The Origin Of Eldath

From the Origins of Eldath Volume I by Markelia Moratoris

The Great One

In the beginning the the Great One was alone. The Great One looked out over all of Oblivion and wept at the lost possibilities. However at this point it was impossible to create anything as creation itself had not been discovered. Therefore the Great One rent itself apart, creating four gods of the fundamental forces of the plane: Law, Chaos, Good, and Evil. In doing so The Great One created something new and thus Oblivion was torn. The four gods: Castellon , Ravik , Vultin Martia were able to work together in order to create the lands, the seas, the moons and the stars.

The Divine Four

The task of creating reality from nothing was overwhelming and each of the Divine Four set about creating servants to channel their divine power through and expand their ability to interact with the world. Castellon created the High Elves, Ravik created the Blood Orcs, Vultin created the Gold Dwarves and Martia created the Flux Gnomes
Each of these True races received motes of divine power which made them into demigods with the power to create and alter reality and through their works the world of Eldath was formed.
In this primal state the world was a paradise with animals and plants directly shaped by divine hands and thus were the truest expression of their very nature. Lions and Tigers as large as mammoths stalked through jungles with trees hundreds of feet high. Everything about this First World was larger than life.

The Divine Split

Each of the Divine Four had a polar opposite. Where Vultin the Shaper tried to create, Martia the Shapeless would corrupt and change. Where Castellon the Blessing would bring life and warmth, Ravik the Bane would bring death and chill. Originally the four agreed to section off a part of the world and rule over their own domain with their servants and continue to create their own perfect domain but each would cast their eyes up across the seas and mountains and would bear witness to what, in their eyes, was abomination. Eventually Ravik and Castellon waged war against one another while Vultin and Martia tried to wipe the other from existence.

The Low Races

Once again the gods and their divine servants felt overwhelmed by the tasks facing them now that they were at war with their polar opposite and the divine spark could only be diluted so much limiting the number of servants a god could have. Instead each god began creating lesser races, the Low Races, by allying with their neighbors to create new servants and soldiers in their divine war.
Castellon thus created the lawful Steel Elves, the neutral Wood Elves, and the chaotic Dusk Elves.
Ravik thus created the neutral Tusk Orcs, the lawful Hobgoblins, and the chaotic Goblins.
Vultin thus created the good Shield Dwarves, the neutral Stone Dwarves, and the evil Deep Dwarves.
Martia thus created the good Steam Gnomes, the neutral Deep Gnomes, and the evil Spriggans.
These Low Races were mortal, beings without any spark of the divine and yet still had the power to create life, alter and shape their surroundings and destroy that which opposed them.

The Rending Of The Planes

For an eternity the four gods and their divine and mortal servants warred with one another. The land was ravaged and destroyed and the very soil itself was poisoned so that the First World gave way to the Second where trees were not as strong or tall, animals became shadows of their former selves and even the servant low races began to desert from the armies of their creators. Communities started springing up where orcs and elves, gnomes and dwarves would live side by side focusing on mortal existence than as pawns in the great war of the gods. Eventually each of the gods became disgusted by their creations abandoning them and the destruction of the First World and they took their divine realms and transported them to other planes.
Castellon departed for Elysium, Ravik departed for the Abyss, Vultin to Axiom and Martia to Arcadia.
The land and seas were ripped apart in this process and the low races found they could never directly contact their divine creators again. Instead the low races learned to pray to the divine servants that sill lived among them, the divine True Races that could still perform miracles, just not to the same degree. For millennia the mortal races learned to coexist with one another and it was this time that they started exploring the Sunless Sea below and exposure to the psychic waters created even more races. While some wept at the separation from their gods, others recognized this as the great peace where all the races learned to live together and work the land and build civilizations to call their own.

The Arrival of Man

Nobody knows when or where the first human came but eventually they were found in such numbers as it was impossible to ignore. At first viewed as just an anomaly it was clear that the humans possessed something that let them expand further and faster than any other race before. They somehow were able to embody all four elements: Law, Good, Chaos, Evil; sometimes within the same individual.
More troubling was that man brought with them their own gods and were able to tap directly into divine sources for magical abilities. Their ability to adapt and overcome combined with superior magic and miracles allowed them to quickly expand and push back the other races to the brink of extinction. Deep distrust among the Low Races prevented them from forming meaningful alliances with one another as even millennia of peace could not overcome their inherent nature. They were created to go to war with one another and at this point the arrival of a new threat in the form of mankind was not enough for them to overcome this internal drive.

The Eternal Empire

While humanity was expanding across Eldath the humans quickly fractured and formed nation-states of their own that warred with one another just as much as they did with the non-humans. This came to an end when the First Emperor Kie Var who successfully unified the human tribes and ushered forth an era of vast expansion conquering nearly all of the known world.

The Great Compact

The True Races, seeing their low race servants and worshippers being pushed to the point of extinction, each decided to make peace with the Eternal Empire in exchange for allowing their followers their freedom. The leaders of each True Race bent the knee to Emperor Kie Var and pledged a service to the Eternal Emperor.
The High Elves agreed to share the knowledge of non-divine magic with the humans, training men in the ways of druidic primal magic or the secrets of the arcane. No longer did the citizens of the Eternal Empire be bound to the gods for magic and miracles.
The Flux Gnomes agreed to give the Eternal Emperor access to the Flux Gates, giant magical portals that allowed instantaneous travel between one part of the world and another. With the Flux Gate Network the Eternal Emperor could now move armies and caravans from one end of the Empire to the other in a matter of hours instead of weeks or months.
The Blood Orcs and Gold Dwarves presented a joint gift. To defend the Eternal Empire against the hordes of Cron the dwarves would build strongholds up and down the coastline to the Clawlands and the orcs would be conscripted to serve as the first line of defense against the undead hordes. Orcs backed by dwarven fortifications and siege weapons halted Cron for thousands of years and for once it seemed like Cron would make no further gains in the lands of the living.
So long as the Great Compact held, the Eternal Empire would be invincible.