Cosmology
From Towers
Categories: Setting | Cosmology | Religion
This page discusses the history and nature of the universe as it is known to scholars and philosophers. The information here is a combination of knowledge gained from first-hand experience (discussions with very old elves, for example), study of old documents, divination, oral tradition, folklore, and mythology, and (in some cases) guessing or inference.
See The Planes for information on the geography of the various planes of existence described herein.
See The Spirit for information on the spirits that live in the world and inhabit every person's soul.
Preternatural Gods
The Preternatural Gods are deities without explanation of where they came from. Everything seems to stem from them and no amount of studying or divination has managed to penetrate the veil that protects their origins. Traditional wisdom is that they have just Always Been.
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Creation of the World
Before all time, Uril awoke from a dream and found she'd created a world with all of its complexities and imperfections. It was full of plants and animals but had no thinking creatures. She admired it for a few eons before getting bored with it.
Then she added the spark of intelligent life to it. The fey were the first to be created. They had free will and were capricious and entertaining. She created many varieties of these and populated her forests and creeks with them.
When her creatures began fighting, Uril was shocked. She was made sad and angry when a few of her favorite subjects were murdered. How could this have happened?
She sought out the cause. Certainly there was a darker influence in her gardens. And she found it! Uril sensed the presence of a deep and subtle but powerful form skulking in the shadows of her world. She tracked it and tricked it into coming into the light and confronted it.
"Who are you?" she demanded of it angrily. It reared its black, demonic head and belched fire at her.
"I am The Other," Bessim told her. "I have come for what is mine. I have come to enslave your creatures and make them work for me. I will turn them into a fierce army and we will capture or kill all that we find."
Uril was stunned. How did such an evil and terrible power exist in the beautiful world she created? She tried to destroy Bessim, but he laughed in her face.
"You cannot kill that which you love," it said to her with a sneer.
"I do not love you!" she spat back.
"You do, but you do not know it, but I hate you with all my being."
And with that, Bessim slithered back into the shadows and the Eternal War began.
Philosophical Interpretation of the Creation Myth
The world that Uril first created later became the Plane of Faerie. The Middle World would come much later.
Traditionalists believe that Uril and Bessim are eternal deities that have always existed. They represent good (natural) and evil (unnatural).
The Middle World theologian Zandra of Kelebos posited that Bessim was a creation of Uril, and thus she loved him as all her other creations. The Zandrian philosophy maintains that evil is just a part of nature. Does the tiger not stalk its prey and kill it?
Poldragoras, a Middle World philosopher, argues that good cannot exist without evil, but that neither existed until Uril gave the world form. When she fell in love with her creations, she chose the side of good and her divine will created Bessim as a logical necessity.
The Eternal War
After Bessim appeared to Uril, the two fought openly for tens of thousands of years. During that time, Uril and Bessim struggled to outmaneuver one another. Quickly they realized that neither could harm the other directly. They created new creatures and even new worlds and waged war on each other's creations.
The First War
At first, during a time now called The First War, Bessim lured elves and fey to a dark path with promises of power and glory. They betrayed their monarchs and murdered their kinsmen. These traitors left their kingdoms and forged new empires in the Faerie Plane through bullying and slavery. Uril's creatures were unprepared for this kind of war and were brought to their knees.
The Second War
The Second War began when Uril invested some of her own divine power in the creation of a race of angels called astral devas. These mighty celestial beings led the charge against Bessim's kingdoms. They freed slaves and liberated the Faerie Plane. Bessim tried to create his own divine creatures but he could not do so without Uril seeing him and stopping him.
Bessim took his endeavor underground, so to speak. He forged a new world, Kahsiin (now known as the Lower World) and grew an army of fell demons there. These he invested with some of his own divine power but he was paranoid. He created a very large number of these and gave each only a small amount of divine power. He also made the race of demons disorganized and random. These aspects assured Bessim that they could never rise against their creator, yet their sheer number combined with their avarice and spite would assure that they'd conquer the world.
The Third War
When Bessim opened gates between the Plane of Faerie and his Lower World, the Third War began. The demons swarmed out of Kahsiin like a plague of locusts. They flooded the fey cities and restored power to Bessim in a matter of months. Now Bessim was watching Uril, foiling her attempts to create more devas. It took her centuries to have her most loyal devas carve out a secret world of their own.
In secret, Uril's astral devas created a world they called Verialius (the Upper World). There Uril created new races of devas to combat the demon horde. Her planetary devas were smaller than astral devas but great in number. Her solar devas were very powerful but very few in number.
The Fourth War
Uril connected the Upper World to the Plane of Faerie and the Fourth War started. Devas and demons swarmed in the air and fought bloody and violent battles. This was the worst of the wars to date. As demons and devas were destroyed, their creators would reforge their souls into new creatures.
Creation of the Middle World
The Faerie Plane became a place of continuous violence. The fey gathered together their energy and created a new world to live in. Since their magic was far weaker than Uril's, their world was smaller and had little magic in it. Many fey and elves escaped into that world. This was the start of the universe we call the Middle World.
Over the ages, the fey and elves that lived in the Middle World lost their magical powers and became mortal. The oldest elven sages claim that humans are descended from elves.
A famous solar deva named Dueriel converted a number of Bessim's once-evil followers back to the path of good. He led them to the Middle World and they settled in caves in the rocky hills of the forest. Since their eyes were sensitive to light, they stayed underground during the day and foraged for food at night. Some adapted to the sun eventually. Others moved further underground and adapted to underground living. A large number of them became nocturnal surface dwellers, sleeping during the day (and some still live in caves). These creatures evolved into dwarves and halflings.
Some of Dueriel's converted returned to their evil ways -- the kobold and goblin races are among these.
The Middle World fought its own battles and wars but these were small in scale compared to what was going on in the other planes. Most of the Middle World's creatures were not aware of the Eternal War. Some magic seeped in from the Plane of Faerie and a few sorcerers learned to harness and control it. The greatest invention of the Middle World was the magical battery that allowed the storage and controlled release of magical energy. This was the clumsy precursor to the wands and staves in the Middle World today. The battery was also the worst invention of the world, as history will show.
The Fifth War
It took ten thousand years for Bessim to discover the Middle World. By the time he found it, it was a world ripe for invasion. Its creatures were mortal and there was very little magical energy for protection. He could take it by brute force and he did. At first Uriel defended it with her devas but they were weak there compared to the physically-focused demons.
The Middle World's people were harder to defeat than their faerie brethren. The text of the Word of Caramita explains that magic had made life easy for the fey and the inhabitants of the Middle World had to struggle for every basic thing, thus they were tougher and more stubborn. Some kingdoms fell to demons and evil sorcerers and warlords, but others held fast. Many of the world's inhabitants fled underground to escape the enemy on the surface. In the dark, they built vast networks of tunnels and chambers and lit them with magic. Uril sent leonals to aid in the fight.
The battles of the Fourth War raged on, too. On the Plane of Faerie, tens of thousands of devas defended the gates of the Upper World against demonic invasion. Bessim created beholders to aid in the war. These eye tyrants were quite effective in weakening the gates but Uril responded by inventing avorals and archons. The gates held. The eye tyrants were turned on the underground complexes to drive the people out.
Aspect Deities
These tend to come in fours. Most derive from Uril but some derive from Bessim.
Elemental Deities
These deities have strong ties to the elements. They are described as immense giants with a chaotic streak. The Elemental Deities rule kingdoms that connect various planes.
Each primary element is represented by a pair of fraternal twins (male and female):
- Izer and Fohma (male and female) rule the kingdom of fire, which lies between the Upper World and the Middle World.
- Donnik and Quela (male and female) rule the kingdom of water, which lies between the Middle World and the Lower World.
- Loeff and Breis (male and female) rule the kingdom of air, which lies between the Middle World and the Plane of Reflection.
- Falson and Saba (male and female) rule the kingdom of earth, which lies between the Middle World and the Plane of Shadow.
Sun Deities
In recent centuries, worship of the sun has become more popular, though many criticize the solar religion for its male chauvinism.
At the end of the Third War of the Eternal, Uril rewarded her best general, a solar deva named Sulerien, with a palace made of light. She collected all the light from the Middle World into a huge golden globe and created the Upper World for him to rule.
- Sulerien, king of the sun (valor, light, summer, war)
The sun palace was so hot and concentrated that it would have scorched the Middle World, so Uril set it in motion around the earth.
Sulerien was crowned King of the Upper World and took a beautiful mortal for a queen. She bore him four sons, each a minor god.
- Dimirag, prince of the setting sun (wisdom, calm death)
- Corunthir, prince of the rising sun (light, beauty, chivalry)
- Mithasan, prince of the high sun (truth, justice, law)
- Nocturus, prince of the hidden sun (defense, love)
Sulerien placed his sons in charge of defending the Middle and Upper Worlds at different times of the day. He charged his youngest, Nocturus, with defending the worlds at night when the palace was out of sight.
Nocturus spent a lot of time in the Middle World and he met a beautiful elven princess named Iluna. They fell in love and sought to get married. Her father Iyendial was the first elven king and had lived many thousands of years and had seen many more battles than even Sulerien himself. Iyendial felt that the young couple should live in his palace but Sulerien wanted them to live in the solar kingdom.
They could not resolve the difference and both forbade the marriage so Nocturus and Iluna eloped. They combined their resources to build a beautiful palace in the Upper World and it became the moon. This base helped Nocturus better defend the Middle World at night.
Many ages later, when the sun god needed the elven king's aid, Sulerien made Iluna the immortal goddess of the moon.
Unanswered Questions
- What happens when you die?
- Is resurrection possible?
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