Welcome to the world of Morro'Din. Within here you'll find the origins of the Mother's Dream, who and what lives here, and how it might end.
That Which Came Before, to Which All Returns
They say that the Mother awoke to the cold emptiness of the void. Overcome with grief and lonliness, she wept, and where her tears alit in the firmament, the first stars kindled. The Mother drew from within herself great power to create a child, and for a while she and her first-born were content. However, the Mother grew to desire more children to keep the lonely emptiness of the void at bay. With each birth, she was diminished. Her first born, called Nok-Alu'uk or The Shadow of Death, grew angry and jealous of his many siblings. Driven by a wish to punish his mother's trespass against him, he created the passage of time and with it the slow march toward entropy.
The Mother no longer had the strength to contravene this betrayal, and so grieving what must come again she spun about herself and her smaller children a cocoon of sleep and within this sleep she began to dream.
The Aya
In the beginning, the Dream had no form, and so she called to the strongest of her children, the Aya, and gave to each of them mastery of a domain.
To Llageas, she gave the air and sky so that the bounds of the dream could be guarded against the darkling sea beyond.
To Mha'Haren, she gave mastery of flames and heat and that which creates through destruction.
Ma'ata-sül was mistress of earth and stone and the foundations of things.
Val'Tämyr became the Lady of waters and the divider of worlds.
Bel'vefari was mistress of all life, given dominion over the plants and animals.
Ar'keas became guardian of the dead and those spirits who refused physical forms.
Ingell-Ellith was made Warden of the Dream, only they could speak with the voice of the Mother.
Last-born was Ahsh-en-yyrsill who would be mother to the elves.
The Aya were forever jealous of each other's domains and masteries, and thus in the nature of siblings, they contested. Through their continuous strife was the Dream given shape. When flame and earth collide, great mountains are raised, then weathered by rain and winds. Waters cut deep channels, but carry with them the silts that will be their ends. When air strives to master water, great storms arise to pummel the earth, as all this occurs even the winds themselves become shaped by their opposing forces. All was as the Mother wished.
It is the nature of children to in their turn become parents, and so the Aya begat their own progeny to further enrich the dream.
Llageas plucked one of his eyes and set it into the sky to be Yagda, the stalwart sun. Ever loyal, Yagda set about his task to bring light to the Dream and to guard it against the darkness. However, he is but an Aya'sel and lesser than his father, and so he must fall exhausted from the sky each night. Displeased, Yagesh plucked his other eye and set it to guard the night, but Va'el did not have Yagda's puissance and he wanders as he will.
Val'Tämyr similarly wished for help with her domain of waters and thus formed the great moon Tolune from ice in the northern seas. Tolune finds great joy in her task of shaping the seas and tides, however she loves Yagda and follows ever in his wake basking in his light. Discontented by this turn, Val'Tämyr made Salwë from the inherent light of the Mother's intentions and cast her into the sky, then added Yinarr, stitched from the shadows that fell upon her waters when her first daughters passed overhead. Yinarr and Salwë share an unrequited love for the recalcitrant sun Va'el, and thus shine less bright and are more distant than their elder sister. They each blame the other for Va'el failing to return their affection, thus the smaller sisters appear in the same sky only rarely.
Ma'ata-sül begat a daughter Nimyyr and a son Enu-Ohl. She was of spring and he of winter. She of the forest and the dale, he of the mountains and the deep places. She is giving and nurturing and possessive, prone to wrath in high summer then fading both in power and personality as the season turns. He is garrulous and fickle in summer, known to grant boons to those who can find him if they can beat him in a game of riddles. As the nights grow longer and the cold deeper, his power grows and his humor becomes cruel and his caprice punishing. Those in greatest need seek him in winter, but these boons come at a heavy price. Ma'ata-sül wished not for power, but veneration in her offspring and for this they resent her only slightly less than the enmity they hold for each other.
Of all the Aya, only Ar'Keas and Bel'vefari held no enmity for each other, seeing themselves as two halves of a greater whole. In concert, they birthed the twins Nol, avatar of order, peace, and stability and Rith the avatar of chaos, change, and luck.
Mha'Haren begat four daughters, known as the four Passions.
Ra'vüle Passion of song, dance, and merriment. She is who taught the wolves to howl and the birds to sing.
Ai'ris Passion of love, lust, and revenge. It is to her the blushing maid and the scorned crone bend their whispers.
Fyrnon-ös Passion of craft and invention. It is at her feet the first dwarves and elves learned.
Lu'gallyn Passion of language, spoken verse, and communication. Writer of the nine sacred runes, each with nine forms, as well as the first to speak in all the dream, breaking the Age of Silence.
It was in the Age of Silence that Ingell-Ellith came to Bel'vefari bearing the seed of the Goddess Tree Ahsh-en-yyrsill and bade her to plant it and guard the fruit from the jealousy of the Aya. To This end, Bel'vefari wove the hidden vale of Abbar Innes and planted therein the Goddess Tree setting the trees and animals within as the tree's servants and guardians. In time, the tree grew and it bore a single fruit that when ripe became Obar Kai the first elf, whose name means 'First Sight of Dawn.' The Aya of Life and Living Things resented how much of her time and attention had been given over to this task of guardianship and so recruited Nimyyr, the Aya of Spring, to take up the mantle. This she did with joy and with sadness, for she knew at first sight that Obar Kai was to be her greatest love and her greatest betrayer.
The Riving of the Dream
The Age of Silence gave way to the Age of Song in which the elves grew in number and power. Many, though not all, of the Aya'sel viewed elves with a restrained love--perhaps as one might with a sibling's child--and gave freely to them knowledge of their domains. Enu-Ohl, however, resented the love and devotion given to Nimyyr by the elves. Maddened by this jealousy, he delved deeper within his hidden domains than ever before until he reached the very boundaries of the Dream. There, he carved his own people from the rare stones and metals found within the deep places. Enu-Ohl, being Aya'sel, did not have the power to bring his carvings to life, so he struck a bargain with Mha'haren, trading a spark of life from the Aya in exchange for the promise that the Dhain would forever worship Mha'haren before all others.
Many are the great deeds and moments of that first Age of Song, and many are the tragedies in the subsequent Age of Sorrows. The first war between elf and dwarf, the splitting of elves into the Aileri and the Caligari and the subsequent kinslayer wars. All pale before the great Sin of Iron where the individual called only the Kai Tarr, may her true name be struck from all records and forgotten forever, drove her spear into the Goddess Tree Ahsh-en-yyrsill and slew her. The Mother felt this, the first death of one of her children, and her grief and fury tore at the very fabric of the dream. This was the Riving of the Dream, an event known to be the cause of all subsequent events. It is said by some that the Aya Ingell-Ellith tore the dream asunder by their own hands and in so doing tore themselves asunder as well. This Aya is often portrayed as a male back to back with a female, their bodies merged into one with one face toward the Dream and the other toward the Mundane.
The Three Realms
As the Dream sundered, all creatures who had taken forms were expelled from the dream (Mor) into the mundane or physical world (Terre). As this occured, the third realm Chthos formed as a canker in a wound. The underworld formed as a maelstrom and all spirits inclined toward darkness, and all beings who had in life served the Kai Tarr were carried into it and imprisioned in the new realm. It is said by some, that the Aya of the Dead Ar'Keas carried the Kai Tarr to Chthos himself whether as an act of mercy or punisment depends on the tale and the teller.
The elves, once immortal, were now only long-lived and barred from the dream in life and in death. Before the riving, when an elf was slain, they simply rejoined the fabric of the Mother's Dream. Now, their soul passes from Terre into Mor only to be returned in the form of another life stripped of all that made them an individual. This was the nature of the Tide of Souls, and only the strongest individuals could escape its grasp. One such escape is passing into Chthos. There, twelve lords rose to power, with an unspoken thirteenth who stands silently over all. Many among the Caligari felt betrayed by the Aya and the Mother, and turned their worship toward these new Sidhe Lords.
All had to contend with the harshness of this deadly new world and thus began the Age of Strife.
The Philosopher-King's Peace
War is the mother of invention, as they say, and an age defined by it even more so. Abbar Inness, the heart of elven learning and power, vanished along with the Dream, leaving the Ailari and Caligari no better than beggars and refugees. When they were denziens of the Dream, words themselves could shape reality. Now, they were banished to a world that disliked such change, and what little magic there was trickled from Mor into Terre along cracks and seams between the Realms. Elves were forced to rebuild from scratch under new and harsher rules. The most successful of these attempts were known as the Water-Grass Dynasties for their use of reeds and clay tablets to reinvent language.
In addition to the aya'Din (Blood of the Mother), magical energy that flows into Terre from Mor, a new source of power was discovered. The under-realm Chthos is as a wound in the Mother's Dream and as such is permeable to the entropic energies of the Darkling Sea. Such power can be drawn into Terre by way of Chthos and represents a bottomless well of power. While the natural magics of aya'Din are subject to rules that cannot be overcome, the na'Svän is limited only by how much the caster can survive. This new Thaumaturgy allowed for the greatest wonders of the age, and the greatest horrors. Perhaps because of that latter possibility, peace was finally achieved. The Age of Strife ended and the Second Age of Song began with the creation of the Philosopher King's Peace, which created a unified elven society centered around the greatest city of the age: Shiar'en.
The Devouring Wyrm
How Ahoka-ka'fel, the Devouring Wyrm, came to invade Morro'Din is unknown. Nor is much understood about the wyrm's nature save that it seemed antithetical to the Dream Itself. All that is known, is that the wyrm first appeared far over the Eastern Sea and as it traveled, it consumed all in its path. Likewise, the nature of the relationship between the wyrm and the dragons is unkown, except that they seem to have entered the Dream together and where the Wyrm went so did the dragons.
Little direct evidence survives, though many tales and songs describe the twelve sacred battles, the destruction of Shiar'en, and the sacrifices of the Philosopher Kings that bound and banished the Wyrm and forced the second Age of Song, apex of elven civilization, to give way to the Age of Laments.
An Age of Ice
Perhaps because of the antithetical nature of the wyrm, or perhaps because of the enormous magics unleashed to effect its defeat, the world and the dream were greviously wounded. Elves had always counted seasons rather than years, since the coming and going of Va'el upon his longer journeys resulted in long winters that might last years at a time. However, even this understanding could not prepare them for the time to come. In the years following the binding of the wyrm, spring fled faster and winter tarried longer with each passing, until the entire world was cloaked in ice. Generations of elves were born and died within sheltered enclaves before the great thawing finally began.
That Which Lies Ahead
As the ice retreated, the long Age of Laments came to an end and a new, seventh cycle began. What name this age eventually carries is yet to be written. What is known, is that the day approaches that the Mother will finally wake from her long slumber. When that day dawns, all the world will vanish like morning dew on warm grass. The Mother's children will fade back into her or succumb to the entropic onslaught of the Doom of Nok-Alu'uk.
The Mother will find herself once again alone in the endless void.
