The World of Primythera

I have been talking about writing a web serial for a while so I decided to go back and rewrite some background from my old campaign world from my Dungeons & Dragons days.

When the world awoke she called herself Primythera in the language of the unfathomable, a language she had known before birth. In the void she spun in lonely circles for ages untold, feeling the warmth of her mother. The light and heat comforted the fledgling planet spirit, but it saddened her that it was only upon half her body at any one time.  As eons passed she began to sense more of the universe around her, distant progenitors similar to her own but infinitely more cold and distant. Her brothers and sisters took form during this time as well, but showed little in the way of affection or even sentience.

Though she slept for long periods, her awareness slowly grew. Contentment, wonder and harmony were consistent companions as other life emerged from her body including smaller offspring which circled her as she did the mother. Their spherical forms gazed upon her with adoration and envy, longing to touch, longing to be her. Other spirits formed and roamed for milenia within her before comprehension stole their innocence. These elementals were made of her molten core and cooler flowing surface. Though they were spawned from within, they were not completely born of her spirit and thus limited in aspect. She called them primordials, and loved them like her other children

         The longer she observed the more she discovered layers beyond her normal senses. As she looked beyond her own realm and within these veils, a new understanding of the cosmos infused her being. Other realities and worlds existed outside of her understanding of what was normal. They were other places which required a sort of peeling back of a layer of space and time in order to perceive. Some of these veils were close, overlapping every fabric of herself and all of the celestial bodies she knew of. A veil she called Manether suffused existence and offered a gateway to more distant veils and a place for transient souls. Another veil mirrored the Manether, and she knew it as Somnavel, a parallel and shifting symbiote of the other. One a place of ghostly untamed matter and ethereal spirits, the other a home to unfettered souls, and the dreams of mortal beings.

Eons passed and the planet spirit sent her awareness outward to converse with her family through thoughts and impressions, but she found them all to be either unaware or uncaring. They were focused inward with only the barest of developed personalities. Nonplussed, but sure they would eventually come around, she decided to also focus inward and discovered upon herself a rather unique ability to produce life. Her particular body composition and proximity to the mother’s warmth produced the loom for weaving complex and varied organisms far beyond the scope of her family.

She focussed upon bringing forth such miracles, and within a scant few millennia she had covered her surface with dense green vegetation and millions of more mobile life forms which swam, scampered, slithered or hopped across her surface. These creatures were woven with awareness of one or more of the various Veils and thus often developed fantastic and unpredictable natures. She reveled in her creative outlet, and these original species lived in peace for a hundred millenia. She watched, adapted, molded and sculpted until she had evolved what to her senses, was perfection. It never occurred to her to give her handiwork true sentience until they came.

They emerged from what she thought of as the veil of Veridivel. To her perception it was similar to the inner layer of an onion, tinted green on the surface, but when peeled back it glowed a brilliant emerald color. She had tried to model much of her own foliage from the lush forests of Veridivel, but whatever had designed that realm had more expertise than herself. The beings that emerged and referred to themselves as the fey, were old, varied, and cautious. They walked upon two legs for the most part and possessed great organization and mastery over the veils. Though they seemed to respect her creations, they still hunted and harvested them for consumption and experimentation. All of this, she could tolerate, yet her core trembled when they began to build and breed upon her bounty. Soon their numbers were so great they sought competition and strife with the only other beings who wished the same: themselves. She watched in helplessness as their wrath tore apart her creations and scarred her surface. The fey were not deaf to her distress but they did not care. They considered themselves far older and wiser in their minds than some sentient ball of rock. Her body, as they saw it, was a unique resource of magical wonders and the wounds they inflicted were inconsequential upon a land so vast. They were correct in many ways, but in her innocence she did not understand how much worse the destruction could be. She would soon learn to appreciate the restraint of the fey, however, for all they were tiny and relatively insignificant parasites, they were only the first.

It seemed that within a few short decamillennium, intelligent races of all kinds had flooded her surface and tunneled within her. They came from hundreds of different veils, or they evolved from magic and interbreeding, some even arrived from the vastness upon great flying vessels that could traverse the lifeless void impossibly fast. They built civilizations and annihilated whole cultures building again upon the bones of the forgotten. They fought in a dance of dominance that wove a brutal tapestry upon her features. The factions grew and dissipated so fast she could barely keep track. Their magic and technology grew exponentially potent until she feared they could truly destroy her through misuse of that power. The arrogance of the sentient races knew no bounds, until the dragons emerged.

Intelligent flying lizards had been around in some shape or form since the early days of her creationist experiments, and although some more powerful examples had come from beyond the veils, they kept primarily to themselves. Many amassed great caverns of shiny stones and metals and slept in contentment for centuries. The disinterest of the dragons lasted until the greed of the other races caused those covetous beings to seek out the hoards. It took centuries for dragons as a species to realize they were being hunted, so isolated they were from the world and each other. With understanding came a mobilization of relative alacrity as they organized under a great leader they called the Dark Wing. A being thousands of years old and wrought from Umbravel, the veil of shadow, this elder dragon brought doom to the lesser species. It gloried in the time of its wrath, naming it the age of cleansing. Hundreds of thousands of dragons joined the hunt. The mortal races fled underground or perished altogether. The immortal races hid with powerful magic or fled Primytherea through the veils.

During the next few hundred years the reign of the dragons was absolute, but as is their nature, apathy soon returned to them to lethargy and slumber. The other races, however, were not stagnant. They began to emerge from hiding with strong magic and great industry. A war started anew but this time many of the humanoid races banded together in their efforts. In their desperation and folly they summoned great beings from the Outer Veils, from places Primythera herself could not reach. Great monstrosities that suppressed the mother’s light and were madness for mortals to look upon. These creatures arrived with eldritch knowledge of a time before the gods or even her own mother were born. They were not able to be controlled and when they finished fending off or subjugating the dragons, they turned their diabolical attention to the other species and lastly to each other. Wars erupted on a scale of which the planet spirit had never dreamed. Seas were burned, mountains were reforged, and veils torn asunder. The old things were unstoppable until Primythera for the first time took direct action in the endless wars on the side of the mortals. She reached out to sympathetic ears and offered pieces of her power and knowledge for help subduing the old ones. They were lured to the depths of the ocean or active calderas where her power was strongest and she bound them in elemental chains. Some remained awake and seething, others fell into slumber and still haunt Somnavel, the veil of dreams. Not dead, still able to affect the world in subtle ways. Even with her might unleashed she could not destroy these calamities from distant realms. They abided by no set of rules she understood.

Much of what passed for faith for the races of Primythera was greatly shaken by the power of the old ones. Beings who had called themselves gods from other veils had long sought to influence the world, but for reasons she did not fully understand they had only a limited ability to manifest upon her surface. The beings she had begun to think of as her people, had seen their gods annihilated by the old ones almost as easily as those ancient calamities had defeated the dragons. In their fear and loss many of them turned to the heroes to whom she had shared her own power. This was how the planet spirit discovered how to make gods. Her blessings combined with the regard of her people could push a mortal into ascension. She could enhance a body by providing such boons as strength, resilience, awareness and magic, but the act of prayer could convey immortality. With joy the planet spirit took to  her new act of creation, and soon a new pantheon of divinity populated the cosmos and nearby veils.

At first the new deities were aligned with her purpose and sought to fulfill the same  goals, affecting the general improvement of life upon her body. This sentiment did not last, however, as the fickle nature of mortals seemed to seduce those she had chosen as well. They became self centered and avaricious, scheming for more power and influence. Their jealousy inevitably led to chaos and strife once again. This was just the beginning of her new woes, however, as she discovered that her siblings and offspring had also uncovered secrets of divinity and raised their own champions. These were new powers, beyond her scope. They fought over trivialities, committing atrocities and devastating populations of her people. The wars which arose spanned the veils and brought other pantheons to her realm. Power was to be found by preying upon weaker gods and so the outsiders came, coveting their share. Others arrived, craving her authority for their own or seeking vengeance upon the new gods for sins committed in other realms.

Cycles of violence raged for millennia, and Primythera grew weary. She withdrew from the awareness of mortals and slumbered to avoid the consistent sadness which plagued her thoughts. Ages passed and her influence waned while the world evolved without her. Without her conscious knowledge beings sharing synergy with her ideals scraped slivers of power from the threads of her spirit that wove throughout all natural things. These disciples were aware of what she was and what she represented. Many of them came together as a spiritual organization and called themselves druids. They devoted themselves to preserving the natural balance of the world for they believed it would please her and call the planet spirit back to awareness once more. 

In more recent times, barely more than a thousand years ago, a druid arose who did spark her interest. He was called Neadan and embodied all that she desired in a follower of her particular faith. He actively fought the lords of darkness he encountered and through craft and guile, defeated them one by one. To further his cause he sought out champions with elder souls who resonated with Primythera, whom he called the Mother. Of these there was a hero called Mecre who had been reborn so many times that he remembered each past life with clarity. Fate had woven him into the path of Neadan as an elder darkness sought out the life force of Primythera. A dark god of magic from beyond the outer veils, they called him Agavantor and he came to claim her life for his own progression with only mortals and elder souls to bar his way. Neadan and his companions defeated even this dark adversary. Neadan became Neador in the eyes of his followers and achieved divinity. Mecre aged as a hero and left a land with his name, devoted to his legacy.Though from the limited perspective of mortals, Agavantor and his disciples have been defeated, the truth is that the war rages on. In the dark corners of the veils, an old evil awaits a time that fast approaches.