The Remnant

The Remnant are from the time before. We are from the time before time. From the time before this universe was born in chaos and pain and fire. From the time before the void. From the time before the Elder or the Younger walked on the soul or amidst the stars.

The Remnant - Those Who Remained

The true history of the Gods is known only to a few in the highest echelons on the priesthoods, the most learned mystics, and the High Masters of the Sworn Orders.
But the true history of the gods is known to all of the Remnant. It is their history, after all.
Before the Gods were Gods - before there was the universe as we know it - reality had another form. That from was something like what it is now. There were other races, other beings that existed in this time, but the oldest - the first of these races - is what we now think of as the Remnant.
The ancestors of the Remnant also sought cosmic power and knowledge, and just as now, it was then - some sought power to have power over others and some gained power by seeking knowledge and understanding.
Whichever path they chose, whatever reasons they had for the choosing - it didn't matter, because they all eventually reached the point where they ascended. They could temporarily or permanently leave their corporeal form behind.
But there were those who remained behind.
To care for the bodies of those who ascended to explore. To care for the civilizations left behind by the ascended.
To continue to live.
But at a certain point, it wasn't enough. Cosmic power and deep knowledge of the universe itself, of the nature of reality - connection to and communication with beings from other realities and other dimensions.
They had watched other species evolve, grow, and fade away - some from each of these species found the secrets they knew and ascended to walk beside them.
But only the Remnant remained as they started. Or, almost as they started - by the time more of them had ascended than remained, those who remained were ageless and all possessed power and knowledge.
They just chose to remain corporeal. Mortal. To server. To protect. Or to ignore the 'greater' universes the ascended had opened our reality up to.
Al of the ascended gathered, and discovered there was one last mystery they needed to solve.
The mystery of creation. No one - not even the Remnant - know what was attempted, what act of creation and hubris they sought.
But what they do know - what they remembered - is that it broke the universe. It shattered reality.
Worlds. Systems. Stars. Entire species. Entire parts of the cosmos - were broken, destroyed, or ceased to exist.
Uncounted numbers of being and creatures died. Many of the ascended died.
The Remnant, who had spoken against the undertaking - had prepared and protected themselves.
And thus, they remained.
The ascended who survived - they began the great work of repairing the universe. Sealing the cracks and restoring - or creating - natural law and order.
The races that were born during the chaos - the Elder Races who have walked the stars far longer than most of us can fathom - they were shepherded, guided, protected by the Remnant.
They are the only races of our universe that remember them, because without them, they would have been destroyed during this period.
By the end of the work, when the universe was healed and put back together, the barriers between our reality and others were sealed, the ascended could only seal the breaches from Beyond - on the other side.
What became of them, not even the Remnant know. Maybe the Gods do, but they have never, not once, revealed this knowledge. Not to the Remnant or the Elder Races.
The beings the ascended had created to be their hands in the world during the great work became the beings we know as Immortals - Riani, Impranu, Ashari - and all the others who have been forgotten, destroyed, or left to wander so far away we cannot ever know them.
The Gods stayed in our universe - both in it and out of it, holding all of the pieces together with their very nature and their very being. This all consuming purpose changed them, turning them from ascended into beings of a very different kind.
Gods. The architects and crafters and shapers of our universe. They literally made it what it is through their combined wills. Each of them from an ancient race, an ancient power, a previous incarnation of reality.
Each of them taking on a purpose and a path of their own. But time affected them, too.
As the Elder Races and the Old Ones and the Younger Races and even the New Races - such as humans - were born and grew, the nature of the Gods changed to reflect what they had become and what they had chosen to do.
Asmodian went mad before the Void.
Alystrial was bound in ways that keep her from what she truly wishes -
And more.
But the Remnant did not change who they had chosen to become. They did not age, though some of the died. Some of them left. Some of them gave up their power and let themselves fade away.
Some rose up into the Void or the Astral light to become servants of the Gods in their Realms Between.
But many remained as they were.
They had children, and their children had children - but less than a handful each eon - but still, their numbers grew, and the few places far out on the edges of the universe where they hid, they began to flourish.
Theirs was a culture that grew slowly, but it did grow.
Even if they still feared. Because they still remembered.
From time to time, one of the Remnant would go out amongst the other races, and teach them or learn of them and discover what has become.
They still occasionally met with those who remember them among the Elder Races -
But they never trusted the Gods or their Servants.
They knew better.
And thus, they remain. Waiting for the time when they will need to act, to prevent the destruction of all that has been created.
Again.