"This World is older than even the gods we worship, and perhaps even more powerful."— Vel'elin
The
Creation Myth is the story detailing the conception of the original world that preceded modern-day Helthoria, and one that has been passed on since the first dwellers of both the Mortal and Altar Realms.
Creation Myth
The Age of the Primordial Lords
In the beginning, there was darkness.
Upon the expanse of black stood two brothers, whose origin forever remained unknown. The two dwelled upon the darkness for centuries, until one day the first brother grew tired and desired to make something out of the nothingness. Change, however, was a thing that its kin greatly despised.
Chaos lifted the darkness and molded it into a great billowing landscape of water and smoke, which formed upon the vast sea of nothingness and turned it into the
First Expanse; a plane of black ocean that stretched out for miles and miles. When its brother realized that their realm had been disturbed by his hand, it grew furious and wished to return the Primordial plane to what it once was. It formed a landmass on all sides of this great ocean with the goal of containing its power and keeping it from spreading out further into the expanse of unknown they enhabited.
The two brothers began to feud after centuries of peace and nothingness, which caused the first brother to grow excited with the desire to feul the anger it caused the other, branching out the
Expanse it had created simply to spite its brother. In retaliation, the second brother took some of the darkness for himself and formed it into a great, strong cliff, of which to keep its brother's dark ocean at bay. He fortified the structure he had created until it was just as vast as that of which his brother had created. The first brother's rage boiled so hot that the ocean he had crafted formed into a horrendous typhoon, which beat against the great cliff with such ferocity that the land began to crumble away.
For ages the brothers fought, and with their conflict created an amalgam of things with which the other used in attempt to calm the vast ocean, with both of the brothers' creations on the constant brink of destruction at the hand of each other. Soon however, the other brother grew tired too.
The second brother petitioned for the feud to cease; but as his kin continued with the ocean he had created to beat down upon the great cliff, the second brother simply stopped trying to contain the expanse its brother had crafted.
This angered the first brother evermore, though he soon began to grow bored of this one-sided feud, and begrudgingly agreed to end the fighting.
Creation of the Elements
The second brother, who would come to be known as the
Primordial Lord Order, decided that it had taken a liking to creation, and began to reform the landscape he had once made as a barrier to keep its brother's ocean contained - the cliff of which had now eroded away, leaving only a ramp of earth leading into the black depths where it and the ocean met. Order formed great peaks, and gaping valleys, whose depths held a great trove of metals and rock. Upon that great land, Order crafted a landscape of colour, bedding the overworld with soft, lush green ground, vast planes of golden sand, as well as sturdy towers perched into the ground on innumerable brown spindels that grew the towers strong and tall, topping them with canopies of red and green and gold.
The first sulked for a great deal of time after the feud. It wasn't long before it had noticed its brother beginning to populate his creation with colour unimaginable. This brother, deciding to follow his brother's path, began to create upon his own domain; driving great divets beneath the ocean where nothing but darkness could reside, great frozen expanses across the water, and labyrinths of stone and slate - however, this brother knew that in the harsh environments of the depths, nothing his kin could build up would survive the treacherous waters. This brother, who would come to be known as the
Primordial Lord Chaos, began to create monstrous, resiliant aberrations of great and minimal size to reside in the deepest depths, strong enough to withstand the horrifying conditions of the underwater.
The brothers at last came together to take in all that they had made, and expressed admiration for all that each other had accomplished, though each also somewhat envious of each other's creations, taking from one another as time went on. This new plane built up from the black ocean of the
First Expanse then came to be known simply as the
Two Realms. Order would keep the elements in balance, while Chaos would often test his resolve as its desire to feud him would boil up many times more.
On went the brothers' creating, with Order beginning to populate the plane with grazing beasts and flying lacertilia, and Chaos dotting the ocean floor with strong, spindly flora for the creatures who resided there.
Chaos and Order decided to divide their domains into entites of each's own creation, this event being the creation of the first Pantheon.
The Age of the Gods
Creations of Order
Lord Order first divided the air from the earth, giving them the names of [REDACTED] and [REDACTED], today known as
Azra and
Iyuun. The two married at the furthest point of the land, meeting eternally, far from the reach of the eye.
Next, Order divided the flora, and the fauna, and the depths of the hills and underground, giving them to the long since lost gods called
Yzotl,
Avean, and
Udum. His gods worked together in the creation of the first ecosystem, relying on one another's domains to keep theirs running as their creator saw fit.
Creations of Chaos
Lord Chaos wanted his creations to be as fierce and as dangerous as the depths he fashioned with his own hands, though his vast domain he decided that his children must all share, while he himself presides over it for eternity.
With this, he gave rise to five deities;
Lumas, the great light to beat down upon all the realm, Morovas and
Cylarae, the oceanic gods who would compete for control over the waves,
Thūlmoth, and
Az'ganoth, who would be the darkness of the depths that receded beneath them.
The Great Conflict
Soon, each great domain had a deity presiding over it beneath the gaze of their creators. Though as the amount of deities grew, the Two Realms soon became crowded -- the gods were given great power, with which at times they would begin to overstep their territories. Though rather than work with their domains harmoniously, the gods were restless and how small the Realms were becoming for them, and they grew restless and mad with power. It was then that the Great Conflict ensued.
By the time the Primordial Lords were able to mend the situation, the gods had nearly torn themselves apart, with only the eldest among them surviving the war that broke out among their creations.
In the aftermath, the remaining gods sought to take up multiple domains to care for, as a great majority of gods had perished in the conflict, and they feared the realm of their creators would fall completely to ruin should it not be cared for.
As punishment for destroying that which their own creators had made, the gods were punished. From them, they were told they must sustain themselves and find their own ways to keep their domains from tearing themselves apart; as, should they destroy the two realms, the Primordial Lords would do nothing to fashion them a new place to inhabit -- they had created all they wished to, and now was a new era, that of the gods.
Creation of the Altar and Underrealm
Still, the Primordial Lords knew the overworld was no longer large enough to hold the gods and all their creations, so thus they worked together for the only time to fashion a grand realm, contained by the elements of creation and the arcane, that would reside in the plane next to the first that they had made - and they would call it the
The Altar Realm. From then on, the gods solely resided in the realm their creators had fashioned as their home, where they would preside over their domains under the new pact that held them together. The gods that henceforth remained went on to become the
Altar Pantheon.
The deities came to an understanding with both their creators and with one another, working hard to make the domains exist the way it had been intended. They began to bring fourth offspring; young gods that would act as minor deities, presiding over the smaller domains upon the realms. Azra and Iyuun, as well as the latter's second wife
Mulena, sired many new gods, such as
Kelene,
Tusuna and Nyth, among a great deal of others.
Upon the land that was their former home, the gods began to place upon it a vast network of beings they called Humans, which they had intended as keepers of the old realm, the realm that would soon be known as the
Mortal Realm. Within their own realm, the Altar realm, the gods placed creatures born of magic, beings similar to the humans they had created; such as Elves, Fauns, and Dwarves.
While the new Two realms began to bustle with the life brought fourth by the gods upon Lord Order's realms, the gods under Lord Chaos' jurisdiction had begun to feud.
During the Great Conflict, the two brothers Morovas and Cylarae had feuded to claim the dominion of the sea, with the Cyrulean Lord prevailing, banishing the war god to the deepest depths crafted long ago by their creator, from which Morovas was permitted never to return from.
It was soon after this that the dominionless gods Az'ganoth and Thulmoth began to feud with the two remaining sons of Chaos, wishing to bring about the darkness that once ruled the universe while the sun and sea gods rebuked their desires to forsake all that the Primordial Lords had created. The sea god Cylarae, fearing that the brothers they feuded with could grow in power and attempt to destroy all of creation, took the matter to Lord Chaos. The Primordial Lord, though to see its sons feud brought intrigue, grew angered at the notion of all its work receding once again into the blackness it once grew tired of.
Before the Primordial Lord could exact his wrath upon the two sons of darkness, the cunning god Az'ganoth made his creator an ultimatum; that should he create for himself and his brother their own realm seperate from that of the other gods, they should be content not to mettle in the creation of their lord father. At this, Chaos agreed; and thus the
Underrealm was fashioned from the same darkness that Chaos kept stored away beyond the sky and stars of its brother's creation. From then, Az'ganoth and his brother Thulmoth resided forevermore, the former of which bringing rise a new race that would be called the Devils.
The Age of the Two Realms
As the gods established their reign, the Mortal and Altar realms began to function as distinct bodies, working alongside the other in parallel realms unbeknownst to the other through anything save for legend and folktale.
For a great long time, the worlds coexisted, and the gods lived in favour of their home realm; which allowed the human-driven Mortal Realm to forget the gods and live of their own free wills.
The races in their own rights exceeded the anticipations of their gods, giving rise to unfathomable technologies that both built up and destroyed the worlds around them quicker than even the realms themselves had been constructed, which was a power that set the gods on edge. Though their hold on the Altar Realm held strong, that of the Mortal Realm had begun to fade with the sciences of man making nature virtually obsolete.
The harmony the realms had known for centuries was bound to soon be broken, as the chief goddess of the Pantheon, Lady Azra of the domain of the sky, recieved the
Prophecy that would forever change the worlds her creators had manifested.
The goddess Azra hunted down the Twelve, which consisted of six mortals from both the Altar and Mortal realms, with the intent to imprison them and prevent the Prophecy from coming to pass, which stated that the Twelve from both realms would band together at the gate between the worlds and bring fourth a cataclysm that would converge both realms together and destroy all that lived upon it.
Unbeknownst to the goddess, bringing them together at the Gate like the prophecy had fortold was the cause of the very thing she had sought to prevent.
[EXCERPT REDACTED]
The Age of Helthoria
Following the great Cataclysm that merged the two realms, Chaos and Order laid dormant for a long while, and on the surface where the
Two Realms had met at the
Gate, the scorched land slowly began to reform, blanketting the blackened ground and monstrous, otherworldly cliffs in beds of green, red and blue.
The gods, those that remained, began to aide in the reformations of their respective domains; clearing away the ash and darkness that had retaken the land their Creators had so long ago brough life to. Decades passed, and at last the land returned more or less to the way it had been before, but this time the gate had nothing to separate, and the realms were one.
The gods began to repopulate the earth with mortals once more who could do their bidding upon the surface of the mortal realm, no longer keeping seperate the realms of Altar from the humans of the Mortal realm.
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