In the Beginning

In the beginning there was only the primordial chaos, and it's random fluctuations were… boring, so the Gamaester dispersed some of the chaos and created a blank canvas of wispy silver and separated it from the chaos beyond. From the Astral Mists, the Gamaester called forth Joil the Over Deity and allowed Joil to have free rein of this new domain.

Joil surveyed the Astral Plane, and gathered together much of the mist. Joil sundered the collected mist into baser components, splitting it into fire, water, earth, air, life and death. Taking each of his new elements Joil forged them into great spheres, and from the spheres formed the elemental planes. Joil admired the structure, and founding it pleasing, decide all was done. The Gamaester surveyed the works of Joil and was displeased, it was more interesting than the primordial chaos, but unlike that swirling mass it could not change or grow. The Gamaester raised from each plane one of the Primordials; Firas, Goddess of Fire, Wayith God of Water, Tersque God of Earth, Auria Goddess of Air, Silnai Goddess of Life and Kerthos God Death. The Primordials would leave their planes often to dance with each other, and as they danced they wove together the elements and forged the world of Theril. The Gamaester never again directly interfered with creation, perhaps finding the existence created far too dull and departing to find better tales.

Each of the Primordial Gods were equal in power, yet Silnai and Kerthos contributed little to the creation of Theril, Silnai would join the dances, but focused her energies on the other gods, whereas Kerthos loathed the others and kept mostly to his own domain, Kerthos particularly loathed Silnai. Silnai was greatly loved by the other Primordials but had a particular love for Tersque, who had spent much of his time dancing about Theril. As Silnai danced with Tersque, Kerthos cursed Silnai in an attempt to bring calamity to her. Silnai and Tersue had a child Selus, Goddess of the Moon, but Kerthos' curse corrupted Selus and the Goddess was of two minds. Silnia was shattered by her daughters self-hatred and vowed to never again have child. Part of Selus wanted to bathe Theril in light, while the other desired to cover it in darkness. In the resulting battle Silus tore herself asunder creating Caris, the Goddess of Darkness. The two goddesses continued to fight, hating each other even more than Kerthos hated Silnia. From the mingled blood of the two Goddesses Mysth, Goddess of Magic was formed. Mysth sided with Selus, and together they drove back Caris. Selus was greatly weakened by the fray, specks of her vary being scattered across the sky and she could not provide constant light to Theril, her powers waxing and waning. Caris hid from the light and vowed for revenge.

Mysth recognised that Krasos had cursed Silnai and lifted the curse. From their Silnai had many god children, with Tersque, Wayith and Firas. The other Primordeals desired children as well, bringing forth a myriad of deities, all except Kerthos who remained in isolation. This first generation of gods and goddesses were empowered with creative force, adding something new to the surface of Theril.  Joil was distraught, the perfect planes of his creation were now tainted by the multitudes of creation. In an attempt to stop the tides of new deities, Joil forbade the Primordials from leaving their home planes. His plan was insufficient. The Primordials' children were not bound, and continued their dancing across creation. These elder deities had children of there own.  Their children, the younger deities, were not as empowered as their parents, and instead embodied aspects in the world of Theril.

Joil was not pleased, he banished all the gods to Theril, binding them in avatar form where their powers were greatly diminished and made a great decree: No more gods. The young gods though where not compliant, though they no longer could dance the complex forms of deific courtships they could still meet with mortals. From these encounter's were born the demi-gods, who had powers almost equal to the gods themselves. This time became known as the Age of Wandering, as the gods wandered Theril and gathered for themselves many followers. Many of the gods mingled with humans, but in this time the worship of a multitude of deities was adopted by all races.

Joil was furious with the fact the young gods had broken it's law and decided that the creations of the gods would no longer stain the universe. Thus the first Gods  War began, it wouldn't last for long. The seas frothed, the ground shook, fires erupted from the ground. The winds howled in vast storms, the sun backed the earth as gods and over god struggled over the fate of creation and then, nothing. After what only seemed like a few hours for the mortals the tempest subsided, but there was something amiss, the skies was a broiling silver mist. Priests reported that they could no longer commune with their deities, spell casters were powerless and when explorers were sent out to discover the extent of the destruction thy returned with chilling news. A great silver fog surrounded the world in all directions, and any who entered it never returned. The fog surrounded the world in a great sphere of diameter of about two thousand miles. Over a hundred years the remnant settled, but the world stirs once more and their are whispers that the magic is returning.

Commentary

Welcome to Theril! The general structure of this blog will be follow this post, with some details of the setting followed by some discussion of the material presented.

Here we have a brief overview of the history of Theril, from creation to the start of play. Introducing the basic concept of the setting, Theril is a setting which rebuilt itself after an apocalypse, only to have established order challenged by a return to the world before the collapse. The restriction on size allowing for us to build detail into the world that would be harder in a larger world. Over the next months I'll be on a pretty high release rate as I work through the material I have already completed, but eventually I'll move to a more limited schedule.