Starfall - Creation Myth

[Trailfoot]

It is not known when the Twin Master Races evolved, for they remade the world and rewrote history to suit their own desires and needs. What is known is that they were, and their fingerprints on our world are still visible.

Having mastered the arts of magic to a point unknown even to the most powerful of the Kobold magisters, Cyborg shamans, or Dromite elementalists, the Master Races could create and destroy at will. And create they did, making servants for themsleves.

But I get ahead of myself. I forget that I am writing for children, children who might be of any age, but are children in the eyes of our world anyway, for they know nothing of the world before the Starfall.

Who, then, were the Twin Master Races? In formal reference, they were referred to as the Unknowable and the Most Ancient; in informal tongue, they were called the Gods and the Dragons. The Gods were humanoid creatures, many accounts say, though some say that they could take on any form which pleased them, and others said that they were by nature formless entities, taking on physical form only to interact with the physical world. The Dragons, on the other hand, were great reptillian beings, winged, at full growth able to blot out the sun while flying overhead. Both were masters of magic, able to manipulate the Fifth Force with the same ease you and I twitch our fingers.

The Unknowable, the Gods, created as their servants the Humans, while the Most Ancient created the Kobolds. These two races were the first of the Servant-Races.

The Gods embodied order, building for themselves great cities and temples, and housing their Human servants in splendor unknown even to the Elan Overlords of the Ancient Empire. The Gods tamed the land around them.

The Dragons, on the other hand, embodied the primal forces of Nature itself. Rather than building, they adapted, and rather than taming, they observed. Their Kobold servants lived with them, hunting the great beasts of the Eastern Jungles.

These two Master-Races did all that they could to avoid one another; however, the Humans and Kobolds lacked the wisdom of their makers, and this led to the First War, which I will speak of later.

-Terin Renald, Human Sage, in service to Divinity Reborn
"Of the Times Before Starfall"

[Trailfoot]

On the First War and the Fall of the Dragons

The Twin Master-Races bred slowly, with only one or two births among their entire populations in a decade. Their newly-created servants, however, expanded in number far more quickly, and this led to conflict when the two populations met in the fertile Valley of Relics.

The Valley was covered in a thick redwood forest, filled with creatures that could be hunted. However, the land itself was fertile to a great depth, and could be cultivated and farmed at great profit. These traits made it desireable to both the Kobolds and the Humans, and led to a short battle between the two races. The Kobolds won, claiming the Valley as their own.

However, this was the first time that either of the servant-races had killed the other. The Gods were angry with the Kobolds, and Balius, God of Health, entered the Valley of Relics. Clothed in divine glory, he confronted the Kobold chieftains, demanding a penance for the killing of the Humans, His servants. The Kobolds refused to sacrifice an equal number of their people to sate the God's anger, and He turned His power on the Kobolds of the Valley. With a single spell, He levelled the forests, calling up the spirits of the trees and binding them to His will. These spirits attatched themselves to the Kobolds, creating a mystical plague that caused slow suffering and death.

Belius's children had been avenged, but in taking His vengeance Belius had angered the Draconic patron of the Kobolds who had entered the Valley. This Dragon, Michel the Lightning-Winged, flew out to attack Belius. The two of them met in the Valley of Relics. Though Belius controlled the tree-spirits and tried to use their power against Michel, Michel's anger and strength proved too much for Belius, and the God was slain.

Thus began the First War.

The Gods rose up, brining the whole power of the Humans with them, and moved into the lands ruled by the Dragons and Kobolds. For the better part of five hundred years, the whole of the continent ran with blood and tears as the Twin Master-Races tore it asunder and their servants marched and died. In the end, however, the greater numbers of the Dragons and their Kobold servants proved too much for the Gods to withstand. Cornered in the Mountains of Titans, the last of the Unknowable surrendered to the Dragons, agreeing to their own deaths in return for the safety of the Humans. The Dragons also agreed to these terms, and before the Gods were killed, they split off the great continent into two, ordering the Kobolds to all go to one, and giving the remaining Humans the time needed to migrate to the other. A ban was placed on both races against crossing to the other continent. Then the Gods were put to death.

As His essence fled Him, Asmoren, the last of the Gods to die, had a prophecy come upon him. "The Most Ancient have won, but in their victory surrendered the future. From the wisdom of Our Servants shall come the doom of the Wyrms."

Thus ended the First War.

-Terin Renald, Human Sage, in service to Divinity Reborn
"Of the Times Before Starfall"

[Trailfoot]

The Time After the War

I would write a great deal about the time after the First War, but it is not of great interest to us. The Gods were slain, killed by the Dragons, and the Dragons and Kobolds had retreated to their new landmass, leaving the Humans to find their own way on a continent torn apart by the First War.

The Dragons and Kobolds returned to lives very similar to those they had lived before the First War.

The Humans returned to what of the God-build cities remained, and began to rebuild. From the nessecities of learning to live without the patronage of the Gods and learning to live in their ruined lands, the Humans began to advance quickly in their studies of science and psionics. Thus, a mere two millenia after the First War, they had colonized their entire landmass. They had mastered energy-manipulation and genetics.

The Rise of the Elan

The circumstances surrounding the initial concept of creating a race of genetically-perfect Humans are shrouded in mystery. However, it did happen, and began in one family. This family's ancestral name is lost to history, but they began to call themselves the Elan within about ten years of the birth of the first child with the pureblood Elan traits.

When there were fifty Elan, they began to consolidate their power. Within a century, they ruled the Human continent. They purposefully kept their numbers small during this time, to reduce possible dissension among the Most Perfect. When they could, they gained control through nonviolent means - by offering the people of a region access to their powerful technology. When that was ineffective, they conquored militarily.

The Elan Empire was divided into districts and operated under a sort of feudal republic. The Humans were consulted about decisions by the Elan Overlords, but had no direct control over those decisions. Each Overlord had a number of votes on the Council equal to the number of adult Humans living in his or her district. When an Elan reached maturity, his parent gave to him a portion of their own district. Each Elan was raised by only one parent, either the mother or father, chosen at conception by the two biological parents. The young Elan was not told the name of the other biological parent until reaching maturity.

The Elan Empire existed at peace from the end of the Conquest until the beginning of the War of Dominion.

-Terin Renald, Human Sage, in service to Divinity Reborn
"Of the Times Before Starfall"

[Trailfoot]

The Mad Wyrm

On the Dragon continent, a dragon named Urias was experimenting with new approaches to magic, trying to claim a power that had been lost since the end of the First War - the power of creation from nothing. What He discovered, however, was a new form of magic altogether - sorcery.

When wielded by a member of a lesser race, even by an Elan, sorcery causes minor delusions that lead toward destructive acts, and the user is usually killed by his own delusion before he grows in skill enough to turn the full power of this dark art on the world around him. Not so with a Dragon, however... with the innate talent which the Most Ancient have for magic as a whole, Urias mastered sorcery quickly. However, the delusions that consume any who dare touch that tainted force consumed Urias as well. He became increasingly paranoid and withdrawn, and eventually violated the ban which had stood two millenia and crossed the sea, afraid that all were a danger to Him, believing that the Elan and Humans of the Human landmass would be less dangerous to Him because of their lesser power.

Then He attempted to take part of the Elan empire. In the battle that erupted, Urias destroyed three Elan cities before the Empire managed to even build a sizable military. After the Elan motivated, a dozen High Nobles faced and defeated the Mad Wyrm near the capital at Crystal Spire.

Following the defeat of the Mad Wyrm, the Elan nobility met to decide the fate of the world. It was decided that, given the power of individual Dragons, and the fact that another could descend into madness, there was only one possible course of action - the Empire would go to war.

The War of Dominion

The Elan are nothing if not thorough, and the ancient nobles, of pure Elan blood, were more thorough than the modern Elan. That, combined with the long Elan lifespan, led them to the decision that the war would not be entered until the Empire was ready - until the nobility was certain that they would defeat the Dragons.

Thus, they begain their preparation. They shifted the Empire's technological might toward the development of weapons and vehicles, and developed these at a fast pace. Even so, it was more than five centuries before the nobles decided to move.

They descended on the draconic continent in a horde, Human soldiers armed with laser and antimatter weaponry, Elan psionicists capable of demolishing armies with a thought. The Dragons and Kobolds tried to fight against them, but the Kobolds and their magic were no match for the technology wielded by the Humans, and without the Kobolds to help defend them, the Dragons were defeated quickly. Down to the last wyrmling, the Dragons were annihilated. In the end, the Kobolds were corralled, forced to fall back against the sea. The Emperor, Leathilus Terrean II, was about to give the order to make the last attack, when he remembered the mercy shown by the Dragons in the First War, and the prophecy of Asmoren, as his father had taught them to him.

"The Dragons defeated the Gods, yet spared their servants, for mercy is good. We shall return that mercy. However, we shall not split the world as the Dragons did, leaving the Kobolds to not know us. This land shall be made part of the Empire, and the Kobolds citizens to equal any Human."

Since they did not know Kobold genetics, the new Elan nobles to rule the new continent came from Human stock. And thus did the Elan Empire come to rule the world.

-Terin Renald, Human Sage, in service to Divinity Reborn
"Of the Times Before Starfall"