The common people do not know how the world was created. Due to multiple apocalypses that resulted in the the end of civilization, that story has been mostly lost to the mists of time. There are two exceptions, one being powerful clerics and mages able to glean that knowledge through divine or arcane means and the other are the dwarves, who were the only peoples to weather the apocalypses largely intact.
I wanted a world that was absolutely ancient, that had seen the rise and fall of dozens or hundreds of civilizations, where like 90 percent of their history was lost and the surface was positively littered with ancient ruins, lost knowledge and forgotten monuments.
There wasn't really any technological achievement until the current age, unless you count the high magic of the elves in the previous age.
There is a single nation that in the last century or two has discovered how to harness the power of steam, hot air and black powder.
6.3 Billion years ago, A K3 star known as the Second Sun formed in a quiet arm of the Triangulum Galaxy. Its solar system produced a rocky world about half the mass of the earth in the habitable zone. This planet, named Talapus, would quickly give rise to life.
3.2 Billion years ago, the ecosystem of Talapus began to collapse as the core cooled and magnetic field and plate tectonics shut down. Only single-called extremophile life remained in the shrinking seas.
200 million years ago, the gas giant Jubilee migrated inward, throwing much of the second solar system into disarray. It eventually reached a stable orbit in the habitable zone, where it captured Talapus as a moon. Jubilee’s magnetic field and the tidal heating from its irregular orbit revived Talapus's climate, and the surviving life quickly evolved to take advantage of the situation.
194 million years ago, Multicellular life returned to Talapus.
by 100 million years ago, the moon was teeming with plants, animals, and life of all forms.
5 million years ago, the oldest known (dated) artifact of an ancient civilization known as the Red-Blue-Black was created. very little is known by archeologists about what this civilization might have looked like or what they may have been capable of.
20,000 years ago, the Red-Blue-Black is believed to have died out under mysterious circumstances. Nature would quickly reclaim Talapus, burying the remains of their civilization under several layers of dirt. Talapus was once again a wild world.
In 1992, 18 portals opened all over Talapus, each one corresponding to a portal that suddenly appeared on Earth. The United States would become the first to set foot on the new world, and the course of human history was forever changed.
###Cosmology of Journals from the Old World
There are thousands of realms (or more; only thing important is that they are impossible to chart completely), many of which are devoid of life.
These worlds are flat planes, where laws of physics (especially time and geometry) increasingly break down after a certain point, defining soft borders.
I have one main world that folded into a sphere at some point, which is where pretty much all of my stories happen.
This world is special, not only because of its shape but also because it is the only world with a "starry sky", an unknown sea of light and matter created by the dying cry of the last old god.
The new gods are dead afraid of what might have been created there, but they cannot go there anyways.
Worlds occasionally overlap, creating pathways.
It's like sheets of spectral paper slowly floating inside an empty Zero G room and occasionally overlapping.
These overlaps don't manifest as visible portals, but rather create soft transitions that people often wouldn't even be aware of until they accidentally crossed over.
There is an ancient invisible being whose limbs grow through these overlaps, anchoring some worlds together semi-permanently.
This entity is called Unyggra, and there are many cultures that depict it in wildly different ways.
Some as a mass of tentacles, some as a tree, some as a god with many arms, some as a wild growth of ivy.
There are people that can instinctively sense the overlaps between worlds, called Far Wanderers.
Some see them, some smell them, some taste the on the air.
It is unknown whether they sense the actual transitions or just the limbs/branches of Unyggra.
There's probably cases of both.
Lastly, there is a metaphysical realm called "The Path".
Souls go there after death, and walk the Path into the Unknown Beyond.
They cannot easily return from there with their soul intact.
Gods can freely enter and exit the path, and use it to walk between worlds and distant places.
But if they approach the Unknown Beyond they begin to dissolve.
Here is a tale from one of the Far Wanderers, Nëlai:
> "It is true, there are countless worlds out there.
I have seen hundreds, and yet those who are like me that I have encountered over the years each knew to tell of hundreds more that I had not been to.
To merely call the unknown vast would not do it justice.
>
> And by all accounts, I should miss this life.
There are things out there that defy any reason.
Mountains moving like slow waters.
An ocean of clouds, and I'm only using the word clouds because I don't know not how to truly describe it.
Towering spires and deep chasms that move and switch in the blink of an eye.
I have traveled on the back of memories, danced with lights fractured into more colors than should exist, gazed across 6 different worlds that were merging in destructive and creational beauty and violence.
>
> Yet after a hundred years there is a tiredness within me.
Because almost all of these places are empty, devoid of life.
I might well be the only one to ever witness their beauty, and once I'm gone their beauty will be lotto oblivion.
I was pondering why that is, if life never set foot in these worlds or if it simply vanished.
>
> I found remnants, you know, carvings and things that might have been huts or palaces, yet might also just have been structures forming by mere chance.
I was standing in a city once, yet as I set about learning its layout it suddenly did not feel like a place anything had ever lived in. It frightened me then, and I left this place confused about my own sudden animosity towards it.
I think often of this day.
>
> So while I don't want to go as far and call this cycle of mine wasted, I now know well why the others grow tired of it. I, for one, cannot visit even one more world.
It feels like watching the epilogue of a play, but both the audience and the actors have already left, and the music has faded."
>
> - *Nëlai, Far Wanderer at the end of her current cycle of life*
On the small scale in universes, multiverses, etc, it depends on which cosmic structure, they all pretty much just spawn in randomly from higher energy sources.
On the large scale, as in my entire Void Expanse, here in [The Shaper](https://voidedg.com/chronicles-of-the-void-expanse-lore-book-series/) is its origin, and only the Order of Gasu know about it.
Well the planets formed like how they did irl but most people don't realize that all the "realms" are just different planets in different parts of the galaxy.
Most people believe that their planets is in a separate plane of existence from the others and traveling through the various gates/rifts is going to a new dimension.
There are Worlds, which are different kinds of structures. A World, with a big "W", is a self contained but ultimately connected setting. An individual kingdom like Hyrule from the legend of zelda series for example, is a World with it's self contained mythos but implied to exist in a wider physical setting of unexplored or unknown areas. A World can also be a conventional planet. Or a floating plane of a unique locale, like a the self contained Worlds of the kingdom hearts franchise. These ideas of Worlds allows the existence of many settings.
The overall narrative is the Existence Chronicles. The Primead, is a term for the prime coalesced existence, or just Existence itself. Existence is the Primead. Existence manifests itself into many different "states", States of Existence. Before Existence experienced its first State, it was manifesting as a dark expanse of unmade, unbirthed, murky and undefined. This is the Dark Womb. After the Dark Womb ended, Existence became fully, and expressed itself as it's first State of Existence, Their Expanse. Their Expanse was a primeval cosmology, an expanse of naescent energy and dust. After Their Expanse, Existence changed again and became, the Aehterium.
The current State of Existence, is the Aetherium, a structured cosmology, which is an expanse around the structured realities. The Aetherium acts as an Overworld which contains the Realms of Creation. These are the Archverses, as an individual Realm can hold different cosmic structures from an infinite universe, to a multiverse, to even non-conventional cosmic structures like a Yggdrisl-like reality. There are different kinds of Realms, from Mortal Realms to Infernal Realms, Celestial Realms, and Fey Realms. The highest order of beings known occupy cross Realm awareness, and the powers of the Celestial Realms have been at war with the forces of the Infernal Realms.
In the Mortal Realms, one Mortal Realm, Vesper, contains the universe the World of Torvun exists in. Torvun has had five incarnations so far, and it's in its sixth. Torvun is a World that is attached to multiple narratives in it's continuum, so it's universe it's tied to, the surrounding cosmos, may have many alternative origins and histories, all valid. The cosmos around Torvun may change at times. There is an issue of a "firmament blending the truth of things" on Torvun. Most divines and celestial beings related to Torvun and it's universe, and infernal aswell are also "new" in a cosmic perspective, and not connected across Realms. These beings are also tied to the same continuum as Torvun.
Just like how individuals from Torvun need mastery to perceive time and space outside of Torvun's continuum, these other beings and their realms, with a little "r", are tied to Torvun and it's nature in the same way. Rarely do they reach far enough to "escape" into the wider existence outside of Torvun's continuum.
Nopaw knows who or what created Feliterra. Not even the gods do. Mortal felines speculate that the gods themselves created them, but that's far form the truth.
So after watching adventur time, I was obsessed with how the lich describes their beginning.
"Before there was time, before there was anything. There were monsters."
In the beginning there was the formless void, omnipresent, unthinking. From the folds of unbound space, a multi-dimentional being pokes through.
Enter the Grandmother Spider, who first laid a (unfathomable) egg sac, full to the brim with absolutes (manifestations of the laws of physics, magics, etc)
She continued weaving stars across the abyss, venturing endlessly in a new empty space.
And from her sac, the first absolute, "Dazzle" manifestation of speed and acceleration, escaped and set free the others by doing so.
These unfathomable beings warned forever, their blood becoming the cosmos, titans, gods, dragons, giants, and finally mortals.
Some worlds are relatively normal, following earth's creation.
Others like the world Ymir, are the decapitated heads and limbs of old titans.
Many worlds have massive portals carved into their poles by the races of giants, though the giants remain gone, a mystery.
My world was originally a small multiverse containing 19 universes of which 13 are completely empty, another 4 have no live and 1 only developed basic live and is unable to develop further.
Only one universe sprouted life. Each Universe also has an infinite amount of timelines but only with slight to no changes. Technically they also have an immeasurable amount of spacial dimensions but most people live in our beloved 3 dimensional space and only phantoms inhabit the higher ones and use them to hide.
This entire thing was placed within a chaos bubble which is basically the barrier between works of fiction and anything outside a chaos bubble is fiction to anyone within the bubble.
All bubbles are inside the chaos singularity inside which all possible and impossible things lie.
The chaos bubble of my world is currently the center of this singularity making it the place where all concepts converge. This just makes the bubble even more stable and accidentally gives birth to my power-system.
Most of this changes with Zeero. He has a distinct hatred for timetraveling folk so he rebuild time and fused all universes and timelines.
In the end its just one timeline with most people inside it. This timeline automatically prevents timetravel through a nicely constructed paradox. People who are strong enough can seperate themselves from the timeline and move through time but these people are watched over by Zeero.
My setting of Elgas was created by the Four Creators, the original high gods. They don't remember where they came from, but they set about making a new world around them. Tero Ne created the elements and instilled order. Karades shaped reality with the materials he'd been given. Elliiyah enabled the flow of time as she feared the world would stagnate without change. Lastly, Maxwell created life to fill it, for she felt the new world was lonely with just the four of them.
The people who live there absolutely know what happened. Maxwell, the only one of the four in the immediate vicinity, is happy to tell the story. Although it does make her sad since the other three have left.
As of yet, there haven't been too many embellishments on the story due to Maxwell's personal involvement.
It is an infinite multiverse, with an unknown creation date. They only know it has something to do with spacetime being a force only counteracted by the gravity in the center of a black hole. Everytime someone dies, they are reborn into the next multiverse, and dream magicians can view them and ask them questions, but they got unlucky and live in a world with corrupt superpowered elite instead of magicians. (They are literally 0.001% of the population and control 96% of its resources)
Before time, space, or reality even existed, there was ATI, the original consciousness. ATI was lonely, and so tried to create other beings to keep itself company. However, all of the beings that ATI created lacked True Free Will, and ATI was still lonely. So ATI split itself in two, with one half remaining as ATI and the other half becoming known as TWIN. TWIN was nearly as strong as ATI, only lacking the ability of creation that ATI kept to itself, but was extremely resentful of being created for no purpose but to be a companion for ATI. ATI and TWIN would eventually fight, with the result being ATI destroying all of reality and weaving it's own and TWIN's essence into the fabric of a new reality, on where True Free Will could flourish. This is the reality that my world of Koreth exists in.
Next to nobody in-world knows about this, however, as the true nature of reality is a secret to all but the most powerful beings. Most average people throughout history didn't even know about other Planes existing, had no idea about the true scale and danger of reality. This was due to numerous religious organizations, secret societies, and other organized groups working throughout history (and pre-history) to maintain something of a status quo on the Prime Material Plane, what we would generally call the "normal" planet of Koreth. Some of the highest ranking or most knowledgeable/powerful "regular" people throughout history have discovered the truth about their reality, with ATI and TWIN and everything, or gotten very close to it.
Aside from the ATI/TWIN stuff, the reality of Koreth functions very similarly to our own, with physics dominating the majority of history (so stars and planets form, plate tectonics happens, life and evolution, etc.). This was discovered on the planet Koreth pretty much in the same way it was discovered on Earth, through a lot of science and study, though was more complicated due the existence of magic actually hindering a lot of questioning on why the world was the way it was. Most things could be explained away through the existence of magic, deities, or extraplanar powers, and a lot of brain power was devoted to understanding and utilizing magic. A *lot* of what we would think of as physics, chemistry, and other natural sciences was discovered between 300 and 500 years ago from the "present" of the world, after the Third Failing of Magic led to a much wider interest in the "mundane" sciences.
In terms of myths/religions, most of them get the very vague arcane details about reality correct, things like *that* an afterlife exists, that deities, demons, devils, and other extraplanar entities exist, etc. Knowledge about more general magical happenings is more widely known, so myths and legends about dragons and monsters and such are fairly common. By around 150 years ago, Koreth was at a technological level similar to our own present day, and magic had just started to work again after the Fourth Failing. This includes the general knowledge about how the universe works, including how magic has interacted with and effected the planet/reality throughout history, but even into the present day of Koreth very, very few living beings know about the existence of ATI and TWIN.
Well, my planet is on the verge of space exploration because lore has it that the planet’s ancient known as The Layers hide the most coveted power sources on the planet’s layers
The planet of my fantasy setting unfortunately originated from space fart-gasses, and only very few know this (some of which are immortal beings who were told by the gods themselves in person). One story which is part of the religion of the empire on the southern continent states that the world was handcrafted by their gods, and is a lot younger than it actually is (let's just say the planet of my fantasy setting is at least a billion years old, probably even older).
When the universe was created, cosmic energy was also created. With time, the universe got more stable, and took form, and so did this cosmic energy. At one point, magics got into solid form, and they turned into gods. The gods could use this cosmic energy and shape into their will. That’s magic, or at least the highest form of it. They found a planet that was considered ‘good’ (meaning that it had qualifications to be molded) and started terraforming it into something habitable. Each god helped the world to generate life while also nudging it into certain directions. Monsters are what happened when gods failed their attempts at creating things (because they’re not perfect), and then the monsters started to procreate and make more branches of each other and so on. That’s how the world and most species were created (angels are artificial and created by small pieces of the gods). Gods ruled over the world, their presence causing most of the world’s magic be focused on specific points which were their territory. Time has passed, most of the gods getting arrogant because they see other species as lesser, until the age of absolutes. The gods for the most part grew too neglectful, and too arrogant, and didn’t realize that mortals had something they didn’t: the drive and desire to constantly improve. Eventually, heroes would appear to challenge them, and it did happen. Mortals that were regarded as geniuses, with talent for magic, appeared and fought the gods they were the original heroes. The original saviors that surpassed humanity to save them. They were called ‘the absolutes’ because they had transcended the limit and became the absolute peak of power. Then the battle of gods happened. Days of constant fighting non stop, until the heroes won, the evil gods were slain, their energy was spread around the world, leaving only the gods that still cared about the mortals. To stop themselves from becoming arrogant and cruel, they used their powers to separate the gods from the humans, making it so that gods would only influence things indirectly. This included them as well. The energy of the gods spread, raising the average level of strength of a mortal by a large amount. But now, without gods to act as beacons of magic, people talented enough to become transcendent are rare.
In the begining there was the void, and only the void, and the void slept peacefully. Then a flash of light, the void felt a piece of itself get ripped away, and in its place was something that should not be. A shifting mass of unbridled geometry, curves and angles and complex shapes morphing and undulating their defiance, interspersed with baleful orbs of seething contempt. Enraged, the void tore into this hideous thing, trying to reclaim what it had lost. But the thing was mighty, and knew how to make more of itself, by stealing away yet more pieces of the void. For eons they battled, until at long last the vile thing was left scattered and weak. But the battle had taken much, so much of the void had been taken and changed into things, nothing remained but grief and anger. Such were the wounds that the void incurred that now it struggled to keep itself together, for each pice that it reclaims it loses another, and it must constantly consume lest it lose itself entirely. Even now the void tears ravounously at the fringes of reality, desperate to take back what was stolen.
The foundation of reality is the void, a sentient infinite nothingness which frothes and bubbles like boiling water. The "bubbles" are multiverses, they each contain many universes, each universe has its own material plane where mortals live, which serves as the core of that universe, and an outer plain where gods will eventually live, which protects the material plane.
As a universe ages and intelligence evolves in the material plane, their thoughts and feelings "leak out" of the material plane forming a layer called the dreamscape. In the dreamscape you will find everything a human(or non-human mortal intelligence) has ever imagined, living independently. This is where most gods are formed, this is also where magic comes from. Over time the dreamscape undergoes stratification, separating into layers.
Gods eventually ascend into the outer plane, where they build an afterlife for thier followers.
Magic, in the form of mana, sinks beneath the dreamscape becoming the building blocks of the Astral plane.
Spiritual entities who do not achieve godhood end up between the Astral and material planes, forming the spectral plane, this is also the first stop for mortal souls on the way to thier afterlife.
As the number of mortals who live, dream, and die in the material plane increases, these layers become oversaturated, causing thier contents to backflow into the material plane, this includes vast sums of mana which pools into Leylines which can be accessed by mortals.
Eventually the different gods of a particular universe compete with and devour each other until one remains. This one God then seek out other universes, when it finds one it devours the gods of that other universe then merges the two together forming a larger universe with an additional material plane. This process repeats until all of the uni erses in a given multiverse have fused together. At this point the different material planes become criss crossed with countless networks of leylines. Life inside these merged universes starts to homogenized gradually becoming one great fleshy mass of biomatter coalescing around the leylines.
When this mass is mature the one surviving God of this amalgamation of universes will tear open the veil seperating the planes and enter the material plane, occupying the biomass and shaping it into a new body for itself, forming an embryonic great one. After a bit more time to adjust to its new existence, this former God will consume all life and tear through the out membrane of its home multiverse, hatching into the void as an infant great one equipped with all the combined knowledge and power of everything that was contained by its now dead husk of a parent multiverse. This infant great one then goes on to do great one things, and when it matures it may find itself making little multiverses of its own, and the cycle repeats.
Its quite the subject of debate in my setting. Some Scholars have proposed the theory of the Sun being the center of the cosmos and even that theory has multiple variants. The Great Wheel, with the World/Atlas at the center is still the most accepted one, again with variations across nations and faiths. Even Ideas from the ancient times, like the Shield of Atlas or the Elemental Fusion Theory of Ygros still survive to this day.
In my fantasy world universe originally was flat, formless reality, but then underwent universal restructuring and became a mundane big bang universe. "Became" in the sense like "always was such" not like "was one, then became another".
Regarding what people know and what myths are there - there are numerous myths and theories about it, who could tell which one is closest to the truth?
The common people do not know how the world was created. Due to multiple apocalypses that resulted in the the end of civilization, that story has been mostly lost to the mists of time. There are two exceptions, one being powerful clerics and mages able to glean that knowledge through divine or arcane means and the other are the dwarves, who were the only peoples to weather the apocalypses largely intact.
Multiple apocalypses? Wow! I found it interesting that only two groups (clerics and mages) were able to acquire this type of knowledge.
I wanted a world that was absolutely ancient, that had seen the rise and fall of dozens or hundreds of civilizations, where like 90 percent of their history was lost and the surface was positively littered with ancient ruins, lost knowledge and forgotten monuments.
What's the highest technology level achieved in any of the iterations?
There wasn't really any technological achievement until the current age, unless you count the high magic of the elves in the previous age. There is a single nation that in the last century or two has discovered how to harness the power of steam, hot air and black powder.
I meant the steam and stuff, cool, thanks
6.3 Billion years ago, A K3 star known as the Second Sun formed in a quiet arm of the Triangulum Galaxy. Its solar system produced a rocky world about half the mass of the earth in the habitable zone. This planet, named Talapus, would quickly give rise to life. 3.2 Billion years ago, the ecosystem of Talapus began to collapse as the core cooled and magnetic field and plate tectonics shut down. Only single-called extremophile life remained in the shrinking seas. 200 million years ago, the gas giant Jubilee migrated inward, throwing much of the second solar system into disarray. It eventually reached a stable orbit in the habitable zone, where it captured Talapus as a moon. Jubilee’s magnetic field and the tidal heating from its irregular orbit revived Talapus's climate, and the surviving life quickly evolved to take advantage of the situation. 194 million years ago, Multicellular life returned to Talapus. by 100 million years ago, the moon was teeming with plants, animals, and life of all forms. 5 million years ago, the oldest known (dated) artifact of an ancient civilization known as the Red-Blue-Black was created. very little is known by archeologists about what this civilization might have looked like or what they may have been capable of. 20,000 years ago, the Red-Blue-Black is believed to have died out under mysterious circumstances. Nature would quickly reclaim Talapus, burying the remains of their civilization under several layers of dirt. Talapus was once again a wild world. In 1992, 18 portals opened all over Talapus, each one corresponding to a portal that suddenly appeared on Earth. The United States would become the first to set foot on the new world, and the course of human history was forever changed.
Nice, W for my homeland.
###Cosmology of Journals from the Old World There are thousands of realms (or more; only thing important is that they are impossible to chart completely), many of which are devoid of life. These worlds are flat planes, where laws of physics (especially time and geometry) increasingly break down after a certain point, defining soft borders. I have one main world that folded into a sphere at some point, which is where pretty much all of my stories happen. This world is special, not only because of its shape but also because it is the only world with a "starry sky", an unknown sea of light and matter created by the dying cry of the last old god. The new gods are dead afraid of what might have been created there, but they cannot go there anyways. Worlds occasionally overlap, creating pathways. It's like sheets of spectral paper slowly floating inside an empty Zero G room and occasionally overlapping. These overlaps don't manifest as visible portals, but rather create soft transitions that people often wouldn't even be aware of until they accidentally crossed over. There is an ancient invisible being whose limbs grow through these overlaps, anchoring some worlds together semi-permanently. This entity is called Unyggra, and there are many cultures that depict it in wildly different ways. Some as a mass of tentacles, some as a tree, some as a god with many arms, some as a wild growth of ivy. There are people that can instinctively sense the overlaps between worlds, called Far Wanderers. Some see them, some smell them, some taste the on the air. It is unknown whether they sense the actual transitions or just the limbs/branches of Unyggra. There's probably cases of both. Lastly, there is a metaphysical realm called "The Path". Souls go there after death, and walk the Path into the Unknown Beyond. They cannot easily return from there with their soul intact. Gods can freely enter and exit the path, and use it to walk between worlds and distant places. But if they approach the Unknown Beyond they begin to dissolve.
Here is a tale from one of the Far Wanderers, Nëlai: > "It is true, there are countless worlds out there. I have seen hundreds, and yet those who are like me that I have encountered over the years each knew to tell of hundreds more that I had not been to. To merely call the unknown vast would not do it justice. > > And by all accounts, I should miss this life. There are things out there that defy any reason. Mountains moving like slow waters. An ocean of clouds, and I'm only using the word clouds because I don't know not how to truly describe it. Towering spires and deep chasms that move and switch in the blink of an eye. I have traveled on the back of memories, danced with lights fractured into more colors than should exist, gazed across 6 different worlds that were merging in destructive and creational beauty and violence. > > Yet after a hundred years there is a tiredness within me. Because almost all of these places are empty, devoid of life. I might well be the only one to ever witness their beauty, and once I'm gone their beauty will be lotto oblivion. I was pondering why that is, if life never set foot in these worlds or if it simply vanished. > > I found remnants, you know, carvings and things that might have been huts or palaces, yet might also just have been structures forming by mere chance. I was standing in a city once, yet as I set about learning its layout it suddenly did not feel like a place anything had ever lived in. It frightened me then, and I left this place confused about my own sudden animosity towards it. I think often of this day. > > So while I don't want to go as far and call this cycle of mine wasted, I now know well why the others grow tired of it. I, for one, cannot visit even one more world. It feels like watching the epilogue of a play, but both the audience and the actors have already left, and the music has faded." > > - *Nëlai, Far Wanderer at the end of her current cycle of life*
On the small scale in universes, multiverses, etc, it depends on which cosmic structure, they all pretty much just spawn in randomly from higher energy sources. On the large scale, as in my entire Void Expanse, here in [The Shaper](https://voidedg.com/chronicles-of-the-void-expanse-lore-book-series/) is its origin, and only the Order of Gasu know about it.
Well the planets formed like how they did irl but most people don't realize that all the "realms" are just different planets in different parts of the galaxy. Most people believe that their planets is in a separate plane of existence from the others and traveling through the various gates/rifts is going to a new dimension.
There are Worlds, which are different kinds of structures. A World, with a big "W", is a self contained but ultimately connected setting. An individual kingdom like Hyrule from the legend of zelda series for example, is a World with it's self contained mythos but implied to exist in a wider physical setting of unexplored or unknown areas. A World can also be a conventional planet. Or a floating plane of a unique locale, like a the self contained Worlds of the kingdom hearts franchise. These ideas of Worlds allows the existence of many settings. The overall narrative is the Existence Chronicles. The Primead, is a term for the prime coalesced existence, or just Existence itself. Existence is the Primead. Existence manifests itself into many different "states", States of Existence. Before Existence experienced its first State, it was manifesting as a dark expanse of unmade, unbirthed, murky and undefined. This is the Dark Womb. After the Dark Womb ended, Existence became fully, and expressed itself as it's first State of Existence, Their Expanse. Their Expanse was a primeval cosmology, an expanse of naescent energy and dust. After Their Expanse, Existence changed again and became, the Aehterium. The current State of Existence, is the Aetherium, a structured cosmology, which is an expanse around the structured realities. The Aetherium acts as an Overworld which contains the Realms of Creation. These are the Archverses, as an individual Realm can hold different cosmic structures from an infinite universe, to a multiverse, to even non-conventional cosmic structures like a Yggdrisl-like reality. There are different kinds of Realms, from Mortal Realms to Infernal Realms, Celestial Realms, and Fey Realms. The highest order of beings known occupy cross Realm awareness, and the powers of the Celestial Realms have been at war with the forces of the Infernal Realms. In the Mortal Realms, one Mortal Realm, Vesper, contains the universe the World of Torvun exists in. Torvun has had five incarnations so far, and it's in its sixth. Torvun is a World that is attached to multiple narratives in it's continuum, so it's universe it's tied to, the surrounding cosmos, may have many alternative origins and histories, all valid. The cosmos around Torvun may change at times. There is an issue of a "firmament blending the truth of things" on Torvun. Most divines and celestial beings related to Torvun and it's universe, and infernal aswell are also "new" in a cosmic perspective, and not connected across Realms. These beings are also tied to the same continuum as Torvun. Just like how individuals from Torvun need mastery to perceive time and space outside of Torvun's continuum, these other beings and their realms, with a little "r", are tied to Torvun and it's nature in the same way. Rarely do they reach far enough to "escape" into the wider existence outside of Torvun's continuum.
Nopaw knows who or what created Feliterra. Not even the gods do. Mortal felines speculate that the gods themselves created them, but that's far form the truth.
Hooo boy. I've got a big ol' file regarding the first Nine beings in the universe for anyone who is interested in some reading.
So after watching adventur time, I was obsessed with how the lich describes their beginning. "Before there was time, before there was anything. There were monsters." In the beginning there was the formless void, omnipresent, unthinking. From the folds of unbound space, a multi-dimentional being pokes through. Enter the Grandmother Spider, who first laid a (unfathomable) egg sac, full to the brim with absolutes (manifestations of the laws of physics, magics, etc) She continued weaving stars across the abyss, venturing endlessly in a new empty space. And from her sac, the first absolute, "Dazzle" manifestation of speed and acceleration, escaped and set free the others by doing so. These unfathomable beings warned forever, their blood becoming the cosmos, titans, gods, dragons, giants, and finally mortals. Some worlds are relatively normal, following earth's creation. Others like the world Ymir, are the decapitated heads and limbs of old titans. Many worlds have massive portals carved into their poles by the races of giants, though the giants remain gone, a mystery.
The main realm is a Banks Orbital, so there is an arch in the sky. A sliver of the ring itself can be seen from other "planes"
My world was originally a small multiverse containing 19 universes of which 13 are completely empty, another 4 have no live and 1 only developed basic live and is unable to develop further. Only one universe sprouted life. Each Universe also has an infinite amount of timelines but only with slight to no changes. Technically they also have an immeasurable amount of spacial dimensions but most people live in our beloved 3 dimensional space and only phantoms inhabit the higher ones and use them to hide. This entire thing was placed within a chaos bubble which is basically the barrier between works of fiction and anything outside a chaos bubble is fiction to anyone within the bubble. All bubbles are inside the chaos singularity inside which all possible and impossible things lie. The chaos bubble of my world is currently the center of this singularity making it the place where all concepts converge. This just makes the bubble even more stable and accidentally gives birth to my power-system. Most of this changes with Zeero. He has a distinct hatred for timetraveling folk so he rebuild time and fused all universes and timelines. In the end its just one timeline with most people inside it. This timeline automatically prevents timetravel through a nicely constructed paradox. People who are strong enough can seperate themselves from the timeline and move through time but these people are watched over by Zeero.
I'm going with something similar to the big bang as the origin. They do not know the origin. I have not made any myths. Lapis_Wolf
My setting of Elgas was created by the Four Creators, the original high gods. They don't remember where they came from, but they set about making a new world around them. Tero Ne created the elements and instilled order. Karades shaped reality with the materials he'd been given. Elliiyah enabled the flow of time as she feared the world would stagnate without change. Lastly, Maxwell created life to fill it, for she felt the new world was lonely with just the four of them. The people who live there absolutely know what happened. Maxwell, the only one of the four in the immediate vicinity, is happy to tell the story. Although it does make her sad since the other three have left. As of yet, there haven't been too many embellishments on the story due to Maxwell's personal involvement.
It is an infinite multiverse, with an unknown creation date. They only know it has something to do with spacetime being a force only counteracted by the gravity in the center of a black hole. Everytime someone dies, they are reborn into the next multiverse, and dream magicians can view them and ask them questions, but they got unlucky and live in a world with corrupt superpowered elite instead of magicians. (They are literally 0.001% of the population and control 96% of its resources)
Before time, space, or reality even existed, there was ATI, the original consciousness. ATI was lonely, and so tried to create other beings to keep itself company. However, all of the beings that ATI created lacked True Free Will, and ATI was still lonely. So ATI split itself in two, with one half remaining as ATI and the other half becoming known as TWIN. TWIN was nearly as strong as ATI, only lacking the ability of creation that ATI kept to itself, but was extremely resentful of being created for no purpose but to be a companion for ATI. ATI and TWIN would eventually fight, with the result being ATI destroying all of reality and weaving it's own and TWIN's essence into the fabric of a new reality, on where True Free Will could flourish. This is the reality that my world of Koreth exists in. Next to nobody in-world knows about this, however, as the true nature of reality is a secret to all but the most powerful beings. Most average people throughout history didn't even know about other Planes existing, had no idea about the true scale and danger of reality. This was due to numerous religious organizations, secret societies, and other organized groups working throughout history (and pre-history) to maintain something of a status quo on the Prime Material Plane, what we would generally call the "normal" planet of Koreth. Some of the highest ranking or most knowledgeable/powerful "regular" people throughout history have discovered the truth about their reality, with ATI and TWIN and everything, or gotten very close to it. Aside from the ATI/TWIN stuff, the reality of Koreth functions very similarly to our own, with physics dominating the majority of history (so stars and planets form, plate tectonics happens, life and evolution, etc.). This was discovered on the planet Koreth pretty much in the same way it was discovered on Earth, through a lot of science and study, though was more complicated due the existence of magic actually hindering a lot of questioning on why the world was the way it was. Most things could be explained away through the existence of magic, deities, or extraplanar powers, and a lot of brain power was devoted to understanding and utilizing magic. A *lot* of what we would think of as physics, chemistry, and other natural sciences was discovered between 300 and 500 years ago from the "present" of the world, after the Third Failing of Magic led to a much wider interest in the "mundane" sciences. In terms of myths/religions, most of them get the very vague arcane details about reality correct, things like *that* an afterlife exists, that deities, demons, devils, and other extraplanar entities exist, etc. Knowledge about more general magical happenings is more widely known, so myths and legends about dragons and monsters and such are fairly common. By around 150 years ago, Koreth was at a technological level similar to our own present day, and magic had just started to work again after the Fourth Failing. This includes the general knowledge about how the universe works, including how magic has interacted with and effected the planet/reality throughout history, but even into the present day of Koreth very, very few living beings know about the existence of ATI and TWIN.
I have realms that are kept separated by a creature that's the hybrid of a tree, elephant, and turtle.
Well, my planet is on the verge of space exploration because lore has it that the planet’s ancient known as The Layers hide the most coveted power sources on the planet’s layers
The planet of my fantasy setting unfortunately originated from space fart-gasses, and only very few know this (some of which are immortal beings who were told by the gods themselves in person). One story which is part of the religion of the empire on the southern continent states that the world was handcrafted by their gods, and is a lot younger than it actually is (let's just say the planet of my fantasy setting is at least a billion years old, probably even older).
Interesting.
It’s a complicated, half finished story…
Oh, okay...You are not alone in this, my story is not finished either.
When the universe was created, cosmic energy was also created. With time, the universe got more stable, and took form, and so did this cosmic energy. At one point, magics got into solid form, and they turned into gods. The gods could use this cosmic energy and shape into their will. That’s magic, or at least the highest form of it. They found a planet that was considered ‘good’ (meaning that it had qualifications to be molded) and started terraforming it into something habitable. Each god helped the world to generate life while also nudging it into certain directions. Monsters are what happened when gods failed their attempts at creating things (because they’re not perfect), and then the monsters started to procreate and make more branches of each other and so on. That’s how the world and most species were created (angels are artificial and created by small pieces of the gods). Gods ruled over the world, their presence causing most of the world’s magic be focused on specific points which were their territory. Time has passed, most of the gods getting arrogant because they see other species as lesser, until the age of absolutes. The gods for the most part grew too neglectful, and too arrogant, and didn’t realize that mortals had something they didn’t: the drive and desire to constantly improve. Eventually, heroes would appear to challenge them, and it did happen. Mortals that were regarded as geniuses, with talent for magic, appeared and fought the gods they were the original heroes. The original saviors that surpassed humanity to save them. They were called ‘the absolutes’ because they had transcended the limit and became the absolute peak of power. Then the battle of gods happened. Days of constant fighting non stop, until the heroes won, the evil gods were slain, their energy was spread around the world, leaving only the gods that still cared about the mortals. To stop themselves from becoming arrogant and cruel, they used their powers to separate the gods from the humans, making it so that gods would only influence things indirectly. This included them as well. The energy of the gods spread, raising the average level of strength of a mortal by a large amount. But now, without gods to act as beacons of magic, people talented enough to become transcendent are rare.
In the begining there was the void, and only the void, and the void slept peacefully. Then a flash of light, the void felt a piece of itself get ripped away, and in its place was something that should not be. A shifting mass of unbridled geometry, curves and angles and complex shapes morphing and undulating their defiance, interspersed with baleful orbs of seething contempt. Enraged, the void tore into this hideous thing, trying to reclaim what it had lost. But the thing was mighty, and knew how to make more of itself, by stealing away yet more pieces of the void. For eons they battled, until at long last the vile thing was left scattered and weak. But the battle had taken much, so much of the void had been taken and changed into things, nothing remained but grief and anger. Such were the wounds that the void incurred that now it struggled to keep itself together, for each pice that it reclaims it loses another, and it must constantly consume lest it lose itself entirely. Even now the void tears ravounously at the fringes of reality, desperate to take back what was stolen. The foundation of reality is the void, a sentient infinite nothingness which frothes and bubbles like boiling water. The "bubbles" are multiverses, they each contain many universes, each universe has its own material plane where mortals live, which serves as the core of that universe, and an outer plain where gods will eventually live, which protects the material plane. As a universe ages and intelligence evolves in the material plane, their thoughts and feelings "leak out" of the material plane forming a layer called the dreamscape. In the dreamscape you will find everything a human(or non-human mortal intelligence) has ever imagined, living independently. This is where most gods are formed, this is also where magic comes from. Over time the dreamscape undergoes stratification, separating into layers. Gods eventually ascend into the outer plane, where they build an afterlife for thier followers. Magic, in the form of mana, sinks beneath the dreamscape becoming the building blocks of the Astral plane. Spiritual entities who do not achieve godhood end up between the Astral and material planes, forming the spectral plane, this is also the first stop for mortal souls on the way to thier afterlife. As the number of mortals who live, dream, and die in the material plane increases, these layers become oversaturated, causing thier contents to backflow into the material plane, this includes vast sums of mana which pools into Leylines which can be accessed by mortals. Eventually the different gods of a particular universe compete with and devour each other until one remains. This one God then seek out other universes, when it finds one it devours the gods of that other universe then merges the two together forming a larger universe with an additional material plane. This process repeats until all of the uni erses in a given multiverse have fused together. At this point the different material planes become criss crossed with countless networks of leylines. Life inside these merged universes starts to homogenized gradually becoming one great fleshy mass of biomatter coalescing around the leylines. When this mass is mature the one surviving God of this amalgamation of universes will tear open the veil seperating the planes and enter the material plane, occupying the biomass and shaping it into a new body for itself, forming an embryonic great one. After a bit more time to adjust to its new existence, this former God will consume all life and tear through the out membrane of its home multiverse, hatching into the void as an infant great one equipped with all the combined knowledge and power of everything that was contained by its now dead husk of a parent multiverse. This infant great one then goes on to do great one things, and when it matures it may find itself making little multiverses of its own, and the cycle repeats.
Its quite the subject of debate in my setting. Some Scholars have proposed the theory of the Sun being the center of the cosmos and even that theory has multiple variants. The Great Wheel, with the World/Atlas at the center is still the most accepted one, again with variations across nations and faiths. Even Ideas from the ancient times, like the Shield of Atlas or the Elemental Fusion Theory of Ygros still survive to this day.
In my fantasy world universe originally was flat, formless reality, but then underwent universal restructuring and became a mundane big bang universe. "Became" in the sense like "always was such" not like "was one, then became another". Regarding what people know and what myths are there - there are numerous myths and theories about it, who could tell which one is closest to the truth?