The History of Creation

Starting with the single question: What is the Celestial? The Celestial is what I have named the creator of this universe, the god of all things, if you will. However, it is not something you can summon or even commune with, as everything IS the Celestial. As I like to compare, you would not know if one of your skin cells wanted to talk to you. It is often depicted as a dragon made of pure starlight and constellations, with rivers of darkness binding it together.

Era of Creation

In its beginning, the Celestial created several dragons, considered its children. These were the builders of the universe, controlling the elements and creating new materials to give birth to stars, planets, and entire galaxies through the power of the contrive.

However, something peculiar began to happen. Elements and minerals came together and started forming the foundations of life, a creation not made by any dragon. The Celestial found this new creation too chaotic and unpredictable, ill-fitting in the beating engine of stars and planets. So in response, Mother Nature was given life. A force that didn't care for creation or destruction, but only the cycle of life and ensuring it continued. To aid the Mother, a special dragon was made to bridge the gap between material order and the chaos of life: the Divine Dragon.

The Echne

The Divine Dragon looked at the chaos and the disorganized structure of life. Compared to what the dragons were achieving, this form of life was basic and unimpressive. Nothing more than just a few worlds with trees, flowers, and unintelligent creatures. It was beautiful, but unimpressive and simple.

It didn't take long for the Divine to begin his masterful work, creating a form of life that could shape worlds like the dragons could. This effort gave rise to the echne, a species unlike any other. 

Echne were six to eight feet tall, with rounded heads and smooth skin. They could think in ways the dragons had only been able to. The Divine bonded their souls to his power, connecting them to the golden rivers that began to flow behind the surface of reality. Then, the first of the echne began to learn the contrive, the secret that allowed the dragons to build entire worlds. Their power was nowhere near the dragons', but it greatly worried them when the Divine's work had been discovered. 

After some pleading from the Divine, the dragons agreed to meet with the echne to determine if they were a threat. The echne did nothing but greet the dragons with open arms, and even showed off the cities they had started building with their newly found contrives. The dragons agreed that the echne would be a welcome addition to the engine of the universe. 

The Humans

As the ages passed and they spread across the stars, it was clear that the Divine was loosening his grip on the echne. They had become plagued as the natural cycle of life took hold of their civilization, bringing disease, famine, and even de-evolution. One of these devolved forms was just slightly shorter, with a much smaller lifespan. At first, it was considered a condition or an anomaly. However, these devolved forms began appearing more quickly and even moved to new worlds to start their own civilizations. They started calling themselves humans, a name fitting to their limited intelligence and aggressive lifestyle. 

The echne considered their growth to be too rapid and destructive. So, in response, they began sectioning off galaxies and star clusters where human presence was limited. Aggravated, the humans immediately pushed beyond their assigned areas and even started several small conflicts to take over the governance of the echne worlds. It became apparent that conflict was inevitable.

The Flesh War

It was named by the dragons as the first organized conflict to have ever existed. The term 'war' for the dragons was intentionally chosen as it is nothing but a distasteful and horrific slur in their tongue. 

From the perspective of the dragons, it was the greatest calamity to have ever passed. It started small, with battles between human and echne worlds. Both of their technologies progressed quickly, focusing on war and extermination. The escalation led several galactic clusters to send generational weapons to annihilate one another, bringing ruin to what the dragons had once built.  

However, it was not a weapon or invention that sealed their fate, but a single human. He discovered a world full of contrive power and tamed himself to use it. With the awesome power of the dragons, he unleashed a torrent of destruction, shredding the stars across several galaxies controlled by the echne. The dragons quickly responded by destroying the human and this world, while trying to save the rogue worlds that now wandered free from their stars. Unfortunately, no one could predict what would happen in the aftermath of such a powerful release and the untold death of countless echne. 

The Demons

The sudden loss of life unleashed such a torrent of divine power into the golden rivers that it created a new world beneath the surface of reality, beyond the Celestial. From this new plane, creatures of pure chaos and freedom poured into the true reality, killing without thought and acting as though no moral and civil law had ever existed. 

They were called demons: beings who harvested divine souls and could even corrupt both echne and humans into demons. Faced with this new threat, both the echne and humans stopped fighting each other and focused on defending their own worlds. There was no assistance or alliance between the two, only a ceasefire. 

The dragons were confident that the demons could be expunged quickly if greater force was used. So, in a rare alliance, they allied with both humans and echne to purge the gateways and even led several expeditions into hell. To their dismay, this was unsuccessful.

Now the greater powers were called on. Since they were his creation, the Divine Dragon was the first to be summoned. His solution was to create the opposite: two beings who would wield their own divine souls as weapons, preventing the demons from harvesting them. The dragons didn't care for the plan, but agreed to it. 

The First Paladins

There were to be only two, a human and an echne. It was forbidden to have any more paladins, as they drew the power from the golden river itself and risked demonic corruption. After the two were chosen, they were renamed to the Blade (an echne woman) and the Hammer (a human male). Their success was immediate as they cleansed entire worlds and sealed multiple doors to hell. However, there were only the two, and they could not be everywhere at once. 

The Wolves

Mother Nature saw the paladins' dismal progress and felt the threat the demons posed to nature itself. Under their control, forests were cut and burned, animals were driven to extinction, and even the mortal races were consumed. She needed her own weapon. 

The creation of the first wolves is wrapped in a blanket of mystery and myth, as it wasn't endorsed by the dragons and had to be done under cloak. Eventually, her forms of life found their way onto the stage. It was a perfect blending of a human and animal. The human provided the divine soul and intelligence, while the animal cocooned the soul and protected it from demonic corruption. This blend gave these few humans the power of great regeneration, strength, speed, and endurance. However, it also made their emotions more primal, requiring greater self-control if they wished to avoid acting brashly. 

Humans initially tried to kill these wolves, seeing them as another abomination like the demons. The wolves fought for their survival, succeeding when the humans began to ignore them as the demon threat grew. Some wolves banded together and started fighting the demonic forces on their own terms. This effort also proved futile, as the gates of hell kept expanding, and the destructive power of the demons now reached their climax.

The Shattering

In the final moments of the last eon of the Era of Creation, a trusted friend brought ruin to all. 

He defied the Divine Dragon and trained his own paladins, called the Agarthi. They marched upon the echne worlds and cleansed their forms from existence, hoping that, without the echne, the demons would be only half their strength and that hell would collapse. The Hammer led the charge and soon confronted the Sword in a city now lost to time. There was no battle, only a blinding starlight that engulfed all of reality. 

In a last effort to save themself, the Celestial split into a seemingly infinite amount of universes, fracturing reality into an unstable web held together by the golden river. Every world and every star now replicated across the infinite universes, varying in small but major ways between them, ending the Era of Creation. 

The Beginning of the Era of Mortals

At the heart of this shattering was Amora, the only world spared from duplication and variation. Humans are scattered across all universes, and the echne are seemingly extinct. The dragons have given up on their duties and simply watch as the demons slowly conquer one universe after another. Their progress is much slower than it was before, but the inevitable seems... inevitable.