History of Tarril

Epoch 1: Impetus

What is known for certain about the first age, the age of the inert is that, at some point during its twilight, four cardinal tendencies existed.  forces which today, we scholars decree, are called the primarch forces.

Though we cannot know the exact nature of these primarch forces in prior history, and while it is certain that they were perhaps tangible and physical in stages of our universe’s history, today they are much more subtle. Now, these are not deities, these are not beings, they have no size, shape, or any physical qualities that may be detected by any modern methods. They are metaphysical tendencies and yearnings of our universal structure, and we know that they exist thanks to the many deities, phenomena, and subordinate forces which exist as derivatives of these four. Most importantly, we have the three (and possibly four) children of these primarch forces, the primarch gods, direct testaments and descendants of these progenitors who loudly claimed to be the direct inheritors of the primarch’s legacy. The adventures and histories of these chief deities will be discussed later.

Foremost, there existed Locus prime, she who guarantees space, who decrees that the universe be given a height, length, and width.

Then there existed Tempus prime, they who designate a fourth dimension of time, and guarantee that all time must press onward into the future.

Then there existed Chaos prime, who insured that entropy be the prevailing state of things; anything distinct is neutralized under Chaos’ preference. The only state which is tolerable to Chaos prime is nonexistence.

Chaos, by far, was the most assertive and dominating of these primarch forces, the only one to take initiative in boldly deciding that there would be one thing in the universe: nothing. Thanks to chaos, nothing is the base state of the universe.

Nyxus:

It is not to any of the above forces that we owe our prodigal, indescribably complex universe to. Indeed, under their custody, the universe is briefly and brutishly described, for there is nothing in it. Nea, it is the pygmy Nyxus who, at some point or another, gained consciousness, and decided to become the antagonist of Chaos. It is ontologically certain that Nyxus has been, is, and will forever be the adversary of chaos, his exact opposite, and it is incumbent upon this pygmy to be all things which Chaos is not.

Most curiously, Nyxus is a paradox of himself (this is explained by some scholars as a consequence of Chaos’ insistence that it be completely separate from Nyxus, therefore Nyxus desires to completely subsume Chaos), because Nyxus plainly seeks what the elders once called Taxikaos, that expression of chaos which is ordered so sublimely as to create order. This is because Chaos is, as mentioned earlier, the only primarch force with impetus. The ability to do anything may only be derived from Chaos, the great doer, and Nyxus, the weakest of the primarch forces, has relied on Chaos or one of his derivatives in every turn for Nyxus’ own ends.

The first instance of this, the moment in which the Universe entered the second age, occurred when Nyxus budged Chaos in such a way to interact with Locus, creating a rift in it’s space continuum from which matter began to bleed into the universe. Chaos attempted to destroy this first matter, aether, and yet the attempt was doubly futile. Chaos had not the power to undo the being of the matter at a rate to undo that at which matter spilled into time and space, and so it chose to neuter the matter in certain ways, choosing to whittle down and degrade aether into either earth, fire, wind, or water. This is the first choice a primarch force had ever made, and thanks to exposure and interaction with Nyxus, the pygmy’s sentience was rubbing off onto the first beings.

The Creation of Magic, the subordinate forces, and the development of sentience

Nyxus interacted with Locus and Tempus to create the first axioms to unfurl time and space, creating the first Phi magic. Nyxus encapsulated the bitter nihilism and destructive tendencies of Chaos into the first Pi magic (Nyxus would later derive from Pi the forces of good and evil). Nyxus encapsulated the growing clout the Primal Force’s possessed in creating and destroying matter in space into the first Xi magic. Nyxus encapsulated the swinging emotions of the first Primal forces’ thoughts into the first Chi magic. From these magics, the first theories of physical laws (such as gravity, the invention of electromagnetic spectra from concentrations of energy, etc).

Magic proved an important invention for the gods, though. On pockets of planar earth floating throughout space, the first mana pools of these magic coalesced with leftover sentience produced by the primarch forces (and a growing contingency of subordinate forces) and formed into the first corpses of elves, which in some cases lived for very brief periods of time, bringing notice to the dull sentiences of the gods.

At this point, exposure to Nyxus and the sentiences of one another cause the primarch and subordinate forces to act and behave like formless gods, quarrelling among themselves. The force of Law, Nomos, an advocate for the developing universe, regularly denounced Chaos. Bono, an expression of goodwill and benevolence of his seven prime virtues, is perpetually opposed to Malo, an expression of malfeasance and ill-will of his seven prime sins. Many others are created, aided in a mutual rivalry by the intervention of nyxus, and soon, subordinate forces to metaphysical concepts are created, the first gods of love, war, arguably so that these first subordinate forces can have anthropomorphic manifestations of ideals with which to petulantly debate over.

The Council, it’s repercussions, and the creation of the Universe as we know it

It is the period in which the council of the primarch forces is held. Chaos, who had taken to recruiting the favor of the other primarch forces (as he ought to, chaos is the most rawly proactive of the primarchs) convinced them that the creation of these tertiary subordinate forces of abstract ideas. Furthermore, Chaos was compelling in his case for a return to neutrality, so that in the end most of the subordinate forces of the universe gained Chaos’ self loathing, and the rest were coerced begrudgingly by the vile pain Chaos’ and his lackeys promised to inflict in their deaths.

A vote was passed in this council, documented by Azazel, the first cleric and custodian of the forces, who drafted a plan of action for the enactment of the reversion to Chaos that was to go underway. It was called the Ingrafi. In understanding the limits of their powers, the forces would use their willpower to temporarily go against the tendencies which dictated the moving of the 1st age universe, which was at this point composed mostly of small, astral islands of developing, complex ecosystems, and shape the entire universe to their image so that it would be most efficiently destroyed. The fire was conjoined into the stars, the water was frozen into the comets and asteroids, the air was coalesced into the gas giants, and the earth was congealed into the planets. All things were designed for a destruction and disintegration to bounce off of one astral body to another like a giant game of billiards, and the cue ball was a relatively small planet which was called Tarril in the tongue of the gods.

Tarril, in it’s infancy, was a small, elliptoid ball that was built around an aether center core, a mantle of the four elements, and an outer layer of earth, with the dermis coated in an ocean. We know much of the early composition of the planets thanks to The Phasmagora, an autobiography of the life of the God Kronos and the holy text of his followers. On a small, diamond shaped island, which is today Cyprus, there were three landmarks created by the gods.

Primal Tarill

First, there was Yggrdass, the tree of knowledge and the first plant. It was a mass of wood which varied in quality in different areas, appearing as an oak on some branches, a date palm on others, and a coniferous tree on others, an amalgamation of all of the plants which now inhabit Tarril today. It’s trunk was 15 thousand cubits in diameter, and it rose to a height of 100 thousand cubits at the apex of its canopy. It was designed to be the beating heart of a circulatory system of magic that flowed throughout Tarril, the arteries would later become the leylines with which magic is distributed around modern Tarril. It was located on the eastern vertex of the Island

Then, there was Parabolo, the garden of corpses, on the island’s Western vertex, an open chamber with which to throne the vessels that would house the diabolical consciousnesses that the forces developed. Three Thrones would house the primarch forces, with Chaos at the head, Tempus to his left hand, and locus to his right. These effigies were shaped like the Elves, who were despised as manifestations of the wretched irascibility which the forces would not experience in their dumb, unintelligent nonexistences.

Then, there was Smilios, a marble column 7500 cubits in diameter and 350 thousand cubits tall, decorated at the base with an engraving of the Ingrafi at the base and a chronicle of the universe’s history engraved in deep relief along the side. It’s purpose was to act as the billiard stick with which Tarril would be struck, slammed directly into the core of Tarril and causing it to explode, setting off a chain reaction of explosions that would resound around the universe, reverting everything back into its old state.

The stage was set. Azazel enacted the ritual of the rapture, a mass migration of the power, essence, and sentience of the forces to their new vessels in the garden of the corpses. Everything was transferred to these vessels except for the prime tendencies of the three primarch forces that would need to be run at the Universe’s inertia, and a trace amount of sentience for Chaos prime, enough so that he might strike Smilios into Tarril’s core in the proper way.

Chaos manifested in the sky, and nearly punched Smilios into the ground, but, as it is remarked in the opening text of the Phasmagora:

In my first view of the sky, I saw a manifestation of Chaos over that great, Earth shattering chisel, and lo, I saw it gaze unto the visage of his vessel in enamorment and conflict. It seemed that a compassion had been left with he who was tasked with destroying his son. Chaos dissipated. By his hand, our world would not be sundered.

It seemed that Nyxus had caused a misstep of Chaos, leaving in Chaos enough vanity so that it could not bring an end to itself. This marked a transition from the first age to the second age.

Eon 2: Regnos Noumenous

With a new found sentience, the Gods, as they would soon come to name themselves, would
Wander the primordial island of Cyprus and make it their garden. They planted and cultivated grafts of the Yggdrass into the ground, making the island fertile, and the deities many children would become the first living organisms of the world.

Rapidly, the three gods in the largest seats at the garden of the corpses were quickly deemed the leaders of the bunch. They claimed descendance from the primarch forces, were the most powerful of the gods, and could climb the treacherous branches of the Yggdrass to eat the virgin fruit of the tree, imbuing them with incredible magic and custodianship of Tarill. There was Ouranos, son of Chaos, who on eating the fruit of the Yggdrass, gained the powers of the astral bodies. There was his wife Gaia, Daughter of Locus, who on eating the fruit of the Yggdrass gained power over all of Tarril. Finally, there was Kronus, the first wizard, a hermaphrodite who, on eating from the fruit of the virgin, became one not only with time, but with all magic. These primarch gods were the only ones permitted to dine on the fruit of the Ygdrass, and to dine on the fruit of the tree was certain death.

The days of these gods were rarely varied. Kronus sat on the northern end of the island, experimenting with magics, chronicling their days, and devoting their time to codifying the laws of magic.

Ouranous would leap each day and meditate at the top of Smilios, taking in the energy of the sun, and at night would descend to have intercourse with his wife Gaia.

Gaia would give birth to a child each day, and would spend her hours raising her growing progeny as well as entertaining the other gods.

The Progeny of Ouranous, and the commencement of Titanomachy

The children were all impeccably powerful and prodigious, at least as strong as the lower gods in their maturity, and the strongest would grow to enormous heights and powers to match the gods. Gaia would give some of her power over the earth to these children, who would become known as the titans. To house the titans, the first continents were created as playgrounds where they could endlessly spar and carouse with one another.

Sometimes, the titans would be slain inadvertently, either throw play, exhaustion, or neglect. Their bodies were shot into the cosmos to rest among the primarch forces which dictated the universe, and while the practice was respected, the corpse-vessels absorbing remnants of chaotic sentience. These corpses would mutate into the gods of the elder mythos.

The progeny of the Primarchs multiplied rapidly, and Earth began to approximate, over the course of many millenia, to adopt the form that it resembles today, with its continents, oceans, and caverns dug up through the games of the Titans. Some settlements were formed here, too, and around leylines the first Tarrilean elves were manifested into existence, forming numerous colonies around magical areas, but the most notable one atop what is today the region of France. Some of those who were born on Cyprus ruled over the elves, and their sovereign became the first king, Nomos. As a representative of his people, he regularly decried the tyranny of the haughty olympians, and quickly drew the ire of Ouranous, who, after Nomos insulted Ouranous too personally, called for his children to obliterate their civilization. The only survivor of the carnage was Hermes, who warped himself in time to a small, rocky satellite close to the sun in time to avoid the destruction.

It was at this point that a particularly powerful string of children reached adolescence and implored their mother Gaia for an aspect of Tarril to reign over. Gaia confessed that she had no more power over Tarril to give to her children, and it was this denial of birthright and the carnage against the Nomons that caused them to agree to rebel. Working together, they climbed the yggdrass with combined effort and, reaching it’s canopy, ate the virgin fruit of the yggdrass, usurping power over Tarril. Hestia gained power over civilizations, Hades was granted the domain of the Svartal, the many caverns beneath Tarril. Poseidon was granted power over the ocean, and Demeter over the grassy plains of the earth. Whereas Gaia had been a mother to all of the gods, Hera, the maiden, would become the mother of all mortal life. The effects of this deification were immediately felt, and the gods and titans recoiled as half of their power was wrestled away from them by the feast of these renegades. Then, these gods would escape the Yggdrass and make flight to the peloponnesian peninsula, setting up a court to rival cyprus atop mount Olympus. Hence, they would be dubbed the Olympians. Quickly, many of the weakest children of the Titans would join alliance with the Olympians, or would at least show sympathy towards their cause.

Titanomachy

On listening to the news of the new Olypmians’ treason, Ouranous truly embraced a hatred of all of the progeny, and came to the conclusion that only he and his wife would be fit to live on planet Tarril. First, he vasectomized himself so that he would never again give birth to another batch of mistakes which might eat of the tree of knowledge. He became the general of a counter-offensive against the Olympians, mustering the strength of his Titans to punish the unruly children.

To the north of Macedonia, in what is now Carpathia, he ordered the Titan Iapetus to uproot a leyline of Pi energy, desecrating parts of the region, causing the tainted land to spew forth horrendous, undead abominations. The first eggs of the mysterious, sentient reptile Wurm, who lived in the elemental mantle of Tarril, were shot through the crust, giving birth to the first draconids. The Metallics aligned themselves with the olympians, whereas the chromatics did so with the Titans. The many battles in the Aegean sea, in which islands were hurled at the invading titans, left the many archipelagos that dot the sea today, and the black sea was formed when Zyphus, the closest brother of Oceanus, was felled in battle, his blood pooling into the sea. Though the powers of the Olympians were miniscule in comparison to Ouranous’ forces, they could defend Olympus effectively, and were gaining allies and territory day by day.

But, When Ouranous was alone and idle at the top of Smilios, not directing his armies against the growing powers of the Olympians,  he was condensing the astral energy he had absorbed into something which might guarantee his supremacy over the realm definitively: The Egg of Atma.

The exact dimensions of the egg of Atma are unknown to this day, but based on the volume of shards of it that scholars have collected, it is at least the height and width of 5 meters or at most 15 meters. It was said to be shaped like a chicken’s egg, filled with catalyzers of magic and solar energy made to mimic the internal energy of a star. Only the Primarch gods would be able to withstand the power of the blast, and even then, they would only be safe at the top of Smilios. Ouranous had considered that everyone he knew would be slaughtered save for his wife and sibling Kronos, but he cared not. These were the only two individuals he had any more regard for, and at this point, he possessed a secret, deep loathing for all life besides these two. It is said that it took a century to create the hardware necessary for the egg, and then, Ouranous pooled nearly all of the power of the stars he had collected into the machine. After a century of titanomachy, it was time for the decisive blow to be dealt.

Atma’s plummet, the Ouranian Exile, and the new quest of the Olympians

One morning, Ouranous summoned both Kronus and Gaia to the top of Smilios, and the two came to the top quickly to gaze at his machine in wonderment. Ouranous stated his intentions to the great disgust of both of his siblings. Kronus, quickly teleported to a gas giant in Earth’s orbit to live in solitude, yet Gaia was grasped and coerced into watching Atma destroy all the earth.

Atma was plunged from the stratosphere. However, at the midpoint of it’s fall, Ouranous noticed that Atma was not detonating properly, and, in fact, recalled a number of subtle missteps in the creation of the device. Atma would not destroy life. Nea, it would enhance life, kicking all processes of Tarril into overdrive and bringing the systems of the world into a singularity of Taxichaos. Above all, Atma would give birth to a being with unlimited power, and would certainly see to it that Taxichaos be enacted across the galaxy. In effect, this was a close check move for Nyxus.

Ouranous had no choice. He struck Smilios, sending it hurtling into the core of the earth like his father chaos intended, in an effort to catch up to the device. He leaped from the column, and with all of his might, sundered the plummeting egg before it could detonate into the supreme being, and its shards were scattered around the world. The shockwave of his grand slam against Atma would cause the Yggdrass to be sundered, the trunk hit with such force that it was decoupled from the earth and flew across space into the planet Venus. Ouranous crash landed in Anatolia, his power nearly depleted, and awoke to learn that his wife Gaia was now lodged in the core of Tarill, alone, and that the Olympians had him cornered in his weakened state.

The Olympians subdued Ouranous, and arranged for his exile to the furthest planet from the sun Sol, as well as his coerced approval for the Olympians to be the new custodians of Tarril. When this meeting was complete, Ouranous was duly teleported to the new planet, and the Olympians returned to Olympus to celebrate. When they arrived, however, they found their old stronghold pierced by a great, careening fragment of Atma, which had dug itself into the earth. Next to it, the body of an eminently powerful deity laid, who claimed that his name was Zeus, spirit of the Tessera of Atma. He spoke to the Olympians of the future, of how Atma nearly enacted Taxichaos around the universe, how each shard of Atma was given a deific manifestation such as Zeus’, and how Atma’s effect would be fulfilled if its shards are reassembled and the Atmic gods unified into one. Each of them possessed a fraction of omnipotence that would be fully realized when enough of them were in union, and at some point, the machine would reassemble on its own.

There was much in the way of this, however. While the Olympians were now stronger than ever, the tessera of Atma were lodged deep within territory of individuals who would now be fiercely loyal to Ouranous, the titans. They would see to it that by all means necessary that the Olympians, the people who antagonized their own father, would be stopped at every juncture. Even if the gods were as strong as the Titans, they would still have to contend with nature, the ultimate underling of the Titans, in its animals and lifeforms which would fight against the Olympians.

The task was twofold at this point: find the shards and kill the titans, who remained still in great number and with a loyalty to their father fiercer than they had since experienced. At this point, they lacked the power to do both, and would need to create mortal beings, the only sentiences which could be created at this point and the souls of which would be able to be housed in the planets of the Olympians to augment the gods’ powers. The Olympians would also need a fresh set of allies.

Commencement of the 3rd age, and the planetary domains of the Olympians

At the council of Olympus, which officially marked the commencement of the third age, these allies were contacted and formed.

Hermes, son of the first king Nomos, was promised to be the sovereign of his exile planet of Mercury, where he would strive to create a simulation of a world in Taxichaos populated by fierce followers of order.

Aphrodite, the subordinate goddess of love, was promised jurisdiction over the planet Venus, and her chief duty was to regrow the trunk of the Yggdrass. While her efforts could not restore the Yggdrass into the entirety of its former glory, as a pure conduit for all magic, it produced something perhaps superior, the magic of the fae. When the Yggdrass was propelled off of earth and onto the planet Venus, the magic running within it was vulcanized, making it extraordinarily potent, giving it the capricious and whimsical character common among all things fey, and yet confining it to a faerie ring, an area of effect nearby the Yggdrass outside of which all of its magic withered (the fae have a variety of loopholes to exist outside of these faerie rings, but they all have their compromising). From the great magic of the Venusian Yggdrass, Aphrodite forged the faerie races, which flew to earth and slowly but surely replanted the Irmins, smaller, pygmy saplings of the Yggdrass which were planted on leylines to increase the breadth and potency of the mana on Tarril, and they also provided important fey enclaves which could fight against the Titans

Ares, General of the Olympian forces and a renegade subordinate god, was promised to be the warrior-king of Mars, where he would colonize distant planets with life and amass an interstellar fighting force which could combat the Titanic forces.

Jupiter would become the new home of the benevolent gods and the archangels aligned with Bono, who were the kindly lesser deities who had at allied with the Olympians at the outset of war.  Its many moons would become physical houses for the many Atmic gods.

Saturn would become the great laboratory and library of Kronos, who had expressed a willingness to see it through that taxichaos be achieved and hoped to recreate the first elven kingdoms on the planet.

Neptune would become the home of the malevolent archangels aligned with malo, their leader being Lucifer, an egotistical, vain, and extraordinarily handsome titan who had sought to become greater than his father Ouranous. His power would be required as an enemy of the enemy, and a jurisdiction over Neptune would guarantee that Lucifer’s loyalty.

Uranus would house Ouranos, and was to be steered clear of as an exile planet. In time, some of the elder gods would give Ouranos company and cultivate his growing hatred of all things.

Lastly, the planet Pluto was given to Azazel, and given custody over the living souls of all mortals. His land would become a sorting ground for the passage of mortals to either Jupiter, Neptune, or the Pluto, if the souls were neutral in alignment.

The development of the second civilizations, and the new mortal races

Over the course of the third age, which commenced seven thousand years ago, the Olympians took to developing pockets of civilization across the planet Earth. The first experiments in this primarily came in the lizardfolk, which were settled along the nile river and in Mesoamerica, as well as with the Elves. Difficulties emerged, however, by a lack of willingness of the elves to settle earth when work was to be done on their home in Saturn, and the lizardfolk were too martial and quarrelsome, and frequently established cults to chaos.

The gods soon heard tales that in the svartal, a band of stout and committed mortals were seeking the mineral riches of the earth. Hades quickly met with Helmenar, the leader of these mysterious dwarves, who claimed to be descended from Dwerrot, small mustelids which lived in the earth’s core, that had been genetically modified by Gaia, who sought to create the garden of crete in her isolation on earth’s core. The Dorians, a newer, more optimal generation of the dwarves, were said to now be gardening this second eden, while the prior generation of Gaia’s helpers, the Duergar, had made the less brutish dwarves their slaves and craftsmen. Helmenar had led them from this slavery, and humbly implored a vassalage to Hades, which was granted quickly. Hades granted the dwarves a home in the large cavern Knarvel, a meridian which belched gems coming from the elemental core of Tarril, over which the modern city of Vienna is housed. The dwarves would expand fortress settlements across all of the mountain ranges of Earth in due time.

The most important of the sentient races would be the humans. Developed by Demeter in her spare time, these beings were hardy, agreeable, good natured, but most importantly, adaptable; these evolved simians would be perfectly suited towards developing the world. First, they were dispensed as small, communal tribes across the earth, and while some of these tribes were prone to allying themselves with the titans, their civilizations were soon established across the world. They lived in Mesopotamia, China, Egypt  and Mesoamerica (along where the Lizardfolk once settled). This was a watershed moment for the gods; emboldened by the success of these civilizations, the gods dispensed both half-angelic humans to serve as the first rulers of these civilizations, and were generous in their initial aid towards these societies. The benevolent gods had the best luck so far with the human civilizations.

From jealousy of the Jupiterian gods’ success, the Neptunians sought to match the mortals of the good gods with a lineage of beings created in their own image. Alchemists on Neptune quickly brewed the Mortengrash, a symbiotic soup of primordial life which would give birth to the Greenskins, variant biological sentiences intended to be soldiers against the Titans. There would be the hobs, short, humanesque footsoldiers, and Ogres, designed as giant, sluggish cavalry for basic hammer and anvil strike tactics against the titanic army. Sometimes Trolls and goblins were produced from pits of Mortengrash across the earth, and the occasional human would slip and fall into these pits at times, creating the first hags.

The titans had their mortal followers as well, the druids, rangers and barbarians of the land who would act as footsoldiers and artisans in the Titans’ clashes with the civilized world. Most frequently, these were wood elves, which were a type of middle elf whose attunement to the Titanic magics of the plants and animals adapted them to life in the untamed realms. The clerics of these Titans abandoned the procedural custom established by Azazel, not worshipping a single deity but the animistic energies of the world instead. Thus, when a Titan was felled, they were still able to gain the domains from the now sundered spirit of their once deity, because their essence still laid about the earth. These savage mortals were sturdy and stubborn in their resistance to civilization, but nearly all of the worlds’ barbarians would eventually capitulate to civilization, some even taking their old customs with them.

The Business of the Mortals, the Prophets, and their religions

The world went on in this way for the next five thousand years. Mortal beings would expand territory against the Titans and sometimes against each other, making civilizational strongholds, some of which would survive, prosper, and gain the strength to expand even further. Most nations were ruled by peoples who adhered to benevolent teachings, and human, dwarven, and some elven societies thrived. There were smaller civilizations of more obscure mortals. Gnomes, small and whimsical mortal beings of the planet Venus, sometimes visited Tarril, and Halflings, which were either humans exposed to magic which made them shorter and hairier in certain places or, by some theories, humans exposed to the magic of Nyxus, also made their homes among sentient civilizations, most notably on the Korean peninsula, the Javan Islands, Madagascar, The Caribbean, The Aleutians, and the British and Scandinavian Islands, especially in Ireland.

Ultimately, the greatest factor in what would separate the great civilizations from their chaff was geography, but the greatest societies all possessed tessera of Atma which conferred onto them the favor and power of the Atmic gods. While the Atmic gods would all migrate to a home on the moons of Jupiter when they were first found, these gods would often inspire prophets or even incarnate themselves to create cults to themselves, guarantee the longevity of the civilization that hosted them, and search for more tesserae of Atma. There was, of course, Zeus, the cornerstone of the Hellenic pantheon, but soon Siddharta Gautma would become a proponent for the metaphysical plane of Nirvana, an entire demiplane created by a shard of Atma, as would Zoroaster, but most importantly Christ Jesus, who was in fact, a direct incarnation of the Atmic god JHVH.

Jesus was just as successful as the other prophets, but the Evangelical culture which surrounded this charismatic carpenter from Galilee insured that JHVH’s death at the hands of the Roman Pontius Pilate would not be in vain. Indeed, the followers of Ouranous could be said to have the most underground influence in the civilization of Rome, regular Pogroms against the first Christians and a popular culture of persecution would result in their outlaw and ridicule for 300 years. The cult to Christ spread rapidly, however, as the people grew hopeful by the idea that a great incarnation of an Atmic shard would walk among them. The Ouranians could live in denial no longer when the emperor Constantine adopted Christianity on Easter of 311.

The mortal project to recreate Atma and the invasion of the Orcs:

Constantine had several orders of business now that he was the first Christian emperor. First, he would move the capital of Rome to Constantinople to compete with the Sassanid Persians. Next, he would insure that Rome would remain the perpetual seat of the pope, who now had a duty beyond inheriting the tradition first set by Peter. The Pope was to agglomerate all of the shards of Atma in Rome, so that Rome might become the place where Taxikaos would first emerge on Tarril.

While all were to accept this Roman agenda towards Nyxian order, the East was far more receptive towards this directive than the West, and in fact nearly all of the Western roman empire (except around some metropolitan centers, especially Rome itself) were somewhat reticent to abandon the old Olympian gods and lose respect for Ouranous. These differences would lead to a split in the Roman empire nearing the close of the 4th century. Nonetheless, the prosperity and size of Rome was massively augmented by the program of Atmic assembly, as many states around Rome capitulated to its tributary demands for shards of Atma.

Ouranos, once again, was put into check by the influence of Nyxus. In 425, Ouranos sent envoys to visit tribes of greenskins on the far outskirts of Rome and empires like it which were using their spheres of influence to build Atmic engines. These emissaries of Ouranos understood the burning hatred of these martial greenskins towards the prosperity and invincibility of these civilizations, and promised them an opportunity to decisively destroy these civilizations. The greenskins happily accepted both this offer and Ouranos’ request for these greenskins to become Ouranos’ own mortal race.

With power accreted from the Stars for five thousand years, Ouranos channeled into these greenskins the strength and ferocity of tiny demigods. Their blood boiled, teeth gnashed, every inch of their existence seeking the crude, unadulterated destruction of those followers of Atma. These were the Fha-Bhubbosh, the first orcs. They attacked civilizations all over the world for 200 years. They fought with the strength of 100 trained mortal soldiers, dismembering them in the harshest way possible, and their armies reduced the realm of Western Rome to smithereens in one fateful week on August 450 AD. Though the power imbued in the orcs by Ouranos soon dissipated or mutated them into abominations before it could dissipate, the damage had been done.

The decimation of most pre-medieval metropolitan civilizations occurred thusly, and the destruction of infrastructure therein was a devastating, damning setback, as well as a marker of the end of the 3rd era. New empires would form. The Merovingians would try to reclaim the glory of Rome in their Frankish kingdom, the Tangs with the Qing dynasty, along with some unexpected newcomers, like the Tatar horde, composed of greenskin orcs who were said to have once sacked Rome and Xian, along with the Umayyads, who followed a religion that overlapped with Judaism and Christianity yet, in addition to sharing doctrinal differences, followed angels and archangels which had been trapped in Tarril’s elemental mantle and encouraged a worship of Allah, which was said to be infinity, the essence of all of Atma.

Eon 4: Dormitabus

It was a dark time, and gone was the hopeful sentiments engendered by classical cultures that promised a future of taxikaos. Now, it seemed that the only priority for everyone was to survive the assaults of the shrinking titan forces, and the growing global quarrels that emerged with the fellow mortals. Leadership from the gods were reduced. Everyone felt as though the goal of Nyxus, to create Taxikaos, was a lost cause, because nobody knew precisely where the shards of Atma were.

Curiously, while the Fha-Bhubbosh succeeded in defacing the great classical cities of Xian, Teotihuacan, Rome and Constantinople, they did not retrieve and could not destroy the Atmic Tesserae. It is said that these were clandestinely stored in unreachable caverns and crypts around the world before the Fha-Bhubbosh could seize them.

The popular Catholic mythology states that they are located in missionary settlements created by the first apostles, at the kingdom of Prester John in Africa, at Thule in the Islands north of the Orkney, at the realm of Shambala in the Mountains of Nepal, the island of Avalon, home of the tomb of arthur...legendary places that were tucked away. Even if they could be found by mortal explorers (and the legends told of brave men who managed to venture into these tombs), none returned, not even the most experienced and powerful mortals could pass through these chambers with slivers of chance. Nonetheless, the mythology around these Apostolic Dungeons piqued the interest of all adventurers, and even though most adventurers would ever grow close to being in a league where they might find a shard of Atma, the possibility of the power of a god alone, or the treasures of great civilizations that could be found along the way, was more than enough to motive generation after generation of adventurers.

The future:

It is the High middle ages today. Tomorrow, an intrepid band of adventurers secretly crawling through temples in which the Atmic shards are housed might finally collect the last shard, gaining enough power to assemble Atma and then invoke Taxikaos. Maybe not. Maybe society forever stays bound to developments in magic, suspended in a middle age that grows more halcyonic by the day. Maybe society moves forward into the Renaissance, and as the inherent powers of Mortals grow with their technical understanding of science, technology, and magic, they might create Taxikaos on their own. Maybe they’ll destroy themselves with a Uranium bomb laced with Pi magic, ushering in a post apocalypse. Maybe the mortals will succumb to the power of a bloated, multi corporate oligarchy that destroys the concepts of nations, bringing in a new feudalism where fealty is sworn to the megacorps. At any given time, there’s the risk of an invasion from the elder ones, unruly extraterrestrials, or Ouranos. Maybe the cataclysm comes in the form of a clash between the good and evil planars, which bicker more and more each day. Nobody is certain. Only Kronos, the great keeper of secrets, may know which future is true, or perhaps they may all be true. We certainly may not know.

All we know is that this planet is mostly called Earth today, rather than its archaic name of Tarril. It is miles in diameter, the mundane can never be certainly expected, for magic is everywhere, and some people are able to manipulate this magic to their own ends. Mortals live, mortals die, and most mortals hope to pass so that they may live in a gentle, peaceful afterlife, working each day to make their mark on the story of the planet.