Chapter one : The Begining

I have assembled this history of the beginning of the world, the First Epoch, from several old and forgotten texts. It will amuse you to know that the most valuable of these texts was bought from a junk merchant in the wretched town of Freeport for two silver. That tome was written in an ink I had never seen before, and have not seen since. Perhaps it’s the blood of a long-extinct beast. The book was easily over two thousand years old, preserved by some ancient magic.
After absorbing that book, after reading it over and over, I came to realize that it is for good reason that he beginnings of our world have been forgotten. Most of us believe that the principal gods as we know them, having always been, created our world. This is a comforting belief, for within it is the assumption we were not put here by random chance. The Great Sage Mordekai insists that we were put here as part of an elaborate game between the gods. The priests of Tinel believe that all of life is a test, an exam of sorts, for the time when we might rejoin the gods in the Heavens. There are countless explanations for our existence, but all of them share one thing: the assumption that along with our world, we were created for a reason.
The truth is, I fear, far darker. You see, there was a time when silence and darkness reigned. I do not mean silence as in the stillness of the forest when no bird chirps and no wind blows. I mean an absence of sound only possible in a universe yet to discover the very idea of sound. So too was it with the darkness: a void so complete as to deny the very existence of light. The nothingness was absolute. In a sense, it was perfect order and peace. The emptiness was constant, without beginning or end. And yet, the void did not last. In the darkness, something began to change. The tome I found in Freeport referred to this change as “Shachté,” which means, “The moment before the dice decide which face to show.” I think we can best understand it as pure change and violence, invading that vast sea of silence and peace.
Though Shachté had no face or name, it changed the void. Silence and peace were now interrupted with tremors of searing light and shrieking noises. The tremors grew more frenzied, the peace and the violence tearing at one another, changing one another. Light and shadow were thus coupled, and sound and silence were joined as opposites, for until this struggle none of these forces had existed to be opposed. All the positive and negative energies of the universe were made in that eternal moment, and in their creation, they were so infected with one another that rarely might one find a pure light without darkness, or a pure sound without silence.
The war of creation continued, creating a maelstrom that flashed across the void, lasting for a million years, or for just the winking of an eye, for time had no meaning then. And then, all at once, from the intersection of silence and sound, a Word was formed; and in the heart of the storm, there coalesced an Image. In that moment, the Nameless One (so He must be called of necessity) created Himself by uttering the Word: His name.
You may doubt this to be true, dear reader. Please believe me when I say that I wish it were not so. I wish the universe came from the careful plans of our loving gods as we have always believed. But I have known since my youth that this is not true; our world was created in less than perfect circumstances. As an apprentice to the Great Sage Artonik Sellowyl I came across this passage in my research:

“Nothing is sacred For something is from nothing made And when the end of something comes Only nothing will remain”

Innocuous as it may seem, it was in a tome about the beginning of things. Reading this passage was the first time, I encountered the notion of nothingness. No gods, no life, no existence. Even then, I knew there had to be more to the beginning of time than we have always believed. Perhaps the significance of the Nameless One’s creation and this poem escape you. Let me explain. When the Nameless One created Himself in that moment of Image and Word, time began.
Everything we know and hold dear began. But the roots of creation are in Shachté. The universe was created not from the perfect stillness of logic and peace, but from its clash with chaos and violence. The Nameless One, the creator of all, was a being born not just of perfection, but also of pure change and randomness. Therefore, so are we. We are not here by the plan of the gods; everything we know is an accident of creation, and all of it will someday come to an end. When the end of something comes, only nothing will remain

Other Beliefs

About the Beginning

The Great Sage Matalou’s discovery that the universe

was created in a moment of chaos is not, in fact, the most

frightening claim ever made by a scholar.

In his widely-distributed tome Gods or Monsters: an Investigation into

the Nature of Divinity, the Great Sage Curfas asserts that

the gods not only didn’t create the universe, they came to

our world from another place to prey on the weak-willed,

and convince the foolish to offer them worship.

Curfas goes on to assert that the universe was created

by the mortal races, who were once powerful sorcerers.

It is his assertion that the individual is all-powerful, but

must throw off petty beliefs and take whatever they want.

While the Great Sage Curfas’ work is usually dismissed

as the ravings of a madman, mere piffle compared to the

well- researched findings of Matalou, there are some who

find it very alluring indeed