HeavenShallBurn
First Post
I have been chemically inspired (not in an illegal way of course)! Here's a summary of an idea for a cosmology and setting that I've recently come up with. It uses the standard Great Wheel planes but can be easily tailored for many variant cosmologies.
In the beginning there were the Titans, primeval beings of unimaginable power that spawned from the stuff of the primordial planes themselves. They were wild, uncontrolled, and capricious, each doing as they would without law or order and all paid heed to them. But their offspring were not like they. Immortal perhaps but of lesser might and nature they sought their own place in the young planes. Not so mighty as the Titans they were nonetheless powerful and the weaker creatures gave homage in much the same manner as to their ancestors.
But in time these immortal creatures grew jealous and bitter, sure that they could have no true place of their own while the Titans remained. They harvested the power enabled by the belief of lesser creatures and used it to become something great. Greater even for a short period than their forbearers. So these nascent Godlings newly risen to a previously unimagined height made an agreement a pact. And they did wage war against the Titans, a war of a like never seen before or since. Setting aside their own disagreements they performed a working of cosmic magic such as had never been seen before, sealed in the sacrifice of Gods. And cast the Titans down to imprisonment beneath wardings and barriers never again to trouble them.
These Gods shattered back into their own factions once the unifying enemy was gone and old grudges resurfaced. Now there was a new order of things and with the means of divine empowerment realized none could release the power they held for fear of their rivals. And they had a terrible secret, that power was bought at the cost of many terrible things though gods devoted to the forces of Good deluded themselves it was for a higher cause they took up this power. Eternity is a very long time, and no working regardless of its power can hold such as the Titans forever. Under assault by their prisoners for immeasurable eons the wards have begun to crumble, through the cracks leak out an earlier order and a horrible truth.
Everything the denizens of the material plane think they know is a lie perpetrated to continue the order of their patricidal gods. Mortality is a racket, death no more than a molting stage where the immature soul sheds a pupal form and grows into true adulthood. The Gods feed on the essence of their followers, devouring that substance to fuel the divine power they've stolen from less powerful beings as those entities meld with them in their realms on the planes. But they can catch only a portion of all the entities emerging on the Great Wheel, and they know how events would run if their actions became known. Thus they have bound these lesser entities in a veil of illusion with powerful rituals in early days such as held their predecessors. Stealing from the newly matured entities rising from the material their memories in order to make them vulnerable and easily absorbed by deities.
Nothing lasts forever, under pressure from the constant struggles of the Titans cracks have opened. Growing numbers of beings are slipping through the Gods' net, retaining their abilities and memories of "childhood" on the material plane. Through the cracks whispers of the titans' powers begin to touch the planes so long denied them. Spreading knowledge of the perfidy of the Gods to those who have evaded their grasp.
It is the end of a beginning and the beginning of a new end. Every circle comes back to where it started.
ARISE THE TITANS!
In the beginning there were the Titans, primeval beings of unimaginable power that spawned from the stuff of the primordial planes themselves. They were wild, uncontrolled, and capricious, each doing as they would without law or order and all paid heed to them. But their offspring were not like they. Immortal perhaps but of lesser might and nature they sought their own place in the young planes. Not so mighty as the Titans they were nonetheless powerful and the weaker creatures gave homage in much the same manner as to their ancestors.
But in time these immortal creatures grew jealous and bitter, sure that they could have no true place of their own while the Titans remained. They harvested the power enabled by the belief of lesser creatures and used it to become something great. Greater even for a short period than their forbearers. So these nascent Godlings newly risen to a previously unimagined height made an agreement a pact. And they did wage war against the Titans, a war of a like never seen before or since. Setting aside their own disagreements they performed a working of cosmic magic such as had never been seen before, sealed in the sacrifice of Gods. And cast the Titans down to imprisonment beneath wardings and barriers never again to trouble them.
These Gods shattered back into their own factions once the unifying enemy was gone and old grudges resurfaced. Now there was a new order of things and with the means of divine empowerment realized none could release the power they held for fear of their rivals. And they had a terrible secret, that power was bought at the cost of many terrible things though gods devoted to the forces of Good deluded themselves it was for a higher cause they took up this power. Eternity is a very long time, and no working regardless of its power can hold such as the Titans forever. Under assault by their prisoners for immeasurable eons the wards have begun to crumble, through the cracks leak out an earlier order and a horrible truth.
Everything the denizens of the material plane think they know is a lie perpetrated to continue the order of their patricidal gods. Mortality is a racket, death no more than a molting stage where the immature soul sheds a pupal form and grows into true adulthood. The Gods feed on the essence of their followers, devouring that substance to fuel the divine power they've stolen from less powerful beings as those entities meld with them in their realms on the planes. But they can catch only a portion of all the entities emerging on the Great Wheel, and they know how events would run if their actions became known. Thus they have bound these lesser entities in a veil of illusion with powerful rituals in early days such as held their predecessors. Stealing from the newly matured entities rising from the material their memories in order to make them vulnerable and easily absorbed by deities.
Nothing lasts forever, under pressure from the constant struggles of the Titans cracks have opened. Growing numbers of beings are slipping through the Gods' net, retaining their abilities and memories of "childhood" on the material plane. Through the cracks whispers of the titans' powers begin to touch the planes so long denied them. Spreading knowledge of the perfidy of the Gods to those who have evaded their grasp.
It is the end of a beginning and the beginning of a new end. Every circle comes back to where it started.
ARISE THE TITANS!
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