Origins of the Multiverse
--The following has been excerpted from the Black Ethereal Bible, with editing done to remove bias towards the light ethereal--
In the beginning was Chaos. It was formless, shapeless energy, with every molecule of it moving independently of every other molecule. It was the embodiment of randomness, and it was all-encompassing.
But one day this random thing created life. It was unintentional, and – if Chaos could be said to have sentience – likely unwanted, but it was irreversible. This life, this being who could exist even in the depths of Chaos, named itself Iluvitar, meaning “The One Who Is Alone.” Had this been all there was, the life of Iluvitar would have been little more than an anomaly in the vast rifts of Chaos. But this being was not content to exist as One. He created a paradise for himself, a plane removed from the vastness of Chaos… a plane that could hold back its constant bombardment. In the almost infinite span of time that has passed since, this place has been called many things, but it is most often known as the Elysian Fields, or Heaven.
Iluvitar was still not content at this. Even though he was surrounded by beauty, and no longer struck by Chaos, he was Alone. And so he drew again on the infinite energy of Chaos, and created a race after his own image: he called them Ethereals.
These Ethereals, like Iluvitar Himself, were ageless and timeless; also, they were almost innumerable. They were not as powerful as the One Himself; the reaction that had caused his birth seemed un-repeatable, but it did not matter to the One. Even if these Ethereals were not peers, not equals, they were companions. He was content.
And thus time, a meaningless word to this race, stretched on. The Ethereals eventually were broken into a social substructure, as Iluvitar discovered the more clever and the more powerful of His race. The most notable names among the Ethereals have been listed as following: Lucifer, the “Bearer of Light”, whose great beauty and sharp mind won him a place at Iluvitar’s right hand; Michael and Gabriel, the Archangels… they were the greatest warriors (also a meaningless word at the time) and most powerful of the Ethereals; and Simeon, the Judge – he was most likely the wisest of the Ethereals. Below these came the Consorts, the closest followers of the Great Ethereals, and then the rest of the race.
And Iluvitar was content (note: the wording used in the original texts was “content with decadence”), but there were some in His Paradise that were not. Most notable – and most secret – was the dissatisfaction of the Great Ethereal Lucifer. Unlike Iluvitar, Lucifer did not desire “kinship” and “contentment.” He wanted a race of subjects, a realm of pure order… an impossibility in the Elysian Fields.
And so came the Revolution. Lucifer’s Consort, Wiegraf, along with thousands upon thousands of their followers (known once as the “Light-Givers”) arose and slew followers of Michael and Gabriel – by all accounts the closest-aligned with Iluvitar. This began a war that would last for what mortals would call a span of sixteen millennia. It would come to be called the Elders’ War.
Eventually, the war turned in Lucifer’s favor – they managed to take the Great Citadel, Iluvitar’s home in Paradise. It had become known to Lucifer that the Citadel was the place where the barrier against Chaos was at its thinnest; it was the place where the God accessed this energy source.
Lucifer took advantage of his stay in the Citadel, which he knew could not last.
Using amounts of Chaos energy never before dreamed of, Lucifer created the Multiverse, a monument to order, ambition, and the infinite possibilities of existence. It was designed to be forever-expanding, so that with every random event that came up, a new dimension would be created to follow every possible outcome. Lucifer would not tolerate the randomness of life in Heaven, or in Chaos.
And then he created the first races. He began with beings made in his likeness, ageless creatures made to watch over his Creation. There have been several of these races – some such as the beings that exist in the “Beginning of Time” come to mind – but the most notable were called the Eternals. They were born into the Nexus, the exact ‘center’ of the Multiverse, and the vantage point from which all the Multiverse can be viewed.
And then came the first dimension, the “Prime.” He created the planet that would come to be known as Earth, Terra, and many other things, and inhabited it with the first race: humans. These beings were not created in his image, as were the Eternals; rather, they were made with certain of his attributes. They were given his ambition, that they might further their environment and further themselves. They were given intelligence, that they might be given the ability to use that ambition effectively. They were given the arts, that they might feel the glory of creation that Lucifer had felt.
But Lucifer’s creation did not come without cost. The vast amounts of Chaos energy he had used left a small space of Infinity void of anything; the subsequent backlash of Chaos re-entering resulted in a thin layer of the energy entering the Elysian Fields.
This was catastrophic to Lucifer’s tenous reign. The Citadel was destroyed, and hundreds of the Bearer of Light’s followers were killed. Iluvitar took the opportunity to regain his position by capturing Lucifer and his Consort.
The penalty of Lucifer’s actions was great. Iluvitar was not pleased with the being’s creation, and made this clear by creating a new plane – not expanding, but still huge – in a twisted likeness of the Multiverse’s Nexus. He allowed Chaos energy to run freely through it, along with infinitely hot fire. It, too, has gained many names over the ages; the most common one is Hell.
While most of Lucifer’s Black Ethereal followers were cast into this Hell, there were a few who Iluvitar felt would not be properly punished by the constant influence of Chaos; there were those who thrived on the energy source, on the element of the random. For these he created yet another plane. It was a place that no Chaos could penetrate, a delicate and frozen plane of unending silence. It is relatively unknown within the Multiverse, and is called the Icy Wasteland.
And then, the threat of the Black Ethereals ended, Iluvitar and the remaining light Ethereals were left to figure out what to do about this “Multiverse” Lucifer had created…
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