived the ascension of the cult and the ritual to divinity. Following this ritual, the war began in earnest, with the Primarchs and the newly divinely powered Daechons leveling much of the realm in the process. It was fierce, it was fast, and then it was over. Much of what mortal hands created in Astoria was gone, as were the Gods themselves- Primarch and Daechon alike.
It is believed that the Daechons were destroyed, and that the ritual they conducted had no hope of meeting the power of the truly divine Primarchs. This belief comes from current religious ritual, in which mortals on the Material Plane are able to commune with and feel the influence of the Primarchs, but no such success has been found with the Daechons. Instead, it seems the divine power of the Daechons was ousted entirely from the Material Plane, and coalesced into a new realm- the Abyss to secular peoples, or Hell to the Ortesian Church- home of daemons.
The Silence
Following the climax of the God War, a period of quiet took hold across Astoria. Known today as the Silence, it was a time of colloquial "dust settling" after the fires of war, where no mortal peoples could be found anywhere in the realm, and nature reclaimed what it had lost to civilization.
Of course, in truth, there were plenty of mortals roaming the war-scarred landscapes of Astoria in these times. The reality was, however, that the corrupting influence of the Daechons remained on the Material Plane; as nature reclaimed the urban centers of the old world, horrific monsters began to emerge from the depths of the Abyss. These daemons spread their sickness throughout the land, and were a large reason for the stagnation of culture and the slow return of civilization to the realm.
It took thousands of years, but mortal cultures began to reform on Astoria. Tribes came together, cities were rebuilt, and a new history began to come into form. This was no small feat, no matter the time frame, as the daemons were no simple beasts to be quelled. Many different methods of dealing with them came to be during the Silence- many tribes developed special divine rituals to commune with higher beings to provide protection from daemons, allowing their homes to grow and prosper. Others chose to use these divine gifts to take the fight to the daemons, ridding small and large swathes of the land from under their corrupting influence.
This all eventually brought an end to the Silence, as with the daemons largely pushed back into the deepest, darkest corners of Astoria, civilization could once again rise.
The Holy Ortesian Church and the Modern Era
Today in Soleria there exist a number of varied peoples and cultures, and two major nations- the Ortesian Empire and the Florentine Republic. The former of these, the Ortesians, was formed by nomadic human tribes in the Southern half of Soleria, and has grown in the subsequent centuries to be the largest and most powerful empire in all of Astoria.
This power is drawn largely from it's central governing and religious body, the Holy Ortesian Church. The Church is responsible for modern civilization in the region, as it claims- from cities to roads to coinage to law, it is all the doing of the Church and it's Holy leaders.
The truth is the Church achieved it's power through a carefully conducted cultural shift performed over hundreds of years. The initial formation of the Empire rested on the central figures of the movement to create it carefully rewriting what little history existed into something that common people needed their protection from. The Daechon War in Soleria is critically recontextualized not as the fault of an evil, power-seeking cult, but as the doing of all mortals. Mortals, as the Church teaches, are inherently sinful, and must redeem themselves in order to make up for the horrors of the War and to achieve salvation.
These teachings largely took hold thanks to the Church's extremely effective weaponization of the threat of daemons and daemonic incursion, possession, and corruption. Daemons roamed the land in full view of any unlucky enough to be caught in their path during the Silence, and while they have for the most part been driven back out of the common folk's view, memory of the times in which daemonic attacks were commonplace served as a useful wellspring for the Church to tap into to inspire piety and devotion from it's followers, and eventually, from the whole of the peoples under it's rule.
Further, the entire Pantheon of Astoria, in the eyes of the Church, has lost it's godhood. Most, if not all, of the history of the Daechons and even of the origins of the Primarchs was written and stored in Soleria. This history has been collected and either hidden away or destroyed by the Church, and a new history has taken it's place and has been taught to the masses.
Rather than thirteen Primarchs coming to Astoria and creating the mortal races, the Church reframes the Pantheon into a single entity- a single, all knowing, all powerful, all present God. It similarly reframes the Daechons as not mortals who ascended to godhood, but as evil creatures born of the inherent sin of mortals. The goal here is clear- one divine being created everything, one divine being sacrificed itself to save us from ourselves, and we now must trust in one divine being (read: organization, read: Church, read: King) to guide us to redemption and salvation in the eyes of this one divine God.
The Church further teaches of the idea of Sainthood; that mortals can achieve divinity through redemption and faith, and that the One God rewards this devotion with a gift of divinity. The many gods of the Astorian Pantheon have been repositioned on the historical timeline, and rewritten to not be divine beings from a higher plane, but mortals who achieved divinity through their actions during the Silence and reconstruction of society during the Modern Era.
This version of Astorian history is only really accepted within the borders of the Ortesian Empire, but there is a concerted effort by Imperial missionaries to spread this teaching elsewhere. Whether or not it succeeds remains to be seen.
The New Republic
As the Holy Ortesian Church began to solidify it's control, many found themselves fleeing for safer harbors. Some went South, to the Archipelago, some fled East across the oceans, but most fled to the North. These refugees, all persecuted in one way or another by the Church- be it for their beliefs, or for the Church's beliefs about them- came together to build a new nation. One formed on the ideas of equality, egalitarianism, and fraternity. The Florentine Republic.
The Republic came to be within the last two centuries. Initially coalescing in secret in the uncharted Northern regions of the continent, it appeared effectively overnight. The first city- the Capital of Florence- was founded, and used as a staging ground for rapid expansion and conquest of the territories still as of yet unconquered by the Empire. Over those two centuries it came to solidify it's control of the region, establish a firmly protected border along the two major rivers stemming from the Andeiran Mountains, and establish itself as a safe place for those looking to get out from under the Ortesian Church.
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