the Mythologia Elyden - part 2

Part 1

“...The Shaper saw what It had made and saw an emptiness. That the entirety of creation; the / Material Plane and the Firmament Above and the Atramenta Below; was a hollow void saddened It / greatly. In such sadness were born dreams of fulfilment, a vision of Perfection that would crown the Three / Realms in finality: life. Nevermore would the Three Realms be null and vacant. The Material would become / a womb to propagators of life, great beings; entities that embodied life and vigour, health and fortitude. / The miracle of life would come to symbolise the Three Realms and, at their heart, the Material Plane would / thrive as the throne of these gargantuans. Thus were created the Mesochthons. Thus was the first mistake wrought.”

The Mythologia Elyden. 2: 7–14

The Shaper saw what its dreams and visions had wrought, and knew that the Sea of Chaos could never be the same again. With the separation of the Atramenta and the Firmament had come something unexpected; something new – the Material – between them. The Atramenta and the Firmament were scions of chaos; one delicate and ephemeral, the other coarse and persistent, yet neither was rooted in substantiality; for that was the domain of the Material.

The Shaper did wander through the unending expanse of the Material and did feel something that had never been before – it saw emptiness in a way that only the Material Plane could illuminate. In that emptiness did The Shaper feel an aching void. And in that void did grow a great sadness, as though the emptiness of the Material clawed at it, yearning for a fulfilment that did not yet exist.

In such a time, where the totality of existence was the Three Realms of the Material, the Firmament above, and the Atramenta below, The Shaper did weep. Its tears fell to the Material, where they lay amid coarse unshaped fields of potential, awaiting laws of nature to affect them – for the Material was not as it is now, a place governed by laws and edicts: it was yet in its raw form; spilling with possibility.

And so did the tears remain there, taking root in a primordial fashion, yearning for a life that was within sight yet out of reach.

And as eternity meandered about it, The Shaper saw those tears, their struggle for life in a realm that forever seemed to tease them with its promised bounty. The Shaper saw the desire in those tears, the way they had taken root, biding their time for the right conditions in which to flourish and spread and fill the Material Plane with a measure of hope and life. Their dreams, fed for the first time with promises and whispers of a future where life spread unbound, gave The Shaper strength. In its dreams, the Material was more than a barren playground for beings as yet unborn – it was the heart within which stirred all that The Shaper had dreamt during Their first Stirring. In it was the future, the result of Their Great Shaping; the purpose behind its creation of the Material. The Shaper stirred at the dream, knowing then the importance of the Great Shaping that lay before and behind it until the end of days.

In the sanctuary of the Material, The Shaper bestowed its primordial emotions and passions into those tears, bringing the first primaeval life into the Material: the so-called Mesochthons of the First Age; the First Beings to walk the Material.

But not all was as it should have been, for The Shaper’s hand, the hand of one who knew not the meaning of physical beauty, the experience of true emotion, or the joy that came from natural birth, could not bring beauty, emotion or life to the Material, which was the scion of two timeless, thoughtless entities. It was a vast excruciating place; a wasteland strewn with what would later become the building blocks of physicality and life but which, in those primaeval days, was little more than a morass of chaos; fields of unending matter without form or purpose; a maddening cradle of lights, textures, sounds, sensations. It was bedlam incarnate and nothing could withstand such bedlam unchanged.

Born as they were of The Shaper’s tears – symbols of sorrow and disappointment – and the maddening traits of the unbound Material, the Mesochthons became creatures of chaos, despair, pain and suffering. They tore up the Material Plane in their agony, unable to comprehend the chaos into which they had been born, the torture they perceived themselves to have been created to endure. What little order had existed in the Material was shattered by their birth-pangs, the desert-like beauty of their home crushed by their unbridled destruction.

And so, did the first tortured life appear on the Material Plane.

“...And behold, in the wake of beings forgotten came forth the Two-and-Twenty, each a master of their own / craft, each a force unto their own, each a facet of their Primogenitor. From the realm-that-was-not they came / into the realm-that-was-to-become. They shaped and crafted the light and darkness into countless / spheres of wonders and disparity, yet one sphere shone amongst the many, one shimmered with a glimpse of a / future that was not to be denied, or sullied, or forsaken. That sphere was Elyden, daughter of the / Two-and-Twenty, the cradle of lives yet unlived and desires yet undreamt.”

The Mythologia Elyden. 3: 13–18

The Shaper saw what had become of the Material and decried it to be an abomination to its Plan, its dreams and visions of the perfect world. Seeing the pain the Mesochthons were enduring, the way their very presence polluted the Material, The Shaper saw the error of its ways. How could it, an entity to whom birth and the joy of physical beauty were unknown, ever hope to impart life into the material? It simply could not. Such an undertaking could only be done by those who had been created through emotion, by those who had been created, been born.

Even as the Mesochthons ravaged the Material Plane, so did The Shaper ponder. It would create beings of great power – simulacra, each of which would bear a particular facet of The Shaper’s essence, desires, and wants. And through their actions it would shape the material into its perfect image. They would be its craftsmen, its servants, and above all its Children – the Two-and-Twenty.

The Shaper gave charge of the Material Plane to these Two-and-Twenty beings that had been fashioned from different measures of the Atramenta and Firmament, each with a spark of The Shaper’s own divinity. Two-and-Twenty workers, forevermore called the Demiurges, the Children of The Shaper, would take the Material Plane and shape it in the name of their Primogenitor.

Together, the Demiurges hunted and captured the Mesochthons, imprisoning them deep beneath the Material Plane in gaols created by Synchthonith and Vorropohaiah as their siblings creating a fresh canvas on which they could work.

Together the Two-and-Twenty were a mirror to the Shaper, yet individually they were that same mirror, shattered into 22 shards, each of which reflected a different aspect of The Shaper - born from the same mould, yet cast in different materials. The materials were The Shaper’s thoughts and wishes, its emotions and dreams, some universal amongst the Two-and-Twenty, others unique to one or two of the siblings. Thusly, each of the Two-and-Twenty was of a distinct character, of desires that none of the others could fully comprehend or see, or hope to ever emulate.

Together, the Demiurges imparted their emotions and thoughts upon the Material Plane, creating, amongst countless others, the Sphere of Elyden, suspended in the void that was the mixture of the Firmament above and the Atramenta below. Some orbs clustered about each other like families, others hung suspended alone. Some were vagabonds in the void, while others remained stoically until the end. The Orbs of Life had been shaped. And with the shaping of the Orbs of Life came time and space to a realm that until then had been without time or space.

The Demiurges both drew and lost essence through this Shaping of Creation; losing, as a man who weeps or loves too hard loses strength; drawing, as a man who sees completed a work of art created by his hands draws satisfaction.

The Shaper saw the love the Demiurges imparted into their work and was pleased. Before it stood a time of slow propagation and meticulous growth, devoted creation and distinct birth, shaping and crafting. Come was a time of Creation. Come was a time of Life. Come was Elyden.

The Shaper had seen the Demiurges work in its dreams, and saw what they done as the same. However, the Dream of Life was not yet complete, indeed, it had only begun. There could not be life until the Material Plane was perfected to accept such a responsibility. But The Shaper was pleased with its Children’s work and created seven-times Two-and-Twenty seeds, planting them within the earthy skin of the newly created Elyden, which was the most brilliant of the Orbs.

Cocooned in a balancing shell between the tranquil Firmament Above and the roiling Atramenta Below, these Seeds of Dusk that were Sown at Dawn would one day give birth to immortal creatures that would, in the fullness of time, reap the rewards of the Demiurges’ work. But only when perfection, and balance, and the work of the Two-and-Twenty was complete.

And so, the Two-and-Twenty pods were sown, each bearing seven seeds. Each pod was a facsimile of both The Shaper and one of the Demiurges, in whose image they were created. Thus the seeds, when germinated into full life, would be the Demiurges’ children; the grandchildren of The Shaper: the Immortals.

And The Shaper spoke, its multitudinous voice echoing throughout the Firmament Above and the Atramenta Below and the Material Plane Between, and resounding within the ears of its children, the Two-and-Twenty, “Our Great Work, the First Act of Shaping – the creation of the Firmament Above and the Atramenta Below and the Material Plane Between – is complete.

“Our Great Dream, the Second Shaping – the birth of the Demiurges Two-and-Twenty, Our Children – is complete.

“Your Love and Toil, the Third Shaping – the crafting of the Material Plane into the Orbs of Life – is complete.

“Our Great Plan, the Fourth Shaping – the sowing of the immortal seeds – is complete.

“The Sea of Chaos is no more – contained, changed, shaped into something more. Continue Our work, Children, and create perfection for the seeds to inherit. The Great Shaping is done, your Great Work now begins.”

And so was life conceived in the Material. And with conception came the end of a timeless age that was thereafter known as the Ages of Shaping.

Part 3