Hey everyone, I have grown interested in the origin stories of homebrew worlds. How did your realm come to be? Who are the first creatures? What did the early universe look like. I'd love for people to share their ideas and comment on those of others. 

Of course, I should lead by example, so below is my own creation story.

The First Years

The thirteen planes started as a single universal seed, which when it hatched became the empty space of the Astral Sea with Etherea in its center. Etherea was the first plane and gave birth to its first being, Diastrova the First and Last. This sudden birth of entropy caused a ripple across the multiverse which caused the Astral Sea to absorb an unhatched universal seed which would lay dormant but alive at the edge of reality. It also caused Etherea to give birth twelve times to the same being, Ceacirus the Dozenborn. After Ceacirus brought some stability to Etherea, Etherea shot out a small seed which grew into the great tree Bet Balor Damnos. Within Etherea itself a great mechanism was born known as the Abhorrent Machine Irrin Max who triggered a wave of creation. Bamhurst was born and caused the first other plane to be ejected from Etherea, Limbo.

After the ejection of Limbo caused by Bamhurst, things calmed down. The other greater gods where born one by one. Until finally a new problem occurred. Etherea gave birth to destruction incarnate, Kallum. But without any release destruction threatened to be the end. The other greater gods then remembered Limbo and centered the pure destruction into a new third plane. Oblivion was ejected from Etherea and became a completely destroyed plane with nothing left in it. The universe’s own response at this was to give birth to the Dark Horse, Eviscua. 

Eviscua was death and anything born after Eviscua could die. In response the essence of life itself burst from Etherea and became the living plane Neth. Now four planes, the system was out of balance and a fifth plane formed to restore balance, mirroring all other planes that were and would be. Etherea continued birthing more gods after this, who would become known as the Second Pantheon. But one of these beings, Athreos, succumbed to death. Seeing this as the problem it was, the greater gods and second pantheon came together. Their solution was to restore life back to Athreos by connecting his life to the other living gods. Meaning that Athreos could only die after all other second pantheon gods were dead. They then made Athreos responsible for sorting the dead. To this end two planes were born to store the souls of the dead while the empty husks were shot into the Astral Sea. These planes were Heaven and Inferno which in turn gave birth to Ao and the Pale Night to shape them. Ao created the first Celestials, while the Pale Night created the first Fiends. 

After this the greater gods decided that Etherea was theirs and disconnected the parts of it that gave birth to new beings. These two parts were Nirvana and the Far Realm. Nirvana soon gave birth to such beings as Helm, Hoar and Mystra, while the Far Realm merged with the old universal seed which had named itself Azathoth. This merging gave birth to twisted gods like Yog-Sothoth, Shub-Niggurath and Nyarlathotep. 

Soon enough beings without divinity were born, the slaads in Limbo, lesser fiends and celestials, the Nethians in Neth. The Mind Flayers of the Far Realm became the greatest of these and conquered an empire across the planes and astral sea. Four more planes were disconnected from Etherea before Etherea itself could be affected. These were Materia, Shadowfell, the Feywild and the Elemental Chaos. This gave birth to the first great civilizations of the inner planes. The Fey, the Elves, the Genies and the Giants. But others followed soon. The apex of which where the Dragons. A lot of these creatures started to carve out divinity in their own right. Then the first extinction threatened to happen.

The Great Ceratopians were the first species that threatened to go fully extinct. The last of their kind being Bronko Tikar. Athreos pitied this being and Bronko Tikar became the First Exception. Athreos would only make an exception like this seven more times. But that didn’t mean other beings didn’t find cheats around death without divninity. Acererak became the first great Lich, The great dragon Lady Ameraya found dragons to be unaffected by old age. The titans of Materia grew powerful enough to fight off gods of death and became so feared that they were sealed away. The Tarrasque was born over and over again by Neth. And eventually there even was a Tabaxi that learned how to clone themselves through time and space without touching godhood.

Quote from ZomblesKlein >>

Hey everyone, I have grown interested in the origin stories of homebrew worlds. How did your realm come to be? Who are the first creatures? What did the early universe look like. I'd love for people to share their ideas and comment on those of others. 

Of course, I should lead by example, so below is my own creation story.

 

 

For my next Campaign...

The Timeless Age

Several hundred years from now a five part colony ship carrying 25,000 colonists from Earth arrived at a planet previously terraformed over the last 200 years. It had one very large and one very small moon. The larger moon is as habitable as the planet, but the planet has a nice, pretty, well established island in the temperate area that makes for an ideal initial settlement spot, as it does not appear to have any large predators and is good enough for a starting spot.

Leaving the vast colony ships in space as a small third moon, they head down and over the next several years they set up, get settled, and generally go about the usual colonial settlement stuff. One day, a group of kids stumbles across a strange rift in the ground, through which travels a sparkling, strange sort of river of light that floats a few feet off the ground. Venturing into the crevasse, these teenaged pioneers on a new world who spent decades in hypersleep end up making a discovery and changing themselves in ways that will ripple throughout time and space.

Gaining special powers, they secretly play and explore with them until caught by the leaders of the Colony, including the estimbale William Lyle, called Bill, who is recently the elected leader. Forced to show this miraculous thing to the leaders of the colony, the youths watch helplessly as despite their warnings the 35 leaders of the whole colony follow through, and they too gain great powers -- after which the rift seals itself and the strange river vanishes. There is death, horror, terror, and revelation, and far fewer than went in emerged, all of them changed, and in ways the seven youth were not changed. Of the 35 that went in, 21 emerged.

Bill Lyle used his new gifts to ensure that he remained the leader of the colony as it grew over the next many years, eventually spreading out over the whole world. During this time one of the others learned a curious fact, and kept it a secret form most, sharing it only with her closest friends. Eventually, Bill Lyle heard, got jealous, and started a slow decline that led to increasing depravity. Seeing themselves as above common norms and conventions, they began a debauched reign that was rather adult for me to go into details regarding here.

During this reign, William Lyle convinced the others to aid him and they removed the world from the universe, and in doing so created the seven Planes and the many Dimensions, and by that act empowered the remnants and vestiges of ancient even then Powers. Into these Dimensions they sent the children and products of this debauchery and experimentation.

The woman who found the secret out was considered the nicest, prettiest, and all that, and Bill wanted her but she was very committed to her spouse, and her spouse was like twice the size of ole Bill Lyle. So he sent her husband off on a series of 12 tasks, and while the man was gone he had his way with the lass. Her husband, on returning, was furious, as were most of the other folks who had become much more than they had been. He confronted Bill Lyle, and was mocked and in a fit of rage he punched ole Bill Lyle.

That was how the God's War started. Over five hundred years, the marvelous technological tools and creations of these Ancient people were slowly destroyed or worn out, and as they did they turned ever more to more and more primitive tools, the whole of the planet ravaged and torn from the battles. Of the original 21, 4 stood by Bill Lyle, 7 more stood by the couple wronged and the remaining 7 claimed to not want to fight a war and worried ever more about the fate of the millions that were fighting on one side or the other. These became the hosts -- The Dread Host following the Five, the Bright Host following the Nine, and the Shadow Host following the Seven.

The casualties were unimaginable.  The Five broke every on of the original Charter laws, and conscripted people into special programs where the strange powers of the Five would warp and change the people to serve the war effort more efficiently -- this is how we got goblins and other things. The depravity of the earlier age had led to the births of angels and demons and miasmas and creatures, and in deep underground laboratories they created the Dreadnaughts and summoned the Beholders and other abominations.

To try and keep up, the Bright Host responded in kind, but sought volunteers, and so came along the Elfs and the Dwarfs and the Tritons, shaped by the powers of the Nine. The Shadow Powers sought to preserve life of some sort, fearing utter annihilation, and so they too sought volunteers and from their efforts came the Therians in all seven of their varieties. The war was of such scale and size that no one could escape it, and millions would die in a single battle, and even the mighty Gods themselves would fall -- and this is why the Nine, the Seven, and the Five are the Seven, the Five and the THree today, for no side went unscathed. The beloved Alfey falling is still sung about in some of the oldest of the tales.

There was no magic then. Only the great Powers that led the Hosts could do the miraculous healing, and the war reshaped the very planet itself even as all the far flung outposts and places were reduced to rubble and ash. After 425 years of constant, unbroken warfare, a disaster struck, and it was in that moment that Magic entered the world. No Host and their attendant powers knew how, or why, but magic entered the world and changed the very scope and shape of the war, making it far more deadly and so it went on until there were fewer than 50,000 of the Ancient people left from the Bright Host, while hundreds of thousands remained on the side of the Dread Host. Finally the Bright Host lay surrounded and losing upon the island of the original settlement, Achkyu, and Belial's mighty Dread Host seemed certain to win...

... and would have, if it weren't for those meddling kids and their three headed dog. At the moment of their penultimate triumph, the world itself was shaken to the foundations of the whole of the universe they had created, and in the blink of an eye the 4321 surviving Houses of the Bright house were standing on the shores of a land they did not know, the ocean boiling and roiling and great storms and tempests tossing before them as the ancient land they had fought to protect was destroyed in a tumult that was only one part of the Cataclysm.

Belial, Pallor, and Timur were lost, unknown, though later it was found they were imprisoned and sundered, still able to influence, but not to act, trapped in secret places that only the mysterious force that placed them there new the location of. Of the rest, nothing was heard. The Clerics that people had come to rely on could gain no power, and the mages left were bereft of their once mighty mentors who had strode the land and erased entire cities.

Thus began the event that still shapes the world today, a thousand years later: The Bleak Journey, The Bitter Road, as those surviving families began a trip of thousands of miles through inhospitable and dangerous wilds nearly barren of food and water, ringed by impassable mountains on either side of a long and winding valley  not natural force could ever have created. For 125 years they journeyed, some breaking away fairly early on to test a possible path but deemed lost when none returned. Haggard, weary, starving, desperate, the stumbled at last into a green place that let them recover slightly, but still had to move forward until at last they came to a vast sea, and it was there that they built the Father of Cities, Sibola, named for the leaders daughter who was a member of the fifth generation born on the Bitter Road.

hAving had no help and no succor from the Gods for so long, the people turned their backs on them, and no longer called them gods. Now they were Powers That Be. But, in a disaster during the building of Sibola, a woman who had held on to her faith in the lady power whose harm had sparked such suffering, was given once more the ability to heal wounds and mends broken bones.

It has been an entire history yet still since then. The finishing of Sibola marked the beginning of the Age of Myth, followed by the Age of Fable, the Age of Legend, the Age of Heroes, and now we come to the Age of Ikons. The Whole of Humanity, all the many peoples, all come from those Ancients, though many are no longer recognizable as being related to humans.

The Dread Host still exists The heart of it exiled to Lemuria, from whence they spread the ideology and ideals of Belial. The Thyrs raid and pillage from their base upon THule, the Grendels in their peculiar way  live in anarchy upon Duat. Those who had been forgotten and left at sea founded the Sea Realms or Islandia and Keris, above and below. The lost breakaway peoples became the Kahokians and those who never followed still wander as the Exilians. The Therian still reside within the wild lands of Hyboria.

This is the Origin or our world. And yes, Mr. Urton, there will be a test on it later. That's enough for this class.  Lunch time. 

I love that it's told like a story!