Calthoss' Creation

The world is not perfect. God was born writhing and screaming. Vast cosmic energes had coalesced to form his body in the infinite Æther encompassing all realities. And when his starry heart began beating, and he awoke from his endless slumber, those energies immediately began tearing him in two. Most notably, the force of gravity strained to keep his body together against all the other energies. Gravity permeates throughout reality, the source of all magicks and psychic powers. The other energies coalesced into two persons that were part of the greater God: the Shadow and the Shine. Good and evil. Light and darkness. The magickal and the mundane. This process took millenia.   Finally, the Shadow and the Shine were at peace with one another in the imperfect duality that characterized their existence. They each created worlds upon worlds, matching each other tit for tat. They decided to seal off the mortal realm, which they called 'the Axle' on either end with their two prized possessions: this Earth and that Earth. These worlds were very similar, and were both intended to one day be populated by humans, the mortals or 'lynchpins' most similar to the two gods psychologically. This would prove to be the downfall of humankind.   Just as God was imperfect, and multi-faceted, so was humankind. There are often more than just two sides to every conflict. And conflict amongst humans became war, with two sides and all the innocents caught in between. Humans began acting in discord with the gods. The servants of the gods, perfect ethereal beings known as fogmen, began aiding and favoring humankind, even stealing fire from the gods and giving it to them. Soon after, humans discovered magicks. Magicks could wreak enormous amounts of havoc on other humans, and was akin to mutilating the body of God, hurting both the Shadow and the Shine immensely. The Shine, ever quick to anger, smited humans left and right, and cursed them with cancer, the Death of Humankind, painful pregnancies, birth defects, and much, much more. And even with all that destruction, humans prospered and their civilization continued growing. Soon, rogue humans were born with magickal potential rivalling even the gods. The Shine called them gods of destruction. When one tried to kill the Shine, it responded by cursing humankind with its greatest punishment. Hornmen.   1 in 10 humans are born with horns, wings, claws, fangs, talons, doe-like ears, and nine fox-like tails. Their horns are brittle, and sensitive to the touch. They cannot fly. Their claws are dull, and prone to breaking easily. Their fangs lead to speech impediments. Their talons make it very difficult to wear shoes. Their hearing is worse than average, and their tails attract flies. They kill their mothers during childbirth, and they are hated by all other humans.   Their existence crippled human civilization in a year, leading to a massive war that led to humans being separated, and sent back to the stone age on two separate earths. 30,000 years later, and humans on one earth are on the brink of extinction, having developed a magickal bomb capable of levelling continents, and unleashing enormous monsters known as tallmen (giant hornmen) on to the world. The other world, however, is still in the stone age. The two have never interacted before. Until now.