The Old Ones and The Birth of the Gods
The World Theirself
In the beginning there was the World, and from themself they made life. Like a spark catching wildfire, the first forms of sentience began to walk the world beside the first creatures as they crawled from the bowels of magic into the world.
The World felt at peace, contented with their accomplishments, and so they slept.
But beside the first animals and those fated to someday become mankind, were the Old Ones, creatures formed purely from the lasting echoes of magic radiating through the world. These creatures were the first of the gods, chaotic beings primordial in nature.
For millennia the Old Ones walked the world unimpeded, undisturbed by the world and it's meanderings. In that time there was a quiet sort of peace, born from a lack of malice and near primitive fascination with the new reality and life itself. In that time all lived like the animals, a day for itself, each moment its own.
And then the Old Ones began to change, maturing in their powers and sentience into fearsome, unopposed beings who could walk the world in a matter on days. One of these being wished to be as the World had been, and so they sat for, till moss grew over them, and rivers bent their course around them. And they sat through a thousand storms. And they sat through the changing of the lands. And still they sat as the tides came in and oceans sat at their heels. And still they sat, until at last amid the shellfish and soft tendrils of kelp there lay beside them not one, not two, but three infants, the size of those born to mortals.
And still they sat for a hundred days and nights as the ocean's tidepools nurtured the young beings, wrapping them in cocoons made of sand, salt and seaweed. And they grew, and grew, till on the hundredth and first sunrise after they came into being, the sand, salt, and seaweed fell away to reveal perfectly formed beings laying suspended inside the tidepools.
Contented with this accomplishment, the Old One left their children who were to become the first of the gods and walked into the sea to feast, ravenous.
The Gods
After their parent left, as the World had left those they bore, the gods wandered out into the world.
The first found a river and sat upon its banks where she began to play with its flow, dropping in small twigs and pebbles, watching them swim away down the current towards the ocean. An idea struck her, and so in the waters she placed fish from the sea, sending them out to fill the streams and brooks and populate the waters so something would swim there, as it had the place she had been born. This god came to be known as Verda, the fertile, for wherever she walked the world she placed, changed, or created small sparks of life to fill the world to bursting.
The second of the three wandered the world in search of adventure, seeking to fill themself with the spark of excitement and joy they had felt when their being was kindled into the world. They sang and hummed, soft at first, then louder till their voice mingled with the winds in a haunting melody. This was the god of peace, joy, and music, the god of festivities, and living life for the better emotions, Myor. Their children were to become the god of grief, pain and sorrow, and the god of anger, rage, and the fight.
The third walked the world in search of his own purpose, seeking far and wide for what he was meant to do, or be. He passed his siblings as they brushed the world with their gifts, and brought new light and life, and still he was unsure. He watched as Verda moved among her creatures and grew her crops, seeding the world with new plants of her own creation. He watched as Myor danced amid the fields, singing to the birds overhead and the winds around them.
And Ty was sad.
He moved from his siblings, further and further into the world in search of a purpose he couldn't find. Tears brimmed along the god's eyes as he walked, dropping to the ground in a soft fall. Ty felt the first true form of loneliness, and longing, and it was then, in his darkest hour he walked down to the banks of a river to look down upon his reflection for company when he saw them; those that would be humans and elves.
They walked the banks, some kneeling near the water to drink. They spoke to each other in mumbles and incoherent babbles the god couldn't understand, and they themselves seemed only barely to grasp. Ty watched as they hunted the first his sister had placed into the water, and sang the garbled hums of Myor. Ty looked at his own refection, and saw it was nearly as similar to theirs as it was his siblings. But it wasn't the same, and they couldn't stand how he stood, instead scrabbling amid the dirt and mud.
And so Ty walked across the river, and he grabbed a human by the shoulders and he spoke worlds lost to time, pulling them straight, and as he did so the fear and animal flight left the man's eyes. When he was released, he stood as the gods; back straight, eyes clear and cunning. The man watched as one by one the god touched them, changed them, and made the first humans and elves from the being destoned to become them millennia upon millennia from then. And so Ty changed the world in a way his siblings never could have.
And so Ty became the god of man. And so he and his siblings protected the life they had shaped, gave to them joy, foods, and fertile lands. And so the world began, and the gods began to gather the reverence of those they had helped, just as the Old Ones were feared for their chaos and primordial being.*NOTE* [written in a scratchy, cramped hand the following is penned to the side of the carefully translated document]
In the present this is regarded as an impure version of the truth, twisted by the demons who called themselves gods to further their worship and take power away from the true creator, the One.
Those who still believe the gods had pure intents are in the minority, as well as any who believe them to have been gods whatsoever. These were the children of [name obliterated with ink], after all.
However while worship of these beings is all but forbidden, and with good reason, it is still important to study older cultures in my pursuit of reconstructing a semi coherent history from these ashes and well-meaners who have destroyed so much.
Scholar Dazwel. Year 1264g, fifty-two years after the destruction of the god-demon and the reformation of the continent.
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