One day, about 800 years from now, a series of unmanned ships, connected together, each with a different task, arrived at a plant that had been selected for colonization. These ships triple checked previous flyby data, and then began seeding the world with carefully preserved and sometimes modified insect, plant and animal life, spreading spores and seeds and setting up incubators and slowly degrading artificial habitats and soil changes.
The strange native flora ignored this, the strange native fauna looked at it the way a cat looks at a fence.
One day, about a thousand years from now, a group of people from Earth arrived at that planet. Their ship was enormous, carrying thousands of more animals and seeds and seedlings and equipment, but also 43, 210 colonists. THe ship was in the form of five parts that traveled connected, looking like a sphere, but each of the five parts was slightly different. THe central part was for those people who commanded the colonization ship, and whose work would soon be done.
After careful selection of a site that seemed reasonably safe and free from most dangers, they landed and began spreading out and building a new colony. They had all agreed to the Colony Charter, which had laid out many things, including basic rules and laws and the like.
In the two hundred years since the terraforming machines had arrived (and long since decayed), some of the native Fauna had begun to change, and a very few among them looked up an marveled that there was now a third moon in the sky, however small it was.
One day, a group of young friends who were enjoying a rare day away from the training and working they all had to do, stumbled across a crevasse in the ground. Within the crevasse flowed a strange sparkling ribbon of rainbow hued particles, like a river, and they followed it, and they endured some shocking and terrifying things, and then they all woke up outside, lying in a circle around the crevasse, which was far away from anywhere that had thus yet been settled as the many colonists spread out over the world.
They all soon learned that they were different. THey kept this a secret, until one day one of the older folks spotted them, and they were brought to the elected leaders of the colony. Before this council, they described what had happened, and one of the councilors, a William Lyle, a former Captain of one of the Shifts during the long journey, suggested that they all go out and see it for themselves.
They, too, entered the crevasse and followed the strange sparkling river, only 17 of them died in there during those horrible things, and 24 of them awoke around the crevasse. Except two things stood out.
First, the crevasse was gone. Second, their experience as a whole had not been like the kid's experiences. The youths, all between 17 and 21 at the time, had gone through much and emerged in a featureless void and found a well, and had drank from it. The Adults, whose ancestors had found ways to extend their lives and their youth such that while they had 125 years of life, they could expect that only the very end would sap them, emerged into a void and found a fire, and they allowed it to burn them.
As these new powers learned of themselves, and their abilities, they hid, the cloaked themselves in anonymity, for time touched them no longer. They played and toyed and experimented. THey made and changed and redefined things for themselves.
About 300 years later, William Lyle had himself and the others elected colonial leaders for life, and began to use wha tthey had gained to shape things. To indulge in things. To change tings and allow their darker sides to come forth.
In the intervening centuries, the colony had grown to cover much of the world, a thousand sparkling cities and vehicles that flew through the air and raced along the ground or the sea, a billion people, a thriving world at peace and harmony with the environment around it -- or so they had thought, for the environment began to change over those years, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worst. But always a change, large or small, and it was these changes that allowed Bill Lyle to emerge as his original self, long beyond the age and time he was thought to have been dead, looking much like the statues that adorned so many cities raised in honor of the founders.
And as he came out of the shadows, so did the others -- though the youths did not.
And as he descended into darkness, he dragged the others. Again, save for the youths, who seem to have slowly vanished and drifted away, leaving relatively unremarkable lives in out of the way places, raising families and children and finding happiness.
They reshaped the Universe, and raised The Firmament, and as their progeny was not like the people they once shared commonality with, they created the Planes and the dimensions. And in so doing, they sowed the seeds of their own comeuppance.
Happiness was elusive for Bill Lyle. He wanted something he could not have, for he wanted the love of the woman who all had become attached for her beauty and kindness and joyfulness -- and she was the spouse of another, who Bill Lyle secretly hated, as he had been the First Shift captain, and the first to step foot on this brand new world.
So, as the elected leader of the colony, and now the planet, Lyle sent his opponent off on many trips to the far places of the world, and while his enemy was gone, he took what he wanted by force, and he did so to any and all that he so sought.
On his return, the hated enemy learned of this horror, and confronted William Lyle, and in a moment of rage he struck out with his fist and the force of that blow shook every part of the world. Homes collapsed, flying machines fell from the sky, oceans raised and shattered, and entre forests fell. THe surviving few native fauna had their first thoughts and took to the skies.
That began the God's War. And over five hundred years the population beyond those few mighty powers was reduced to under 5000 families, the ancient marvels were lost, the nightmares that still haunt us came to be, and the elves and dwarves and goblins and bugbears were created, all drawn from the only source they had: mankind itself. The war was reduced in the end to ancient, half forgotten ways of fighting, swords and spears, and the gods had divided into three camps -- William Lyle's group of five, he who came first to be called Paragon's nine, and Alfey's seven, who chose to struggle to stay out of the fight. DUring the later stages of the War, the first Skyfall struck, and later still the Eruptions of the geysers that spread magic into the world happened.
Six gods were slain on those battle fields -- beings whose very essence cannot be slain, who cannot die, and the oracles tell us they are returning, so perhaps they did not, they merely were set into the great cycle that they had created unwittingly.
That war ended 1500 years ago, when the Cataclysm happened.
What's your world's origin?
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Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities .-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-. An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more. Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
Two ultimate, omnipotent, biblical gods. (Good and evil)
Two universes that mirror each other (like the Upside Down in Stranger Things)
Both absolute rulers in their universes, but engaged in age old battle with each other, while lesser gods build the universe.
Gods are numerous and so are worlds.
Here is the thing. The Prime Material World, which is the campaign world, is the key center of the universe.
Its whole purpose is to be as diverse as possible, because that diversity or lack of it, will affect all other planes.
The Hellish Mirror World failed at this, so their entire universe is very barren. Their range of emotions is limited and even the gods' abilities become narrower and narrower. Mostly violent and destructive abilities. So they want to conquer the other side.
So the biggest gods in the "good universe" chose the best possible team of gods to rule the world. They weren't the strongest gods, but their specific abilities allowed them to create the Mortals.
Now what made Mortals special? Weak and pathetic ants. But they were able to evolve, both physically and mentally. Unlike for example dragons, who were given specific and strict minds and alignments that fit well with their god given missions.
But mortals would evolve into whatever, without divine control. This was the ultimate reason and origin of the world and mortal races.
The universe and all of everything was created in the typical way, as noted in many other corners of this multiverse. By and large, this was considered a good thing, but one being absolutely disagreed. Tharizdun took the creation of everything as a direct offense and moved to end it before things got too out of hand. Tharizdun is a bit more than the average god, deity, or other higher being, but a big group of them, at great effort and the cost of many of their lives, managed to seal Tharizdun away in the Far Realm. He was then only mentioned as They Who Cannot Be Named lest the attention of The Chained One be drawn to a speaker.
Sometime around then, this world as we know it was created. Titans, Giants, Dragons, and whatnot were the first beings here, just as many other Primes. Also, as seems to be something of a trend, the Dragons and Giants decided the world was not big enough for the two of them. This is where things diverge from other Primes. The Giants won. The Dragons were subjected to genocide and are known in the legends of the dawn of this world's time, but they are not known to be alive. Anywhere.
The Giants danced around a bit, expecting some reward from their progenitor, but nothing happened. They did become immortal in terms of natural life, but that's it. Not even a clap on the back and "Good job" from their father. Ennui sunk in, and the Giants receded, neglecting their kingdoms across the world. Power abhors a vacuum, so the humanoids that served the various Dragons & Giants carved up the world into their own nations and began to separate from their mythical beginnings as soldiers in the Dragon & Giant wars.
Nobody alive knows why this Prime was created. Their cultural stories all reference arrival at the time of the Dragon & Giant wars.
Oh, and one other thing - the mortals have no concept of a deity. They've only known Dragons & Giants as patrons. Never a god. The idea of worship and holy folk has just never come to mind. None know that this is vastly different than most Primes. None also know that their world is the key to Tharizdun's prison. This is probably a good thing, but then who knows? The Gods agreed, at the creation of this Prime, that the souls within would fuel the lock that keeps Tharizdun in the Far Realm. It's an awful trade, but it's better than the risk of The Chained God getting loose.
Some Gods still debate that decision over snacks of ambrosia and nectar. None have dared cross the line into mortal awareness on the Lock-Prime. That'd ruffle some feathers, but the idea is popular in the more artsy deity parlors.
The current idea originated from Oratio the Great Thinker. He was one of those old guys in togas who had too much time on his hands so he spent most of his days questioning everything that exists. One day he was puzzling out the question: why do the sun and moon spin around the earth? He walked down the streets of his towns as he thought and eventually meandered into a carnival. As he wandered about distractedly, he bumped into a clown causing the buffoon to drop all of his juggling balls on Oratio's head. This was the catalyst for the great thinker's eureka moment. As the balls hit his head, he realized that the earth, sun, and moon are great juggling balls tossed about by some magnificent juggler. Oratio later reasoned that the Great Juggler must have been bored one day and so he created the sun, moon, and earth to juggle and entertain himself. He then wanted someone to observe his performance so he created all the peoples of the earth as the audience.
This is one of the most prevalent ideas for the creation of the earth.
Bluntly, my world's origin is in a proto-planetary disk with some odd properties. I recently learned that the body I had been calling the moon is actually a planet in a tidally locked orbit with it's sun, and the game world is orbiting it. In order for the game world to have day-like intervals--and especially for it to have the kind of tides I want it to have--it must be orbiting this body perpendicular to the ecliptic. Don't yet know how that configuration arose, although it helps that the game world exists billions of years into Earth's future. Perhaps it's the result of some solar system engineering project.
While the world was forming, it became connected with a mirror of itself. I think this is a localized and unique property. It might be the case that other worlds have their own mirrors, but I think they'd have to be unique to those other worlds. The world's mirror is something like a spirit world--it's where the feywild, shadowfell, and the elemental planes can be found. Each one is like a direction of travel in that mirror space. An ethereal being could walk from the shadowfell to the plane of elemental fire and vice-versa given enough time. Natural disasters are a result of the actions of elemental spirits in that mirror world, and one of the adventures I've been hoping to run but haven't yet gotten the chance to throw in is the one where the PCs have to stop an earthquake from happening by dealing and fighting in the mirror lands. It is also the case that every living creature has a mirror image which is--among other things--an expression of their mortality. If you ever see yourself in the Otherworld, don't shake hands--you'll have a heart attack.
Sometime after the world formed, and probably after it entered its current orbital configuration, primal, primordial giants became the inhabitants of the world. They were often in conflict with dragons and aberrations, and they were not always victorious, but they were numerous and crafty enough to become a dominant civilization. They were phenomenal engineers, building underground fortresses with layers of residential, communal, commercial, storage, and military spaces. They built wells from the bottoms of which they could watch the stars. They built labyrinths with which they could step sideways into the Otherworld. They wrote their findings in knotted ropes, and when their end was nigh, they invented the curse of undeath so as not to fade from the world entirely.
Their end came in the shape of refugees from future-Earth. Arriving with the secret of immortality but with the knowledge of how it was achieved lost in hard vacuum, these fifteen-hundred or so ravaged souls tried for peace. Their gifts were poison to the giants of this world and the two factions soon began a bitter war. In the end, the game world became New Earth (or N'erth for short), the giants became undead monsters trapped underground, and the refugees became factions of immortal partisans (fiends, faeries, and angels), setting the stage for play.
One day, about 800 years from now, a series of unmanned ships, connected together, each with a different task, arrived at a plant that had been selected for colonization. These ships triple checked previous flyby data, and then began seeding the world with carefully preserved and sometimes modified insect, plant and animal life, spreading spores and seeds and setting up incubators and slowly degrading artificial habitats and soil changes.
The strange native flora ignored this, the strange native fauna looked at it the way a cat looks at a fence.
One day, about a thousand years from now, a group of people from Earth arrived at that planet. Their ship was enormous, carrying thousands of more animals and seeds and seedlings and equipment, but also 43, 210 colonists. THe ship was in the form of five parts that traveled connected, looking like a sphere, but each of the five parts was slightly different. THe central part was for those people who commanded the colonization ship, and whose work would soon be done.
After careful selection of a site that seemed reasonably safe and free from most dangers, they landed and began spreading out and building a new colony. They had all agreed to the Colony Charter, which had laid out many things, including basic rules and laws and the like.
In the two hundred years since the terraforming machines had arrived (and long since decayed), some of the native Fauna had begun to change, and a very few among them looked up an marveled that there was now a third moon in the sky, however small it was.
One day, a group of young friends who were enjoying a rare day away from the training and working they all had to do, stumbled across a crevasse in the ground. Within the crevasse flowed a strange sparkling ribbon of rainbow hued particles, like a river, and they followed it, and they endured some shocking and terrifying things, and then they all woke up outside, lying in a circle around the crevasse, which was far away from anywhere that had thus yet been settled as the many colonists spread out over the world.
They all soon learned that they were different. THey kept this a secret, until one day one of the older folks spotted them, and they were brought to the elected leaders of the colony. Before this council, they described what had happened, and one of the councilors, a William Lyle, a former Captain of one of the Shifts during the long journey, suggested that they all go out and see it for themselves.
They, too, entered the crevasse and followed the strange sparkling river, only 17 of them died in there during those horrible things, and 24 of them awoke around the crevasse. Except two things stood out.
First, the crevasse was gone. Second, their experience as a whole had not been like the kid's experiences. The youths, all between 17 and 21 at the time, had gone through much and emerged in a featureless void and found a well, and had drank from it. The Adults, whose ancestors had found ways to extend their lives and their youth such that while they had 125 years of life, they could expect that only the very end would sap them, emerged into a void and found a fire, and they allowed it to burn them.
As these new powers learned of themselves, and their abilities, they hid, the cloaked themselves in anonymity, for time touched them no longer. They played and toyed and experimented. THey made and changed and redefined things for themselves.
About 300 years later, William Lyle had himself and the others elected colonial leaders for life, and began to use wha tthey had gained to shape things. To indulge in things. To change tings and allow their darker sides to come forth.
In the intervening centuries, the colony had grown to cover much of the world, a thousand sparkling cities and vehicles that flew through the air and raced along the ground or the sea, a billion people, a thriving world at peace and harmony with the environment around it -- or so they had thought, for the environment began to change over those years, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worst. But always a change, large or small, and it was these changes that allowed Bill Lyle to emerge as his original self, long beyond the age and time he was thought to have been dead, looking much like the statues that adorned so many cities raised in honor of the founders.
And as he came out of the shadows, so did the others -- though the youths did not.
And as he descended into darkness, he dragged the others. Again, save for the youths, who seem to have slowly vanished and drifted away, leaving relatively unremarkable lives in out of the way places, raising families and children and finding happiness.
They reshaped the Universe, and raised The Firmament, and as their progeny was not like the people they once shared commonality with, they created the Planes and the dimensions. And in so doing, they sowed the seeds of their own comeuppance.
Happiness was elusive for Bill Lyle. He wanted something he could not have, for he wanted the love of the woman who all had become attached for her beauty and kindness and joyfulness -- and she was the spouse of another, who Bill Lyle secretly hated, as he had been the First Shift captain, and the first to step foot on this brand new world.
So, as the elected leader of the colony, and now the planet, Lyle sent his opponent off on many trips to the far places of the world, and while his enemy was gone, he took what he wanted by force, and he did so to any and all that he so sought.
On his return, the hated enemy learned of this horror, and confronted William Lyle, and in a moment of rage he struck out with his fist and the force of that blow shook every part of the world. Homes collapsed, flying machines fell from the sky, oceans raised and shattered, and entre forests fell. THe surviving few native fauna had their first thoughts and took to the skies.
That began the God's War. And over five hundred years the population beyond those few mighty powers was reduced to under 5000 families, the ancient marvels were lost, the nightmares that still haunt us came to be, and the elves and dwarves and goblins and bugbears were created, all drawn from the only source they had: mankind itself. The war was reduced in the end to ancient, half forgotten ways of fighting, swords and spears, and the gods had divided into three camps -- William Lyle's group of five, he who came first to be called Paragon's nine, and Alfey's seven, who chose to struggle to stay out of the fight. DUring the later stages of the War, the first Skyfall struck, and later still the Eruptions of the geysers that spread magic into the world happened.
Six gods were slain on those battle fields -- beings whose very essence cannot be slain, who cannot die, and the oracles tell us they are returning, so perhaps they did not, they merely were set into the great cycle that they had created unwittingly.
That war ended 1500 years ago, when the Cataclysm happened.
What's your world's origin?
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities
.-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-.
An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more.
Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
One of my settings had this:
Two ultimate, omnipotent, biblical gods. (Good and evil)
Two universes that mirror each other (like the Upside Down in Stranger Things)
Both absolute rulers in their universes, but engaged in age old battle with each other, while lesser gods build the universe.
Gods are numerous and so are worlds.
Here is the thing. The Prime Material World, which is the campaign world, is the key center of the universe.
Its whole purpose is to be as diverse as possible, because that diversity or lack of it, will affect all other planes.
The Hellish Mirror World failed at this, so their entire universe is very barren. Their range of emotions is limited and even the gods' abilities become narrower and narrower. Mostly violent and destructive abilities. So they want to conquer the other side.
So the biggest gods in the "good universe" chose the best possible team of gods to rule the world. They weren't the strongest gods, but their specific abilities allowed them to create the Mortals.
Now what made Mortals special? Weak and pathetic ants. But they were able to evolve, both physically and mentally. Unlike for example dragons, who were given specific and strict minds and alignments that fit well with their god given missions.
But mortals would evolve into whatever, without divine control. This was the ultimate reason and origin of the world and mortal races.
Finland GMT/UTC +2
The universe and all of everything was created in the typical way, as noted in many other corners of this multiverse. By and large, this was considered a good thing, but one being absolutely disagreed. Tharizdun took the creation of everything as a direct offense and moved to end it before things got too out of hand. Tharizdun is a bit more than the average god, deity, or other higher being, but a big group of them, at great effort and the cost of many of their lives, managed to seal Tharizdun away in the Far Realm. He was then only mentioned as They Who Cannot Be Named lest the attention of The Chained One be drawn to a speaker.
Sometime around then, this world as we know it was created. Titans, Giants, Dragons, and whatnot were the first beings here, just as many other Primes. Also, as seems to be something of a trend, the Dragons and Giants decided the world was not big enough for the two of them. This is where things diverge from other Primes. The Giants won. The Dragons were subjected to genocide and are known in the legends of the dawn of this world's time, but they are not known to be alive. Anywhere.
The Giants danced around a bit, expecting some reward from their progenitor, but nothing happened. They did become immortal in terms of natural life, but that's it. Not even a clap on the back and "Good job" from their father. Ennui sunk in, and the Giants receded, neglecting their kingdoms across the world. Power abhors a vacuum, so the humanoids that served the various Dragons & Giants carved up the world into their own nations and began to separate from their mythical beginnings as soldiers in the Dragon & Giant wars.
Nobody alive knows why this Prime was created. Their cultural stories all reference arrival at the time of the Dragon & Giant wars.
Oh, and one other thing - the mortals have no concept of a deity. They've only known Dragons & Giants as patrons. Never a god. The idea of worship and holy folk has just never come to mind. None know that this is vastly different than most Primes. None also know that their world is the key to Tharizdun's prison. This is probably a good thing, but then who knows? The Gods agreed, at the creation of this Prime, that the souls within would fuel the lock that keeps Tharizdun in the Far Realm. It's an awful trade, but it's better than the risk of The Chained God getting loose.
Some Gods still debate that decision over snacks of ambrosia and nectar. None have dared cross the line into mortal awareness on the Lock-Prime. That'd ruffle some feathers, but the idea is popular in the more artsy deity parlors.
The current idea originated from Oratio the Great Thinker. He was one of those old guys in togas who had too much time on his hands so he spent most of his days questioning everything that exists. One day he was puzzling out the question: why do the sun and moon spin around the earth? He walked down the streets of his towns as he thought and eventually meandered into a carnival. As he wandered about distractedly, he bumped into a clown causing the buffoon to drop all of his juggling balls on Oratio's head. This was the catalyst for the great thinker's eureka moment. As the balls hit his head, he realized that the earth, sun, and moon are great juggling balls tossed about by some magnificent juggler. Oratio later reasoned that the Great Juggler must have been bored one day and so he created the sun, moon, and earth to juggle and entertain himself. He then wanted someone to observe his performance so he created all the peoples of the earth as the audience.
This is one of the most prevalent ideas for the creation of the earth.
Bluntly, my world's origin is in a proto-planetary disk with some odd properties. I recently learned that the body I had been calling the moon is actually a planet in a tidally locked orbit with it's sun, and the game world is orbiting it. In order for the game world to have day-like intervals--and especially for it to have the kind of tides I want it to have--it must be orbiting this body perpendicular to the ecliptic. Don't yet know how that configuration arose, although it helps that the game world exists billions of years into Earth's future. Perhaps it's the result of some solar system engineering project.
While the world was forming, it became connected with a mirror of itself. I think this is a localized and unique property. It might be the case that other worlds have their own mirrors, but I think they'd have to be unique to those other worlds. The world's mirror is something like a spirit world--it's where the feywild, shadowfell, and the elemental planes can be found. Each one is like a direction of travel in that mirror space. An ethereal being could walk from the shadowfell to the plane of elemental fire and vice-versa given enough time. Natural disasters are a result of the actions of elemental spirits in that mirror world, and one of the adventures I've been hoping to run but haven't yet gotten the chance to throw in is the one where the PCs have to stop an earthquake from happening by dealing and fighting in the mirror lands. It is also the case that every living creature has a mirror image which is--among other things--an expression of their mortality. If you ever see yourself in the Otherworld, don't shake hands--you'll have a heart attack.
Sometime after the world formed, and probably after it entered its current orbital configuration, primal, primordial giants became the inhabitants of the world. They were often in conflict with dragons and aberrations, and they were not always victorious, but they were numerous and crafty enough to become a dominant civilization. They were phenomenal engineers, building underground fortresses with layers of residential, communal, commercial, storage, and military spaces. They built wells from the bottoms of which they could watch the stars. They built labyrinths with which they could step sideways into the Otherworld. They wrote their findings in knotted ropes, and when their end was nigh, they invented the curse of undeath so as not to fade from the world entirely.
Their end came in the shape of refugees from future-Earth. Arriving with the secret of immortality but with the knowledge of how it was achieved lost in hard vacuum, these fifteen-hundred or so ravaged souls tried for peace. Their gifts were poison to the giants of this world and the two factions soon began a bitter war. In the end, the game world became New Earth (or N'erth for short), the giants became undead monsters trapped underground, and the refugees became factions of immortal partisans (fiends, faeries, and angels), setting the stage for play.