Gods

"The first gods swam in an ocean of chaos...
It did them no harm, for they were of the chaos themselves. They were many, and they were few. Where one god ended and another began was not certain, nothing was certain, they were amorphous and ever-changing for ages beyond counting...
They were vast beyond measuring, they dwarfed even galaxies and stars...
Somewhere in the writhing chaos, the younger gods were spawned. At first, they were a vast multitude like frogspawn floating in a pond. But the older gods started to consume them. Trapping them inside their bodies. To begin with, they ate with impunity swallowing the gods in huge numbers. But before long the younger gods became aware of what was happening and started to fight back. This was the start of the first gods' war...
At the end of the war, the elder gods were locked in their Lens Realm prison, and all but twenty-one of the younger gods had been consumed..."

- The Concordance of Fact -

Sacred text of Saint Ceflyn the Scholar -

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Creation

The gods that are currently active in the cosmos are in fact the second generation of such. The first generation, known as the Elder Gods were trapped in a Realm called Yonsha after the first gods' war.
After the end of the war, twenty-one gods remained and started to bring order to the chaos left by their forebears. They placed the planets and moons around the star Ryshell and set them in motion. They created the land and the sea, the plants and the animals.
The gods lived in this landscape, among the forests and hills, deserts and snowy mountains. They watched the seasons come and go, creatures live, grow old, and die. They watched the cycles of life and death. They watched as even mountains grew up, and then slowly crumbled back down.
As time passed the gods themselves changed and grew. They each developed a personality of their own, their own likes and dislikes, some even forming bonds of friendship, others sharing animosity.

* * * * *

Yonn was the first of the gods to discover the Etevin race living among the animals. They lived like animals themselves at that time, but, as she observed them, even from afar she could tell they were different. They had language and could communicate between themselves, unlike any other animal. They were like animals in many ways, but in some, they were worse, the males especially, would fight among themselves constantly for seemingly no reason.
Shaned, Tresdak, Twain, and Mornha revealed themselves to the new race, and started to teach them the basics of civilisation, Hunting, Farming, Building Communities, etc.
The Etevin took the knowledge of the gods and started to make weapons, they fought over land, resources, even over females, eventually creating small kingdoms or themselves. The gods watched in dismay.

* * * * *

More new creatures started to appear in the world. This time, huge creatures of rock and scale with leathery wings and breathing fire. These massive creatures were chaos and destruction incarnate, they seemed to be made from rock, with crystals of different colours encrusting their forms. Rubies, Sapphires, Onyx, and Emeralds, creatures personifying the very elements themselves. Dragons had appeared in the land.
The dragons demanded the Etevin worship them, they refused, and war ensued.
The war with the dragons seemed like it would be a one-sided affair, over quickly, in favour of the dragons. But the very nature of the dragons, their destructive chaotic essence worked against them. Schisms started to form, distrust and contention for supremacy caused them to ultimately fail.
Even though they had won the war and driven the dragons from their lands, the losses for the Etevin were enormous, but they had also gained from the war. Their ways of fighting had improved, they had united under a single Emperor, and they had gained a new power... They had learned of the Realms and how to use that knowledge to wield magic.

* * * * *

The gods gathered to discuss the appearance of both the Etevin and the Dragons, but their disparate natures made consensus hard to reach. They fought and squabbled, but the only thing they could agree on was that the prison Realm containing the Old Gods was not perfect, and something of their essence was leaking out...
Tresdak was troubled by the Etevin, they were too destructive, and obviously borne of chaos. He decided to create his own race of people, a race of creators and artisans. So it was that the Geshwarin came into being.
When he showed his new creation to his wife Garna, she advised him to keep the Geshwarin hidden, and so he did, hiding them in a giant cavern deep under the ground.

* * * * *

A new force was felt in the world, this time by Suhan. She could feel a kindred spirit, a feeling of warmth and love and nurturing, a feeling that drew her to a place where she discovered more Dragons. Like their brethren, these too were huge creatures of stone and scale with bat-like wings, but whereas the others had crystals growing from their surface, these had veins of metal running through their skin. Gold, Silver, Copper, even Platinum, these beasts had a noble bearing, a seeming counterbalance to the crystalline dragons.
She spoke with the metallic dragons at length, telling them of history, and the war of their crystalline kin. They were saddened at the news that they had such chaotic cousins. At her questions about their origins, unfortunately, the dragons had no answers. They knew nothing of their own creation. Their collective recollections of simply waking up starting at the same time that Suhan felt their presence.
Several other gods gathered to converse with the dragons and over time they came to the opinion, that there was indeed a weight and counterbalance at play in the universe. With that in mind, some gods decided to create their own races of people. First, Menorak and Alsoldra created the Naalva, a people of grace with an appreciation for beauty. Kasan and Shessua then created the Humans a race capable of great creations, but also of destruction.
Upon seeing these new races, Tresdak and Garna revealed the Geshwarin to the rest of the gods.
Mornha saw these new races and she too wanted people of her own, so she created the Orcs a race that value strength and power over all else.

* * * * *

As these new races spread out they encountered one another and occasionally came into conflict, but generally, they either got along or avoided one another. It was when they were discovered by the Etevin that things changed...
The Etevin empire was relatively large and powerful by this time, having mostly recovered from the effects of the war. When they discovered the other, much weaker races, they decided to enslave them. Naalva they found did not do well in captivity and simply withered away and died, Geshwarin would refuse to work or even move, they would prefer to be beaten to death by their masters rather than work as a slave. The Orcs were too violent and would attack one another, or other slaves, or even their much larger Etevin masters. They were generally not worth the effort of capturing and keeping. But Humans, humans made perfect workers and the Etevin enslaved thousands, often capturing entire clans of humans in one go, using them to build their monumental cities.

* * * * *

Lonan was the heir to a clan of humans that had been captured by the Etevin. As a teenager, along with the rest of his clan, he watched his mother and father tortured to death by their master as punishment for disobedience. As he grew older he stole the secrets of the Etevin, especially their dark magic and their use of Realms. He used his knowledge to create a dagger, embuing that weapon with every iota of his hatred, every drop of the suffering of his people, and binding it with the darkest and strongest magics he could summon. After years of work he had created a weapon like no one had ever made before or has made since, a weapon that could kill a god...
Secretly he took the knife into the Etevin city and when Alsoldra was visiting the Etevin king, he stabbed her with it. For several minutes the knife poured its pain and hatred into alsoldra while simultaneously absorbing her power. But there was much more power than a simple knife could contain and it exploded with such force that it destroyed the entire city and a huge area around it. Alsoldras life force continued to flow out uncontrolled for almost another hour, burning as if a second sun had landed on the ground, eventually stuttering, fading, Alsoldra was gone...
The death of a god does not go unnoticed. Menorak of course knew instantly that something terrible had happened, but by the time he got there, the city was gone and there was nothing he could do to stem the raging flow of Alsoldra's life force. He could only stand impotently watching her ebb away.
From that point, he was consumed by rage. For a while, his sanity was shattered. He went to the next Etevin city and destroyed it, then on to the next, and the next. The other gods quickly realized what was going on, some tried to stop him, some though, agreed with Menorak. The mortals where obviously too dangerous to be allowed to live. The battle lines were drawn, and so began the second Gods' War.

* * * * *

The war was vicious, with great tracts of the land destroyed, and countless mortal lives lost. Menorak the Seeker had been permanently changed by the death of Alsoldra and he had become Menorak the Sole Twin. The gods fell into three main camps, those that felt that all mortals should be destroyed, those that sought to protect the mortals from their vengeful kin, and those that remained detached, trying to end the hostilities between the factions. Eventually, the war sank into a stalemate, and the centre group managed to persuade the other two camps to form a truce. The main stipulation of the truce was that all the gods would leave Pelagus entirely.
By the end of the war, the entire Etevin race was extinct, the gods had left to create or occupy new realms, and the few mortals that remained were left to try to pick up the pieces and survive on their own...

Pantheon

The gods have, for the most part, kept to the terms of their truce and remain aloof from the world. They can still affect things within the Realm of Pelagus but not in such a direct, immediate way as they did in the past. Their influence is much more diffuse and subtle.
Now they work through Saints who act as intermediaries to the gods. Most gods have more than one saint, and oftentimes there is more than one branch of religion dedicated to a single saint. Priests pray to their saint who may then channel the power of their god to the Mortal Realm.
When the gods defeated their progenitors, they were unified in purpose, but since then they have developed very distinct personalities and interests. This has brought them into conflict numerous times. This has simply further highlighted the differences in their temperaments. The chart below shows a very quick reference of the gods and their respective interests, with links to more details about each.

Further Reading

Elder Gods

Realms

Saints

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A Dragon

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"Gods, Ha!... Like dealing with petty children. Worse, these children have power, such unimaginably vast power..."

- Lessons from my master -

Early Lessons -

Dinora Quinn

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