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Message: <blockquote data-quote="LoneWolf23" data-source="post: 4806503" data-attributes="member: 643">Thanks for the interest.  Your ideas are also interesting.  I hadn't thought of using the Nameless One's self-creation to explain the Astral Sea/Elemental Chaos split.  Anyways,  to continue my little Mythos...After imprisonning Asmodeus into Hell, banishing the Djinn and Ifrit into the Elemental Chaos, and sending the Shee (later called Sidhe) into the Feywild, the gods took the last of the Div, who had remained loyal to the gods, and to reward them, gave them new, powerful forms, with skins of hards scales, wide and powerful wings, and hearts filled with elemental power. The gods renamed them Dragons, and gave them dominion over the world, to keep the surviving giants in check, and to watch over those beings who would be born next from the tree of life. Bahamut and his cousin Tiamat (who were lovers at the time) took upon themselves to watch over the dragons and guide them.The Tree of Life now bore five fruits, which had been ripening long enough for the new generation of gods to grow to adulthood. Then one day, Zhenkeef, on a whim, began plucking the fruits.The first, she plucked and tossed it into the mountains, where her nephew Moradin found it after it split open, releasing a race of stout people. These, the Dwarven, took to the mountains and the caverns, and Moradin taught them the ways of mining and smithing, and they, in turn, declared him their father in spirit, naming him the "Soulforger". Even when they were later enslaved by the Giants, they did not recant him, and he in turn aided them until they finally won their freedom.The second fruit, Zhenkeef juggled and squeezed until it was difformed, and threw it near the gates of Hell, where Asmodeus was still imprisonned. From it emerged the difformed Grendel, ancestors of those now known as orcs, goblins, ogres and trolls. Asmodeus saw these misshapen creatures, and though his body was imprisonned, his voice was not. And he whispered to them that it was the gods who was responsible for their twisted bodies, and that they should hate them, and those beings who's forms were not flawed as theirs was. The grendel listened, but did not forswear the gods as he intended, though he knew he had planted seeds of darkness in their hearts.The third fruit, she tore to pieces and tossed here and there across the world. The smallest pieces became the beasts of the earth, sky and seas, and so they spread across the earth in multitudes. Those pieces of the fruit that had been closer to the core were different, however, bearing limbs like the other races, yet with the appearances of their animal kindred. These became the Beastmen races: Minotaur, gnolls, kenku, lizardfolk and similar folk.Zhenkeef tried to eat the fourth fruit, but became ill from it. Morwynn, who had discovered what she had done, made her vomit it, but the fruit was now ruined. And so the gods tried to gather the pieces back together as best they could, but soon discovered they each had made the new race differently from one another. Skin color, hair color, shape of face, and even size; while all were still of one race, they were as different from one another as the other races was from them. Still, the gods saw them fit enough to inhabit the world, and spread them across the world, naming them Humans if they were tall, or Halflings if they were short.(Okay, I kinda fumbled on that one; I wanted to make Halflings related to Humans, since they're so similar anyway. Does anyone have a better suggestion as to how to explain it?)The fifth fruit remained on the tree, and Morwynn kept Zhenkeef from plucking it. And to this day it yet remains on Eliwyn, and so we know not what lies within. As the new races spread across the world, the gods tasked the dragons with guiding them, protecting them and teaching them, as they had taught and guided the dragons. In time, they would build Arkhosia, the First Empire, as a bastion against Jotunheim, the Kingdom of the Giants.As the mortal races began dying, their spirits began filling the earth, as Mormekar had nowhere to place them. And so the gods created another mirror to the world. This one they named the Shadowfell, and it was a place of darkness and gloom, not fit for the living, but perfect for the dead. Mormekar entrusted the Shadowfell to his daughter Morgaine, whom mortals now call the Raven Queen, ruler of the dead.Meanwhile, the gods began taking turns to guard the gateway to Hell, to keep Asmodeus from whispering to mortal-kind again. And so Asmodeus began whispering to the gods instead. While most rejected his words, his lies and half-truths found root in many of them: he fanned the flames of Bane's pride; he made Lolth grow jealous of the sidhe's love for Corellon; he taught Tiamat the virtues of Greed and Dominance; he convinced Gruumsh he was mightier then Kord, and that he should prove it. Soon enough, Asmodeus had corrupted nearly half of the gods, and just stood back as sibling turned against sibling, son against father, daughter against mother. The gods began dividing themselves into camps; the gods of Light, whom civilized races worship, and the gods of Darkness, now worshipped by barbaric or fel races.To stem the conflict, lest the first rule of the gods be violated, Morwynn convinced both sides to agree to a system, which they would call the Compact; the gods would grant mortals powers to serve the will of a god, but only if the mortal, of his own free will, chose to worship that god. To make this choice meaningful, the gods agreed to let Asmodeus tempt mortals towards Hell.In time, Arkhosia became decadent and corrupt, and fell, the dragons abandonning their sacred duties to pursue more selfish pursuits, and leaving the mortal races to forge their own destinies.And that's it for this update...</blockquote>

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