The Beginning

Celestial

The birth of the Five Worlds.

In the beginning was the Big Bang.     Space was expanding into itself and energy manifested in particles: from gluons pairs of quarks were created, which destroyed one another after giving off more gluons. These found other quarks to interact with, forming new quark pairs and gluons in a cycle of sorts. It was so hot that matter and energy were practically the same thing.     Eventually matter outnumbered antimatter and several refined versions of natural law developed, acting under different rules, including strong nuclear force and gravity. When the cosmos had stretched to a billion kilometres in diameter, it decreased in temperature and the cycle of quarks being born and converted back to energy came to a stop. Quarks begin forming hadrons like protons and neutrons.     The cosmos, which had now grown to one hundred billion kilometres, was cold enough to allow most of the neutrons to decay into protons and form the first atom: Hydrogen.     Things cooled and settled down rapidly and atoms formed out of hadrons and electrons, making for a stable and electrically-neutral environment. When the hydrogen gas clumped together after millions of years and gravity put it under great pressure, stars and galaxies began to form. Their radiation dissolved the stable hydrogen gas into a plasma that allowed visible light to pass.     From this plasma legions of cosmic beings were born, the first eight of which came to be known as the Old Gods. After some time the plasma-based lifeforms achieved self-awareness.