On how today's Pantheon came to be

22/09/2011 08:55

The world that has nestled itself somewhere deep inside my mind has originally had a strict separation of races, all having been given their own place on Iawat’s belly by Fahra, the Dreamqueen. What follows is a short explanation of the way the world and it´s pantheon came to be.

Iawat was the first god to leave the celestial realm. He was Fahra’s partner and put all of his divine energy into creating the mortal realm. He literally gave up being a conscious being and materialized all of his immortal essence into the world we know today. Before he had done this the world had been a chaotic place where things came into being as they do in dreams, but were fleeting.

Fahra had agreed to populate the world with many different beings, who would color the world with their lives as a tribute to her late husband.
Iawat had appointed his brother Thanatos to guard over the world and keep the balance between life and death. The task of pulling the sun across the sky to shine some life into the world was given to Solar, the eldest of their children. Solar is still embittered by being granted this toilsome task, but it also gave him the opportunity to graft his own race of beings into the world, the Sons of Solar. As did his younger brother Omonos, who was in control of the weather and who would create a race wrought with violence, the Greenskins.

After Fahra had dreamt up all the living things in the world, which in those days were even more diverse than they are now, she saw that her brother in law, Thanatos, had become overburdened with the task of guiding all of these short lived souls to their respective afterlives. She decided to visit him in his dreams to comfort him and from this came a short but crucial relationship between the two deities which would spawn a divine twin.

When Omonos and Solar found out their mother had betrayed their father’s faith they became infuriated and sought for revenge. So the first Great War between the gods was fought on the belly of Iawat. The Dreamqueen had to retreat further into the dreamrealm, her native plane of existence, taking only one of her sons to be raised there. This lucky boy was named Lyrian and he would grow up to become the God of creation, innovation and would be the one to judge whether a new being brought into the mortal realm would be allowed to stay.

The other part of the twins had been taken violently from its mother by Omonos and thrown into the astral void. Here its divine soul got stripped from everything but that which was needed for its survival. He grew up alone and unloved, until his father Thanatos found him after an aeon long search. The now matured god had never been named and Thanatos was unsure what to do with this powerful being. It seemed to be devoid of emotion, but able to look at things unbiased and with an incredible talent for reasoning.

As Lyrian grew up he had allowed for many strange new beings to inhabit the lands that had been laid to waste in the great celestial war. Thanatos saw, as he brought Lyrian´s sibling into the world, that this deity frowned upon such extreme diversity and didn´t see the necessity for many of Lyrian´s creations. So Thanatos and Fahra decided to just let their regained son roam free in the world with a carte blanche. They never named him however, but the inhabitants of the world know this deity as the Gardener. This Great Pruner takes away from the world that which does not prove useful or worthy of existence.

As the inhabitants of the world prospered, a forerunner on the path to enlightenment was on his way to discover the last secret that would allow him to attain Godhood, and become one of the pantheon´s major deities. This was a human named Mehrun, who had reincarnated according to a plan of Thanatos, for it was he who had invited Mehrun to try his luck. Thanatos had long had the wish for a new Deity that would be able to heal the world and still stand up against the forces of destruction that were Solar and Omonos.

Much later still, inspired by prophetic dreams sent by Fahra, the mortal human wizard Zhul found a whole new way of attaining godhood. What was different about Zhul is that many of his followers have in writing that which needs to be known about the workings of the universe to attain such a status. Somehow however, only the great inventor and teacher Zhul has been able through some amazing feats to ascend to the celestial realm and have a seat reserved for him. One of the major feats he performed was creating a paragon being who´s power would dwarf all of the other races in existence. This was to be the dragon race, first created around six hundred years ago.

As the many races had different successes, some came to dominate over others and as migration and conquest went on the separation of races became less and less. At a certain point in history, only two hundred years before this story begins, a great plague swept over the human race, which was dominant at the time. This forever changed the balance of power in the world and gave the other races a chance to fill in vacuum the retreating humans had left behind.