The Nine Creations Before
- The Last Words of Thelonius the Scribe - Part I
Before Paradise, before even the first breath of mankind, there were others. Many others.
The world we walk upon is not the first. This is the Tenth Creation, and we are its children, but not the creations firstborn.
Nine times before, the Divine shaped the tapestry of existence. Nine times, it unraveled. Each Creation was corrupted by a Deadly Sin, rising from within like rot in the root, and each was answered by a Heavenly Virtue, woven into the next. The First was consumed by Anger, and from its ashes rose the Dark Lord, the Great Deceiver. Another drowned in Envy, where Leviathan coiled through the waters of creation, ever longing. Gluttony bloated a world into silence, and another fell to Levity, laughter twisting it into mockery until even death became a jest.
The Fay, firstborn of an older grace, hail from one of these fallen worlds. They do not speak of it. Others among us, trolls, ogres, mermaids, kelpies, or wyverns, are remnants of shattered ages, shaped by time, sin, and survival. Not all were wicked at first. Not all are wicked now, for some were saved by the Fay and brought into their hidden realm. When the veil between worlds becomes thin, these beings may cross into our Creation once more.
The Divine did not always remove the old to make the new. Some Creations were buried, layered in spirit beneath our own. Their bones remain and among them memories, artifacts, forgotten magic. And through all this , gnashing demons gnaw.
Where sin takes hold in the world, it digs downward, clawing through the ruins of the past. It begins in the Rivulets, shallow and twisted lairs built by cultists of this very Aeon. Deeper still lie the Temples, where demonic influence swells and the air thickens with sacrilege and sodom. And lower still they go, defiling the remains of bygone eras and tormenting the remaining spirits, growing ever stronger, to the illusive point of no return, where Creation ends and Hell begins. These are the true domains of demons, not built but birthed, excreted, discharged by sin and suffering and shaped into shrines of their own foul design.
To fall into one of these depths is not merely to descend. It is to tumble through sins of history.
—Thelonius the Scribe