The Fall of Mordach

The grand history of our cosmos has been passed down to us through centuries immemorial by the great bardic lineage of Verresh, and so I, Lla'Dargen of Yshu, honour that tradition by relating it to you now. Know it to be the truth, O friends, or somewhere close to it.
There was a time, aeons ago, when two eternal heavenly beings coexisted in perfect harmony. Once was Aggelos, the Benevolent; the other, Mordach, the Jealous. It was Mordach's lot to live in perpetual darkness, while Aggelos bathed forever in the blessed light of Helia, the Sun Goddess. For a while they were happy in this state of Balance. Aggelos was called Yang, and Mordach was called Yin, and so they remained in mutual harmony, each assigned their aspect of the impartial cosmos.
However, this did not last. Seeing no end to his umbral existence, Mordach grew envious of existing ever in Aggelos' shadow. He craved the light and the warmth, and grew obsessed with this compulsion, cursing Aggelos though deep down he knew it was not out of malevolence that his cousin kept him thus. That was just how things were, but Mordach could no longer accept it.
And so he channeled the Dark Magic of Void to leave the influence of his godly captor. The magic he siphoned gave him impetus, and he began to move away from his luminescent cousin, to strike out for his own place in the Great Void. But Aggelos was mighty, and inexorably he pulled his wandering counterpart back into his shadow.
Mordach, enraged, resisted Aggelos' magnetism, and the resulting struggle set him upon a trajectory that grew faster and faster in its orbit. Round and round he flew, faster and faster until he could no longer hold his form. He broke apart, and the pieces of his body collided with one another and fragmented further until he was ripped asunder and spread around his impassive cousin in a great ring of dust, moons and planets that gradually settled and slowed to a standstill once more. Exquisitely beautiful was the disc of Mordach, but within was only torment.
Being a god, Mordach did not die. Rather, his mind was split apart as was his body, and in his madness he spawned many strange beings that bred and multiplied. Some took on his anger, others his envy, still others his hatred. Some were timid, some were violent. All were selfish and gave expression to some aspect of Mordach's suffering and insanity. All were subject to death, for Mordach's immortal soul had been twisted into a painful cycle of neverending birth and rebirth. As Aggelos was One, Mordach was Many.
These creatures of Mordach fought and died in perpetuity, some stranded in darkness and others eternally in the light. Those in the light cast a permanent shadow across the belly of Aggelos, which seared his spirit and made him weep for the awful fate of his sick cousin. Thus was born the divine magic that countered Mordach's dark sorceries, born out of pity and love.
As Mordach's sorcery was fuelled by the Void, Aggelos channelled the power of Helia, and this grace gifted hope and sanity to those few miserable mortals who would hear. These would become the Aelfedra and the Derraga: the Elves, who lived in the light, and the Dwarfs, who lived in the perpetual umbra. Ever cursed to be born of Mordach's hateful body, yet touched by the benevolent mercy of Aggelos, they worshipped Aggelos - his bright aspect, and his dark aspect respectively - and yearned to go to him, but they were trapped upon the isolated rocks and ice of the great disc.
The Elves and Dwarfs warred ceaselessly with the Orcs, Giants, Dragons, and even fouler, stranger creatures that were bound to Mordach's unhinged and tainted mind, and ever-ignorant of the divine love of Aggelos... these were the Aberrations, Ghouls, Demons, and other vile entities that stalk the realms. Some primitive, cave-dwelling humanoids they managed to convert, and these evolved into the varied Human ancestries from which we ourselves descend.
We humans, alas, are uniquely torn; part evil, and part goodly, we swing incessantly between the twin poles of Mordach and Aggelos, our sundered nature often tearing the very fabric of the planets upon which we live as we wield both the dark sorceries of the Sundered One and the divine magic of the Blessed One. Ours are kingdoms of ambition and destruction, of intrigue and bloodshed, where the Elves live in wise and wistful harmony in their forests, deserts and mountains, and the Dwarfs withdraw into their deep places beneath the earth and devise improbable technologies to one day take them to the waiting heart of Aggelos the Benevolent.
Meanwhile, as Aggelos reaches out to us from the centre with his endless love, Mordach continues to poison the inhabitants of the Ring Worlds with his crazed, fragmented mind and his dark and broken heart. Terrors from the deep oceans and dark, hellish subterranean clefts manifest his wrath, his greed and his jealousy. Their malice spreads like a plague and perverts even some Elves and Dwarfs to evil.
Although there is no end to it, this interminable plight against the evils that have been born of Mordach's suffering, nevertheless we continue to fight, and pray that one day the broken heart of the Sundered One might be healed and he might be made one again, thus restoring the Balance that once was, all those aeons ago.