I've been working on the creation story (how the multiverse itself, planes, gods, mortal races etc. came to be, what events of cosmic importance transpired in the mythic past) of a homebrew 3.5 D&D world, more as a creative exercise really (no plans to actually use it anywhere). The inspiration basically comes from looking at the 3.5 D&D SRD and trying to come up with explanations for why everything is the way it is (e.g. why giants and vampires are the only creatures to have their own kind of cleric listed in their entries). So I've decided to share it with you guys here, see what you think.

Also, even though this is tagged "My World" (since that's what I'm posting), feel free to use this thread to discuss creation stories and other such "mythical" narratives in world-building in general - I think they're an underratedly important element, as they give deities some actual meaning other than being a combination of symbol, alignment restrictions and domains, as well as giving some cultural background as to why certain races/cultures have certain attitudes (the "standard" D&D stories about drow turning away from their elven brethren after being corrupted by Lolth, Corellon taking out one of Gruumsh's eyes, etc. are good examples).

I'm still writing this account, but since it's waaay large already, I thought I'd start posting what's finished so far, and then update this post later as I add more stuff. The story has been divided into sections, put in spoilers merely for reading convenience.

Note: While you may encounter familiar names (e.g. Tiamat, Surtur), they're just casual references that bear only the most superficial relation to the entities you might normally associate with them. In fact, that's why I'm shying away from really well-known names like "Jupiter" and "Atlantis" (which were briefly considered, for Adad and the Ancients respectively), to avoid any undue cultural baggage; "Bahamut" and "Tiamat" are probably the most notorious names there, referring not to how you might know them from D&D, but from primordial deities in the shape of dragons, respectively made of light and darkness. Of course, names of D&D races, monsters and other D&D terms like planes mean what they usually do in most settings.

So, without further ado, here it goes!

Spoiler: The Beginning, and Creation of the Inner Planes
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In the beginning, there was only an infinite sea of quintessence, the primal stuff of creation, which combines all elements and energies, for an eternity before time. After endless eons of formless chaos, a tiny swirl in this vast ocean perturbed the matter around it, causing it to converge into a vortex that coalesced into an egg. After another eternity of incubation, this primordial egg hatched, and from it emerged a great iridescent serpent, which joined all elemental, energetic and divine natures within itself. The serpent knew only hunger, being the most primal being, and so it consumed the quintessence around it, growing more and more until it burst itself open. From its gut, two mighty dragons spawned: Bahamut, made of light, and Tiamat, made of darkness.

Bahamut and Tiamat started immediately fighting, being of irreconcilable natures, although very similar in shape. However, they were evenly matched and could not defeat one another, so both retreated to recover their strength. As they circled one another, and buffeted the primordial stuff with their wings, their opposed natures also filtered the stuff, gathering the light around Bahamut and the darkness around Tiamat. The elemental stuff between them, swirling from the vortex created by their wings, also started coalescing in elemental forms around fragments of the great serpent’s guts that were left in the middle. Each stretch of its intestines formed into a serpentine creature, shaped by the elements around them, and grew in both size and sentience as they absorbed more elemental stuff and latent divine essence. The Winged Serpent Kukulcan around the airy parts, the Water Beast Leviathan around the liquid parts, the Great Worm Jormungand around the solid parts, and the Fire Bird Phoenix around the hottest parts.

The four elemental lords, seeing the mayhem wrought by the ancient dragons because of their struggle, proposed a truce. The space between the two dragons’ realms would be divided among the elemental lords and occupied by them – that way, neither Bahamut nor Tiamat would have to gaze upon the other and be bothered by their sibling’s antithetical nature. Both would have their own realms, of pure light and pure darkness, with four elemental realms between them. In the middle of all six of those Inner Planes, there would be a meeting ground, immersed in a sea of virgin quintessence, in the spot where the great primal serpent hatched, lived and died. From that beast’s remains, a great arena would be fashioned, where all gods could convene in neutral grounds – the ground made from the serpent’s flesh, fused together with congealed quintessence; the pavement over the ground made from fragments of its egg’s shell; and the bounding ring made from its serpentine skeleton, laid on a circle, its head biting its tail.

The elemental lords gathered elemental matter around them, forming their respective Elemental Planes (and growing into their full divine form), while the two dragons finished purifying their respective domains into the Positive and Negative Energy Planes. However, as they were finishing their work, the Elemental Lords noticed Bahamut and Tiamat growing restless, and probing the Elemental Planes for possible holes where they could mount an offensive against each other. In order to divert the dragons’ mind from that conflict, the Elemental Lords requested their help in fashioning creatures to populate their realm – thus, elemental creatures were created. Being a force of creation, Bahamut became interested in this process and set to build denizens for its own realm, made in its image, and thus created ravids – while Tiamat, being the force of destruction, just finished its work begrudgingly, dreaming of the time when all would be consumed by darkness.


Spoiler: Creation of the Material Plane and its Nature
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However, this diversion was only fleeting, and soon the dragon siblings became anxious about each other again. Fearing a confrontation that might tear them apart, the Elemental Lords convened and decided on a plan to occupy all divine beings – the dragons and themselves – with a much greater project, one which would take untold eons to finish. Thus, they again requested Bahamut and Tiamat’s help to start building a whole new world. Gathering the strength of all six, they pierced the veil of reality and opened a way into the space beyond spaces – the Astral Plane. Across the silvery void, they managed to carve out a second reality, beyond that of the Inner Planes – that which would become known as the Material Plane.

The initially empty plane was filled with elemental matter from the Inner Planes – their supply was endless, as the infinite sea of primordial stuff was filtered into the six primal essences (air, earth, water, fire, light and darkness) as it was strained through the six Inner Planes and into the astral conduits that linked them to the Material Plane. The elements were organized into a beautiful landscape, with a vast bed of earth and stone, an expanse of air above it, swaths of water lining the earth’s crevices and suspended in the air as clouds, and raging fires beneath the earth and above the skies. Bahamut was tasked with linking this new world to the Positive Energy Plane and providing it with the vital energy of creation that would allow life to thrive, while Tiamat was presented with the opportunity to drain this new world’s vitality and bring all within it ever closer to pure entropy through another link to the Negative Energy Plane.

This new world, however, was lifeless and barren. The elemental-built landscape did very little in utilizing positive energy, and decaying from negative energy. Living creatures would be needed to complete that circuit in a truly effective way. However, as the Inner Planar deities knew little other than their pure essences, they decided to leave the job of populating the world to beings of mixed nature, who would not be limited to a single essence as they were. Convening in teams of three, they created two powerful beings, imbued with their divine essence, of humanoid shape so they could walk through the world and work it with their hands – and made them male and female, so that cooperation would be necessary for them to create. Bahamut, Leviathan and Jormungand worked together to build Rovigia, a woman with mastery over earth and water, and with the inclination to make peaceful creatures to provide the world with life. Tiamat, Phoenix and Kukulcan cooperated to build Heron, a man with mastery of air and fire, and with an affinity for voracious creatures that consume all they can.

Rovigia and Heron quickly set to their task of creating the world’s living creatures, a task which they divided according to their natural inclinations – Rovigia growing a lush multitude of plants of all shapes and sizes, which grew on Bahamut’s energy to provide life-giving food, while Heron bred a wild menagerie of animals both ferocious and shy, that consumed Rovigia’s plants and one another, to fend off the inevitable pull of Tiamat’s decay that followed them from birth. Thus both Bahamut and Tiamat became occupied, up to this day, with the cycle of life and death that permeates all mortal lives.


Spoiler: Rise of the Titans, Giants and Dragons
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Fashioning animals and plants out of the world’s elements was not the only way Heron and Rovigia could create life, though, as they were also made with the gift of fertility. Inspired by the incessant breeding that allowed animals to quickly take over the land, the couple lay together as well, and their coupling produced men and women of prodigious size and great divine power inherited from their noble lineage – the Titans. The divine couple’s offspring was numerous, as Rovigia and Heron were the font of all fertility, and grew over the ages into a vast and powerful nation. The titans, led by the first generation to spring from Rovigia’s womb, the wise and powerful Elder Titans (as their progenitors were occupied with tending to the world’s fauna and flora), built a great civilization, with colossal castles and cities, on which they plied their many crafts and probed at the secrets of the universe.

They too had their own offspring, whose divine spark grew dimmer as their generations stretched away from their godly origin, but which were also enormous and mighty – those being the races of Giants, which are the oldest mortal creatures to roam the Material Plane, after animals and plants. The Storm Giants descended from wise and benevolent Adad; the two tribes of Cloud Giants from twins Zephyrus and Eurus, who respected each other despite their deep differences in outlook; the Fire Giants from Surtur, and the Frost Giants from Thrym, those being two warlords that fostered a bitter rivalry; and the Stone Giants from quiet though fierce Balor, foremost warrior among the Elder Titans. Other Elder Titans of note are Porphyron, their eldest and leader; prolific Ymir, who begat many of the latter-generation Titans; and savage and beastly Typhon. The Hill Giant tribes descended from several latter-generation Titans, of lesser power and prestige, including Enceladus, Hrungnir, Hyperion, Gog and Polyphemus.

Such was the industry of the titans and their descendants that they quickly exhausted the natural resources of the lands they settled, in their frenzy of building, and also to feed their mortal kin. As they hunted beasts near to extinction and cleared wide swaths of forest for planting, they drew the attention of Rovigia and Heron, who demanded them to cease destroying what they built with so much effort, or else face their wrath. Nod, a mighty Titan city that ignored these orders, was quickly destroyed by a flurry of disasters wrought by their progenitors – a hurricane and a city-wide fire brought by Heron, and a flood and an earthquake brought by Rovigia – whose purpose was more to remove this threat than to punish their own children. Whichever their intention, the message was quickly learned by the other Titan settlements, who decided to turn their greed elsewhere.

Knowing of the Inner Planes, both from what little they heard of them from Rovigia and Heron, as well as through their own divinations, the Titans decided to tap into their limitless resources to feed their growing civilization. Through portals opened by the Elder Titans, a horde of titans and giants swarmed over the Elemental Planes, carving out space for settlements where they could, and gathering elemental matter elsewhere – earth for planting, stone for building, water for feeding their crops and filling their cisterns, fire for their hearths and forges, and clean air for their tunnels and underground settlements.

This activity greatly worried the Elemental Lords, who were concerned that these tireless builders might tear down their realms in their consumption frenzy; they tried warning off the titans, and even sending elementals to guard the border of their expansion, but to no avail. When the Elders opened conduits into the Energy Planes in order to directly tap their energies to fuel their newest devices, however, they incurred the wrath of the twin dragon gods, who directly intervened with their full divine might – Bahamut blasting the interlopers with pure divine energy that filled their bodies with so much life that they burst open, and Tiamat hitting them with a powerful wave of negative energy that drained their lives and souls into the bottomless abyss of its own core. Emboldened by their elder siblings, the Elemental Lords joined the fray as well, bringing the full wrath of the elements upon the invaders, and finally succeeding to beat them back into the Material Plane (though not before the titans left descendants of mixed elemental heritage in the Elemental Planes, the genies).

After the titanic intrusion was dealt with, the Inner Planar deities convened once again, worried that these upstarts might mount another offensive in the future. Therefore, in order to both keep their population in check and watch over the Material Plane, they decided to create a race of powerful, nearly immortal beings, which answered to no gods but them. A creation as exquisite as the one they envisioned would require close cooperation between all of them; however, the Elemental Lords wisely decided that having both Bahamut and Tiamat work together in the same project was inviting disaster, so they once again divided their endeavor into two, although this time all four Elemental Lords aided each of the dragon siblings. The team led by Bahamut created the majestic and wise metallic dragons, while Tiamat’s party created the terrifying and imposing chromatic dragons, all of them infused with a strong elemental nature. These awesome creatures were then let loose in the Material Plane, and given free rein of it, so that their mere presence would keep any future threats in check.


Spoiler: The Outer Planes are Created
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As the ages wore on, the situation in the Material Plane became increasingly untenable, with the Titans feeling more and more constrained by the restrictions imposed on them by both their progenitors and the dragons, and bucking against their metaphorical restraints more and more, in ever more daring attempts to expand their realms into both the natural world and the Inner Planes. Fearing another deadly confrontation, Heron and Rovigia decided to seek another solution, one that would allow their children to live. Calling an audience with the Inner Planar deities, they explained that the permanence of immortal beings in the Material Plane would always be a problem, as their endless lifespan was bound to exhaust the available resources of a finite world at some point. There would always be conflict, unless a plane more suitable for immortal beings, one with limitless borders, was also created. Asked where would they then find the resources to build this place if not in the Inner Planes – which they would not allow, as it would be scarcely any better than to let the titans raid their realms once again – the divine couple answered that the home of immortals would be built not of elemental matter, but of belief. That they had already felt their power swell with the worship of woodland beings they had created, such as unicorns and dryads, and they suspected the Elder Titans to be growing in power at an even greater pace, due to the devotion of their giant children. This potential, they reasoned, would allow the divine realms to grow without limit as the faith of mortals also grew. All they needed was a seed, another plane beyond the astral void, a small place that was nevertheless built without borders, so it could grow.

Thus it was decided that the Material Plane was to be the home of mortals – Heron and Rovigia’s animals, plants and woodland creatures, the giants, as well as the dragons. Summoning all of their divine might, Rovigia and Heron pierced yet another rift into the depths of the Astral Plane, and carved out a small but unbounded space into the other side, imbued with the start with their divine essence, so that its very fabric of space would naturally respond to the will of divine beings. They then moved into that place, carrying within their own bodies conduits into all Inner Planes, provided by the Elemental Lords and dragon deities, and strained primal matter and energy through their own souls to imbue it with a divine nature, which they then used to fashion a new world of faith and divinity. These conduits were then quickly closed, as the seed of matter and energy they planted would be enough to grow endless planes of belief from. They then summoned the Titans, giving them free rein over this new plane, where they could build a realm that would grow in accordance with the faith they received from the giants.


Spoiler: The Ancients and the Gods
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Before they set out on this endeavor, however, Heron and Rovigia chose a remote island in the material world, out of sight of the titans, giants, dragons and even the Inner Planar deities, and lay together once more, this time allowing only the slightest sliver of divinity to stay in the children they formed. Following a period of gestation, in which Rovigia let herself feel all the pains of mortal mothers, she gave birth to the first mortal man and woman – Ask and Embla, progenitors of the Ancients, a race of tall, stocky, ashen-skinned humanoids with centuries-long lifespans. The divine couple then watched over these children until they grew and had progeny of their own, for several generations, teaching the budding nation the secrets of forest, mountain and sea, how to hunt and which plants to collect, how to tend the land and master beasts, and most importantly, how to call their names in worship and receive their divine blessing.

Thus it was that, by the time the Outer Planes were formed, the Ancients had already grown into a mighty nation, one which had already ventured across the sea and into neighboring lands, as their island was no longer enough to contain their burgeoning civilization. However, as they grew, they faced several challenges for which their knowledge did not prepare them: battles against neighboring giants, difficulty making their way across the land, lack of magical resources to fend off dragons with, tumult within their own society due to a dearth of laws and justice, and many more. They called upon their divine patrons for help, but the gods had already taught them what they could. When some of the Ancients began to turn away from Heron and Rovigia in disappointment, the two decided to try another means to help their children, lest the rest of them be led astray as well.

The divine couple then lay together once more, under the eternal sun of the nascent Outer Planes, and conceived eight other children, this time imbuing them with all the divine essence they could muster, to make them even more magnificent than the Elder Titans. Through divine miracle, these entities were conceived with gifts that even their hallowed parents did not possess, so they could impart them on the mortals. These children, born fully-grown in all their glory, were: Noryx, lord of war and death, come to teach mortals how to destroy their enemies; Leranta, goddess of knowledge and civilization, who would gift mortals with their lore, traditions and laws; Khrumnon, bestial god of strength and savagery, bred to give mortals the resilience to overcome any difficulty; Dumarean, god of light and justice, who was to teach mortals how to separate the righteous from the wicked and keep society just; Pelecia, patroness of travel and succor, who would teach mortals how to cross the world in safety; Bathin, the goddess of power and magic, come to present mortals with the gift of the arcane arts; Vepar, mistress of deception and treachery, made to teach mortals how to utilize subterfuge to ensure victory; and at last, Havith, god of fortune and beauty, whose role was to teach mortals all of the fine arts, so they may be inspired to ever higher pinnacles of excellence.

These eight deities were then sent to the Material Plane, where each assumed a corporeal avatar in order to traverse the world. Once there, they sought out the greatest city of the Ancients, on the island on which they were first born, to teach mortals all they knew. For many years they lived among men and women, taking on many generations of apprentices to ensure their skills would live on. However, skills were not all that mortals learned from them, as their divine magnificence was apparent to even the least attentive observer. Both out of admiration for their inherent nature, and gratitude for the prowess they imparted upon the Ancient civilization, mortals began to adore and then worship these eight masters, who swelled in power from the faith they received. Over time, their divine might became so great that it could barely be contained in the crude corporeal frames they had built for themselves; thus, seeing that their teachings were secure enough among their pupils, the eight divine children of Rovigia and Heron bid farewell to the Ancients, returning to their rightful home in the Outer Planes.


Spoiler: Beginning of the War between Titans and Gods
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The return of the gods was met with discontent from those who had seized the Outer Planes in their absence and made their home in it – the Titans. Despite the boundless nature of that divine realm, the Titans were loath to allow their younger siblings to carve out portions of it to themselves. After all, theirs was a hungry civilization, constantly driven by a desire for greater accomplishments. Foreseeing the potential for a fratricidal war, Rovigia intervened, attempting to broker a truce that would grant each side its fair share of the growing terrain – but all attempts at such failed, as the titans’ greed was matched by the younger gods, who felt they too needed the lion’s share of the new plane to accommodate their swelling power, as well as to house the souls of their faithful, which started arriving in droves.

When Heron tried pointing out that worrying which realm was larger or smaller was pointless, as each deity’s lands would grow according to the belief of their followers, this only served to worsen the dispute – after all, those followers resided in the material world, which, unlike the Outer Planes, was limited. Therefore, each mortal who pledged allegiance to one deity was one mortal stolen from another. The side that lost the dispute for mortal souls risked banishment to oblivion. Under that light, the struggle between Titans and the newer gods was no longer one of territory, but rather one of sheer existence.

With that dire outcome in mind, the Elder Titans led a massive attack on the mortals that fueled the gods with their belief – Adad, Zephyrus, Eurus, Balor, Surtur and Thrym commanding their respective giant subjects to raid and destroy whichever Ancient settlements they could find; Ymir leading the lesser titans and their Hill Giant progeny; Typhon using his mighty powers to directly destroy all mortals he could find; and Porphyron commanding the whole war effort, making decisions of grand strategy and marshalling the Titan and Giant forces together. Great was the havoc they wrought in their initial assault, slaying many Ancients and wrecking a large portion of their capital in their siege, and obliterating their colonies across the world, forcing the colonists to scatter and go into hiding.

Seeing the horrors inflicted upon their loyal followers, the gods quickly sprang into action. Firstly, they stepped in to help those most vulnerable to the assault – the persecuted colonists. Each deity chose a colony with which they had particular affinity, and altered the survivors with their divine power, to further protect and aid them. Dumarean helped a colony of hardy and honorable mountain-folk move underground to escape the stone giants harassing them, by making them small enough to fit in caves, capable of seeing in the dark, and apt at both navigating the underground and fashioning weapons to fight back; those were the forebears of the Dwarves. Pelecia, seeing a band of nomads backed into the mesa flats, made them even smaller, so they could hide in every nook and cranny in the rock, and both stealthy and lucky, so they could easily evade their pursuers; those are known today as Halflings. Havith found the survivors from a large city scattered into a deep forest, and made them slender and graceful to better move along the trees, giving them the wisdom of the woods and the gift of magic, so they could outsmart anyone who sought them in their domain; these were the first Elves. Among the rugged hills of the north, an industrious folk were running from the fury of hill giants; Leranta gave them the gift of illusion, to evade their pursuers, and made them small enough to live in burrows under the hills, so they could pursue their crafts in peace. That folk became the Gnomes. Khrumnon took under his wing a warring band that was chased by fire giants into the hot savannahs, and transmuted them into animal-humanoid hybrids (as Khrumnon himself is), giving them the ferocity of the wild hyena to defeat all that would challenge them; those were the first Gnolls. The remnants of a trading city that fled into a swamp were infused by Bathin with dragon’s blood, turned into reptilian beings that could easily traverse those waters and hide among them; these were the progenitors of the Lizardfolk. Noryx found a tribe of nomadic warriors traversing the rolling hills of the south to seek new lands, and gave them the strength and martial prowess to destroy all in their path; that band turned into the first Orcs. Finally, Vepar came to a scattered bunch of survivors wandering around the frigid plains after their villages were destroyed by frost giants, and made them into stealthy little fiends, teaching them how to stalk the night to strike back unseen at their enemies; those were the forefathers of the Goblins.