The Founding

Long ago, this world was one of tumultuous and chaotic forces, naught but unbridled fires and churning, jagged rock. Through the blank and bare Cosmos, the first gods came from beyond the ether, new and formless. These immensely powerful beings, known as Titans, fought to claim the void for their own. Looking on this roiling realm, they saw potential for great beauty, great strength, and the chance to learn their own place in creation.

Thus, divine hands birthed the beginnings of the elements. Fire, water, air, earth, all were created during this time. The Titans painted the blank canvas of the Cosmos with broad strokes and haphazard blotches, and soon, the empty expanse began to take shape into the Primordial Skies that would be the foundation of all of creation. Additional elements, while not known precisely, were thought to have been created during this time too to accompany the elements we know today. Eventually lost to time, these newer elements were profound and powerful sources of untapped power and magic that would be fought over for eons to come.

With these magics, the various Titans learned to further create objects and celestial bodies in the Cosmos. During this creation period, they experimented and witnessed what their powers could do when combined and altered slightly. The infinite possibilities of combinations gave rise to many of the variations of elements and elemental combinations that make up everything around the world today. The protean creators, the divinity beyond the Cosmos, saw progress and saw that it was good, yet fragile and in need of truer purpose.

Thus were born the First Gods, many of whom make up the Pantheon of Gaia today. These beings, extensions of their more powerful Titan creators, were the prize creation of the Titans. With their creation, the Titans took a step back from Creation, and the First Gods assumed the mantle of prime creators of the Cosmos. The Cosmos grew louder, the divine beings multiplied, and new creations were given form and life. As things grew, and the divine beings further understood the void around them, they also looked up to their creators and gave them worship, gave them form, gave them title and purpose.

But as time moved forward, the understanding of these divine powers grew, and the First Gods no longer wished to be tamed or servile any longer. Forging their own path and their own creations, these First Gods roared in defiance. The great elemental Titans that once dwelt deep within the Cosmos, taking a passive role in the development of the Cosmos, now rose from their unseen domain to sunder their past homes and domains once more. The Titans watched as their children, their joy, were united against them. Demonic entities and creations spilled from the umbra of the Cosmos to aid the First Gods in their defiance only to be met by the divine creations of the Titans and their primordial powers.

These battles, these cosmic clashes of unimaginable power, sparked the creation and combination of the primal elements creating the planes of existence, including the Material Plane, and marked the destruction of many of the primordial elements leaving behind only the ones seen today. After eons of fighting, the Titans were eliminated or banished to far planes, leaving the Cosmos ruler-less and destroyed. The remnants of these battles formed the barriers separating these planes of existence, and to the victors, an eternal ruling over them would be granted.

The First Gods that remained, wishing to salvage what was left, were forced to pick up the pieces and create once more, this time for the final time. They organized and drew the boundaries forming their domains, with some tasked with ensuring the Titans that remained were confined to their respective planes, with no effect on the other planes, and the others stuck with the responsibility of mending the fractured Cosmos and creating further. The resulting creations would become everything seen today, and the scars of these battles serving as the catalysts that sparked these creations. If one looks hard enough, one can see still see some of the battles and their remnants in the Cosmos above, with untapped power and discovery waiting to be unleashed into the surrounding planes.