The Age of Monsters (Milosian Creation Myth)

Many Milosian myths suggest that the world was once formless: a mass of shadows held somewhat in place by an ill-defined substance called the ether. Some myths liken the ether to the earth and the shadow to the air, and some the other way round. Some make no attempt to define either, and seem to suggest that those who inhabited the world in this time simply swam about everywhere. Swim they may have, but these substances should not be confused with water, which came later in the Milosion creation myths.
Who were these original inhabitants? Monsters. Enormous, hideous, malevolent, and possessed of minds too great or too small for mortals to fathom, these creatures moved about the world in constant and brutal contest with one another. Unlike the twin gods of the Dragon People or even the pantheon of a dozen or so gods in Titonis, the Milosians believed these monsters to number in the thousands, that their breath continuously burned all matter from the world, and that their roars extinguished all life. For thousands of thousands of years, the Monsters moved about the world of shadow and ether, knowing nothing but pain and hatred.
After thousands of generations of terror, the Hadrash were born. Though the children of the Monsters, the Hadrash had some semblance of what we might call mortal intelligence. They had no mercy or love in them, but they all desired to end their own suffering, and therefore sought to end the reign of chaos the Monsters maintained. Many battles were fought, yet never was a single of the Monsters defeated, for they were born by torment, and would rise again even from seeming death. Many of the Hadrash were destroyed or even corrupted into Monsters themselves as a result of these wars.
After a thousand years of battle, the King of the Hadrash (in some myths, the Wizard of the Hadrash), looked into the shadow and ether and bound one of these two substances to his will; which one varies with the telling. This substance he caused to fly up and become the blue sky, and from it fell an endless rain. For another thousand years the Great Rain fell, and the Hadrash hid from the Monsters as the world was reformed. The Great Rain gave weight to everything, and the other substance, either ether or shadow, was fused into earth. Many Monsters were buried beneath the heavy earth, defeated where no weapon could prevail. Those that were not buried were drowned beneath thousands of gallons of water, trapped somewhere in the deepest reaches of the seas.
As the Great Rain began to dry, the King of the Hadrash ordered its people up onto the highest points of land, but many were unprepared for this order. Some say they had begun to fight their own wars amongst themselves, and would not give up the lands they had won even as those lands were covered by the seas. Others say the Hadrash had begun to discover love and sought out their friends and cherished ones and even their own children as they drowned. Still others suggest that, though the Monsters had been vicious beyond all thought, that many of the Hadrash still loved their creators and could not bear to abandon them, perishing beneath the seas as they tried to rescue their brutal parents. Even the King of the Hadrash did not survive the Dying of the Rain; whether because of war, love, or duty, we cannot say. The Hadrash who made it to the surface were few and disorganized, and roamed the landscape as the monsters of their own age.
Some say the Hadrash would become the Sembraxi, or Giants, one of the clans of the Aernigh, or Ancient Folk. Yet the Sembraxi were described as fairly human in appearance, if unusually large: sometimes brutish and sometimes beautiful. The Hadrash, meanwhile, were all twisted and hideous, each uniquely malformed and monstrous.
Others suggest that what we call the Hadrash were those that fell beneath the Rains, and that they became twisted by drowning over and over in the new world of water they had created. Many myths speak of the Hadrash coming up out of the water to fight wars with the Aernigh and later even the northfolk who would come through the Pass of Peril to become the first Milosians. These same people often suggest that the few Hadrash that escaped the Great Rains would become not only the Sembraxi but all the clans of the Ancient Folk, cursed to war against their families that drowned beneath the seas.
More than anything, these myths explain why Milosians were so reticent to venture into the seas, even as other nations began to master the waves. They lived in fear of the Hadrash, and a greater terror of the Monsters that dwelt far below, in the depths.