Mythology Monday: A Day Late

Thanks for bearing with my absence! Though it was longer than I thought, NOVA was a ton harder on me than I’d anticipated. It was an amazing time, and I’ll talk about it tomorrow, but I really needed a day of recovery, which meant that I wasn’t going to be writing last night for any reason. Instead, I’ll get it going today, and move to on to the Godswar and general Cosmology, because they are connected together.

After the creation of the earth, the death of Sae-Oon, and the birth of the Demon Queen, the cosmology was set. There was the earth, Kasan, the body of Sae-Oon covered in the four elements. Around it orbited the four elemental planes, the pools of pure elements that the gods had saved for themselves from the coalescence. Between each of these, surrounding each individual plane in a dark mockery of itself, is the plane of Shadow. Each of the four gods built palaces on the newly formed world, as they could not survive in each others planar homes. The orbits of the elemental planes caused the seasons to emerge on Kasan, which caused curious events to arise. Rain fell onto the earth, and with it came the god of rain. Grass, trees and other plants arose, and with them as well, came gods. What Sae-Oons death had brought was the gift of primal essence. Each new event, each new creation brought with it its own god or goddess. Kasan was to be populated with his children. Thousands of gods were born in those years, and made their homes on Kasan as well. There were gods for each color, and for every animal, though none of the animals were sentient yet: That was a gift only for the gods. There were gods for every thought process, concepts place. Their numbers were as grains of sand upon a shore. While these spontaneous gods were many, there were also the birthed gods, the sons and daughters of passion among the gods themselves. These gods were granted domains upon their birth, and were generally powerful, wide domains under which several other gods fell. Marija, for example, was given the wilderness, and Gestril weather and storms.

The gods also had needs that must be met. Castles must be built and food must be served and palaces cleaned. While gods are powerful, their power was based on the quantity and abundance of their domain. The god of green was extremely powerful, while the god of exotic birds was quite weak, but they all had tasks they could not accomplish by themselves, and most were to vain to get their hands dirty with these simple tasks. To this end, they pooled their considerable powers and created, for the first time, a being. Perfectly suited to the tasks they needed, they created Humans. Short life spans, strong backs and a rabid desire to reproduce, they became the perfect servants.

But even this was not enough to quell the growing resentment in the younger gods, especially those created inadvertently from the creation of humans. The god of ambition, Ferosh, was the first to speak out against the greater gods, and Siaron, the god of invention, was the first to be seduced by his words. It was not long before they had gathered a great host, and in an incident of violence unparalleled prior to this time, ambushed and murdered several gods in their homes. There were two consequences of this horrific event. The first, and intended consequence, was the sparking off of war between the gods. The second was completely unknown and unexpected: The death of a god bestowed upon its killer the domain and powers associated with the now-dead god. This was revolutionary and escalated the conflict swifter than anyone had expected.

The war, however, drug on. Gods killed each other, and gained powers doing it, until it seemed that each side was unassailable to the other. There seemed to be no end in sight, and no solution. The Rebel gods – who by now had recruited to their side a number of elder gods, though none of the Primal – were the first to arm their attendants, the races of the world, with powerful godslaying weapons and march them to war alongside the gods themselves against their stronger and more plentiful opponents. The Primal gods responded in kind, and soon the struggle reached even greater heights, with millions and millions of lives being spent attacking and slaying single gods on both sides.

Even this, though, was not enough to turn the tide.  One god, though which one has been lost to time, looked at his armies and thought that they could be even greater. He granted them great strength and size, and martial prowess to kill a hundred human servants, and created giants. Soon, his idea was taken farther and farther, granting scales and teeth to make lizardmen; wings and elemental breath for dragons; stout fearlessness for dwarves and wild, ferocious abandon for Orcs. The world became populated with living weapons off all sorts created for all sorts of specific purposes.

This was enough to turn the favor of war towards the rebel gods, and they pushed forward, slaying hundreds of gods, and getting even more killed from their own side. The brutality was unhindered in every way, and the armies destroyed great swaths of Kasan in their quest to rid the world of their hated oppressors. The rebels finally trapped the Primal gods and their most trusted friends and allies in the Fortress of the Dawn, the sun gods own palace at the edge of the world. Here, the rebels were unable to enter the fortress. It was as old as the Primal gods and as strong as their combined might. Here, truly, the war ground to a halt.

Some of the rebels wanted to end the war, leave the Primal gods holed up in their fotress, sealed off from the rest of the world, but the leaders of the rebels were not content to have almost the entire world to themselves, instead they wanted to eradicate the Primal gods from existence. And Ferosh, now the god of Ambition, Deception and Trickery, thought he knew the way. He had contacted the Demon Queen out in the Plane of Shadow and she had convinced him that she could give them all powers unmatched by the Primal gods, and could enable their victory. He shared his plan with a select few, and contact was initiated. No one knows what the powers that were granted to the rebel leaders was specifically, but it had a cost, one that the rebels agreed to for generations unto eternity – any soul not claimed by a god was to be given to the Demon Queen a night and a day after their death. Their bodies, as well, belonged to her.

Now, with the power of the Demon Queen and the Black Pact made, they prepared for the final assault against the Primal gods. What had happened, though, was spread among the Rebel gods, and very few were pleased at the turn of events, and especially with the concession and signing of the Black Pact. In an event that Ferosh and the others had blindly ignored could happen, many of the Rebel gods rebelled once again, attacking the group that would forever more be called Accursed. The Primal gods saw the chaos in the camp around the Fortress of Dawn, and sortied out into the rebel camp, and with the assistance of their newly allied gods, pushed the rebels out.

When the Primal gods were told what had happened, and of the Black Pact, they sent a party out to find the Demon Queen, while others created a great prison for here where  she would be unable to aid the rebels. She was swiftly hunted down, though being the child of both the Proginetors, was unable to be destroyed and was cast into the prison created for her: The Iron Marches. Shortly thereafter, as the Accursed were being hunted down, they managed to feel the pull of the Iron Marches and they escaped the wrath of the Primal Gods by fleeing there as well, leaving their armies of hundreds of millions behind, abandoned in their hour of greatest need. The Primal gods knew there was no choice, now, and followed the Accursed into the Iron Marches, where even today the war still rages on. The accursed are assisted by the Legions of the Demon Queen in defending against, and occasionally attacking, the Primal gods.

What had made the prison so enticing was now the cause for eternal struggle, as very few of the beings created on Kasan could transition to the Iron Marches. Many would have their souls torn apart in the attempt, and others would simply vanish from reality. However, each side could recover their great champions and their hallowed dead from the realm of mortality to the iron marches, though they would only slowly regain their memories and skills. It is through this capacity that the Godswar is still fought with massive armies of soldiers lead by gods in their Warforms and the greatest champions of the ages.

I know this isn’t as complete, and doesn’t contain the cosmology, but this took way longer than I thought. Next week, I promise, we’ll get Cosmology! Also remember: This is meant to be a discussion, please comment and let me know what you think, and if you have any ideas, though don’t be insulted if I don’t use them!