World creation

Introduction

Related

• History of Earth
• Primordials

Chaos vs. Order

What was before time, space, or matter? Technically, nothing—and yet, a slumbering consciousness that allowed everything to come into existence. Out of Chaos came a paradox, and that paradox was Order. A singularity that gave birth to two primordials, born outside of any comprehensible concept. Creation had started with two equal forces, violently separating them from each other and forcing them to awaken.

At first, the two consciousness clashed with hostility: as Order attempted to subdue Chaos, Chaos tried to rip Order apart, resulting in countless attempts to overpower the other primordial. Between each terrifying Word of War spanned neither quettaseconds or Planck units, as there was no timeline to measure between epochs, yet it took ages upon ages to regain the power to create and destroy new concepts.

Eventually, Order prevailed—with the command of Silence, the second primordial disarmed their opponent, leaving Chaos without power to undo whatever was to follow. Without their destructive counterpart, Order was finally free to fill the emptiness and after gaining the upper hand, force Chaos into an eternal slumber, never to be awoken and allowed to ruin yet another project.

This marked the first recorded epoch of creation, yet not the start of the universe we know.

Creating the universe(s)

The first created universe was everything Order wanted: symmetrical in all forms, beautiful and without flaw. Made of perfect shapes and nothing else, it was the epitome of Order's design—and yet, without life, it was… Empty. Boring. Without purpose. There was a limit to Order's imagination, and no amount of raw creation was going to break the mold. But how to start anew without the power to destroy what was once created? Order had never been more powerful, surrounded by perfection, yet oddly… Lonely.

What if there were other primordials, ones that obeyed Order's command? And so, into existence came the six primary elements: Time, Matter, Gravity, Magnetism, Light, and Energy. They helped Order create the second universe: full of life, but otherwise like the first, filled with calming shapes and not much more. It was a study of everything the seven primordials could do, testing their powers to their limits, breaking and fixing whatever they broke in the process. Time was split into multiverses; matter and antimatter created their own spaces; gravity pulled and crushed everything it touched, while magnetism repelled and spread whatever remained across multiple timelines. Finally, light and energy transformed everything they came across, creating a repeating cycle of change.

These were the building blocks Order wanted to build upon. But the second universe was as unstable and hostile as it was magnificent; with no limits and rules, nothing could survive for long without being inevitably destroyed or transformed. What needed to change and how much, exactly?

Eventually, the primordials settled for a single timeline where actions had consequences, some of them irreversible. As long as change was gradual and linear, things made sense and upkeeping the rules was simple. But once again, the second universe had to be discarded in order to start a new project, yet this one was going to be Order's magnum opus. Creation had to start small, as small as Matter could make it, and then bind together to form larger objects. Gravity and Magnetism would help distribute it across the universe, where Light and Energy could take over to create life. This would become the human universe, starting with a Big Bang as the primordials were released into it.

However, there was a dark secret hiding in the universe's fabric, something Order couldn't have foreseen: a remnant of Chaos, while still slumbering, slowly and unavoidably affecting everything as time went on. And there was nothing Order could have done to prevent it, even if it had been caught earlier…

Heaven and Hell

Oblivious to the spreading imperfections across the universe, Order grew impatient waiting for time to pass and the universe to support life, but instead of creating another universe, another subspace—a realm—was formed. It featured the most beautiful parts of the previous universe: endless blue skies spanning across the horizon, enormous clouds of pure white, green meadows covered in all the colors of the rainbow. This realm would later be known as Heaven, but in the beginning, it was merely a distraction from the slog that was life's insufferably slow evolution.

And what was life like? Bacteria. Fungi. Viruses. The lesser primordials were scolded several times for not speeding things up, but without the power to straight-up create what they wanted, natural evolution was the only way to proceed. So, Order left Earth—the single planet that had generated in a perfect location and situation—and created the first non-primordial creatures to inhabit Heaven: the archangels, each representing a concept that would be known as a virtue. They inherited a part of Order's power, who'd know decided to differentiate from other primordials by claiming a title of a more supreme being: God.

For a while, things seemed perfect: the primordials kept working on Earth, and the archangels took care of building Heaven exactly as God asked of them. But once again, the Creator grew impatient, and after checking on Earth and it's newly formed life-forms, deemed them unworthy of further fostering. With merely more than a thought, God slammed an asteroid into Earth's crust, killing off most of the planet's reptilian inhabitants in the impact's aftermath. This time, the six lesser primordials gave up and left Order to care for the planet without their assistance, rightfully frustrated in the self-appointed dictator's decisions.

While the planet recovered, God decided to flex His powers one last time, in the form of another realm He would personally fill with life He'd handcraft from the start.

The lost paradise

Finally, a third realm was born: a seemingly perfect home for all kinds of mythical creatures, this realm was God's pet project, as He came up with more and more magical animals and beasts, commanding the first angels to watch over them. Inspired by the universe, the realm received its own moons, a night sky, day and night cycles, and all the things that made Earth unique. Unicorns, dragons, griffins, phoenixes… The realm was beautiful, called Eden, and it could have been the final home of humans, if God's planned weren't once again ruined—though, this time, by His own hand.

Inadvertently, instead of balancing seven primordials with seven angels, God had unintentionally created something equally powerful, but less virtuous and more… Sinful.

The seven deadly sins, in fact. Massive beasts, who'd eaten their way out of their own realm, and infiltrated Eden. They kept killing and eating their way through the realm, eventually running into the seven archangels guarding the lands.

Taken by surprise and appalled by the unholy creatures, the archangels declared war against the primal monstrosities. Battles lasting over several millennia ravaged the realm and led to the destruction of both its landscape and wildlife, each side spawning more and more soldiers of their own kind in an effort to turn the battle's tide. But there was no winning; the realm was slowly poisoned to death, killing whatever life survived the battles.

By the time Order realized what had happened and intervened, Eden had turned into a graveyard. An ageless, timeless limbo for the lost, filled with fog and the ghosts of the dead. The archangels were called back to Heaven and made to promise destruction like this would never happen again, not when Order had finally reformed Earth to His liking. Dinosaurs had made way to mammals, animals capable of higher intellect, far superior in potential than anything Order had previously created.

And thus, the realm in the middle was abandoned for good.

Earth

Primates were evolving rapidly, growing smarter and losing their fur, rising up to walk on two legs and creating tools to ensure their survival. This sparked God's curiosity, as He'd never seen another creature besides Himself show signs of imagination. From now on, primal humans were Order's proudest creation, the true magnum opus He'd been waiting for. Feeling excitement for the first time, God descended onto Earth, spending His time admiring the clever apes and rewarding their remarkable progress with knowledge of fire.

But the first humans were barely anything more than the animals they hunted; functioning based on instinct, focused on surviving and multiplying. Still, Order had spent all His time fostering the hairless apes, destroyed entire universes to fulfill His vision, and He wasn't about to give up. To raise humans above other creatures, He gave them a tiny spark of Himself—a soul to guide them and inspire them to greatness, the gift of language and words, and free will to form Earth to their liking. A Tree of Knowledge was grown to reveal the universe's secrets when the time was right and the human race would be able to handle the responsibility, but for now, the first two blessed humans—Adam and Eve—were to do nothing more than name animals they saw and worship the God that had created them.

Yet once again creation surprised Order as the oldest archangel, Samael, had grown resentful of God's divided attention, and coaxed the woman to rebel and eat from the Tree of Knowledge. Infuriated by the betrayal, God banished the couple from the promised paradise, the small piece of Heaven on Earth, and returned to Heaven to deal with the rebellious angels. Humans were left to fend for themselves, populating the Earth and forming the first civilizations, taking pride in their ability to imagina and create like God had intended.

Mankind

By now, the delicate balance across all creation had been irreversibly shaken, and vices took over humanity. As more and more souls ended up in Hell instead of their intended destination, angels were commanded on Earth to keep the demonic forces at bay. However, without the permission to start another war and ruin the planet, all skirmishes were futile, and the deadly sins' power over the human population grew steadily stronger. Even worse, humans had started to rebel on their own, ignoring all of God's wishes and choosing vices instead.

Whatever Order had envisioned, this was far from it.

Insulted like never before, God took out His anger on the last creation defying him: He instilled humans with the ability to pick out patterns, giving them a sense of comfort when they could predict the outcome of their actions and rely on their surroundings. Humans learned to be afraid of disorder and paradoxes, things they didn't know. To make them dependant of His light, their imagination was twisted to fill the darkness with unknown horrors so that they might be scared back into submission. Everything that had been used against God was corrupted and turned against the offenders, but humans had spread too far and wide to be so easily manipulated.

Finally, as the universe turned its back on God, God returned the favor and left. To start anew once more, or to try again with another planet, nobody knew—and thus came the dark age of total silence.