Edenith Civilization

### Summary

The first civilization of First Men who was destroyed by the Great Flood in the Antediluvian era due to their hubris.

**Edenith Civilization** was the first civilization in existence, the greatest settlement of First Men in Tellus Mahte during the Antediluvian era.

However, due to their hubris, they triggered the first apocalypse and were destroyed in the Great Flood.

## Overview

The **antediluvian** (alternatively **pre-diluvian** or **pre-flood**) period is the time period chronicled in the Bible between the fall of man and the Genesis flood narrative in biblical cosmology. The narrative takes up chapters 1–6 (excluding the flood narrative) of the Book of Genesis. Colloquially, the term is used to refer to any ancient and murky period.

In the Christian Bible and Hebrew Torah, the antediluvian period begins with the Fall of the first man and woman, according to Genesis and ends with the destruction of all life on the earth except those saved with Noah in the ark (Noah and his wife, his three sons and their wives).

The elements of the narrative include some of the best-known stories in the Bible – the creation, Adam and Eve, and Cain and Abel, followed by the genealogies tracing the descendants of Cain and Seth, the third mentioned son of Adam and Eve.

The Bible speaks of this era as being a time of great wickedness. There were Gibborim in the earth in those days as well as Nephilim; some Bible translations identify the two as one and the same. The Gibborim were unusually powerful; Genesis calls them "mighty men which were of old, men of renown". The antediluvian period ended when God sent the Flood to wipe out all life except Noah, his family, and the animals they took with them.

Nevertheless, the Nephilim reappear much later in the biblical narrative, in Numbers 13:31–33 (where the spies sent forth by Moses report that there were Nephilim or "giants" in the promised land).

## Summary

As the first civilization in existence and one of the original settlements of the First Men, pre-dating the Big Bang and the primordial gods by hundreds of eons, the Edenith civilization is shrouded in layers of mystery even to this very day and age.

The civilization itself was founded by Cain after he was banished by Adam for his crimes, though it only became a "true" civilization after his son Enoch became its next leader after Cain's, supposed, death. After Enoch's death, instead of passing the title down to his eldest, he divided the settlement into thirteen sectors equally among his thirty-six sons and daughters.

In its most glorious days, the civilization was the largest and the most powerful settlement of the First Men all across the seemingly endless Tellus Mahte, governing countless colonies with the largest population of 13-billions in comparison with the other civilizations of the time, including the ones founded by Adam and Eve's remaining children.

However, it was because of their achievements that brought forth their own destruction as it led to them becoming plagued with hubris and became prideful and ignorant of the angels and demons who gave them the secret knowledge of Heaven which allowed them to advance their society to its current state. Soon, unbeknown to them, this hubris was the trigger for their downfall and the first apocalypse in existence, and its arrival came with the galloping sounds of the Four Horsemen.

In the year ████ of the Edenith calendar, Tellus Mahte as a whole was forced to suffer from one calamity after another, from natural disasters that devastated the world beyond reparations to strange and incurable diseases that killed millions in nights. Within the Edenith civilization, countless civil wars broke out due to in-fighting between its leaders, leading to an era of chaos and lawlessness that sown terror into the hearts of the First Men.

Finally, after centuries of destruction, the apocalyptic force known as END appeared on the horizon as a giant storm, one whose rain was the primordial essence of the Empty itself, which wiped away everything and anything within Creation, from the smallest atoms of Assiah to the highest branches of Adam Kadmon. Everywhere and anywhere the "water" touched was devoured and destroyed and returned to a state of primeval nothingness.

After the rain ended and the primordial water of END finally vanished back into the formless energy of the Empty, the Edenith civilization, as well as Creation as a whole, was no more, nothingness but memories within the mind of the celestial beings and the fortunate survivors of its destruction.

## Culture

According to Shemhazai, due to its immense size, the Edenim was an extremely diverse civilization, whose people came from multiple different cultures, ethnicities, backgrounds, and traditions - All grouped together under the banner of the Edenith Empire after their ancestral lands were conquered by former the civilization's former rulers and conquerors.

They were a gender equal society, with men and women alike sharing the same amount of rights, duties, and responsibilities as a citizen of the Edenith civilization. However, based on the remaining records of the Grigori, much like the rest of the First Man settlements on Tellus Mahte, their culture tended to lean toward a matriarchy, with evidence of women holding more important positions within the fields of politics and military than men.

Among the noble families of the civilization, especially among the oldest of houses, inbreeding and incestuous marriages were a very common practice so as to keep their sacred bloodline "pure", often marrying brothers to sisters, cousins to cousins, uncles to nieces, and aunts to nephews. In addition, it wasn't a strange practice for Edenim parents to sleep with their children throughout their puberty state to "teach them the carnal pleasure of the flesh", with even an account of an Edenim man siring five generations of his family with his mother, sisters, daughters, granddaughters, and great-granddaughters before his eventual death.

Another one of the marriage practices was polygamy, though based on research, most polygamous marriages only occured in the noble class and often only benefit the family the others were marrying into. They also accepted same-sex marriages in relationships in the civilization and treated them as the norms, with even special technology that would allow people of the same sex to have children together.

## Achievements

Despite their antiquity, the Edenith civilization as a whole was an extremely technological advanced civilization, being vastly superior to even the most complex modern technology of any civilization on Earth and on other extraterrestrial civilizations, and closely resembling the technology from science fiction more than anything that could possibly be achieved in real life.

During their time, science was upgraded to whole new levels, beyond what modern scientists can even dream of, much less comprehend, and could be considered as a school of magic in its own right. Ancient Edenim scientists were said to have cracked the codes of [Magic] and [Mystery], thus allowing them to manipulate the magical forces of the universe through scientific methods that not even the angels thought were possible. Their other greatest achievements were in the field of weaponry, with some of their weapons even capable of destroying entire planets.

### Failed Replicas

Throughout the ages, there have been numerous attempts to replicate the antediluvian technology of the Edenith civilization, all of which resulted in failure and the occasional catastrophe. And yet, despite all of these failures, many still tried to recreate these technological marvels and finally shed some light upon the ever so mysterious first civilization. Some of these failed attempts are:

* **Angel Light**: A stealth device that can render walls, hands, stealth shielding, and other objects transparent to the human eyes. It was created by Troy Hurtubise based on an unnamed Edenith artifact, which later Azazel stated to be a prank x-ray glasses, which he discovered with his Sacred Gear. However, before this invention could be made public, both the Angel Light and the Edenith artifact were collected by the Order of the Iscariot and all verifiable evidence was quickly destroyed.
* **Astras**: According to Tvastar, the Astras are all failed attempts created by the Hindu Pantheon on their path to recreate Edenith-era weaponry. And though most of them failed, Azazel had noted that, among all failed replicas, they are still the closest to the originals.
* **Atlantean Steel**: A special type of enchanted steel created by the Atlanteans with distinctive patterns of banding and mottling reminiscent of flowing water, similar to Damascus steel. It's reputed to be extremely tough, incapable of shattering, and is capable of harming all supernatural creatures akin to true sacred metals.
* **Glass Candles**: Enchanted candles made out of obsidian. When lit, they allow the user to see the present and past everywhere sunlight has touched, give out visions and dreams to other people, and to communicate with anyone in everywhere when their name is whispered to the candle's fire. They were found by ancient Celtic druids in Fintan's Grave and rumored to have been created by Fintán himself while he was in isolation, crafting them using his own knowledge.
* **Gogmagogs**: Ancient automaton-like golems created based on an outline for an Edenith surveillance robot. They were first created by the Mesopotamian Pantheon for militaristic means, but their plans quickly failed when they accidentally developed artificial intelligence and rebelled against their creators, resulting in the deaths of multiple gods and immense destruction on their paths for world domination. The gods Enlil, Enki, and Ishtar, however, were able to stop the robots on their path and banished them into the Dimensional Gap.
* **Obsidian Mirror**: Enchanted mirrors made out of a mysterious obsidian-like black stone created by ancient Aztect priests for communication and observational purposes, based on a type of Edenith-era communicator. Several obsidian mirrors are still used by the Mayan and Aztec Pantheons and their followers to this day, and there are a total of three types of mirrors.
	+ One that functions much like modern telephone devices, allowing communication between all who possess a device.
	+ One that has a record-and-playback function, allowing the user to record and send audio-visual messages to others who possess a counterpart.
	+ One that works as a monitoring device, projecting audio-visual surveillance through connection with a living being's blood in a vial.

## Survivors

Despite popular belief, not all Edenim were wiped out, as many were saved from their doom through various means by the angels and demons through various means. The most famous survivors of the Great Flood were Noah who escaped destruction through his ark, the Preserver of Life, alongside his family and 555 other First Men whose blood was pure from unnatural taints.

## Influences

Despite being destroyed eons before the Big Bang, the Edenith civilization still has many influences over the world, both mundane and supernatural alike, even though most of these influences mainly go unnoticed. Their most noticeable influences are possibly on multiple religions all over the world, with many survivors of the Great Flood later got recorded by scholars and prophets in numerous religious works, the most notable of which are the Abrahamic religions, as the civilization as a whole is a crucial part in the history of the Three Factions.

## Trivia

* Despite popular beliefs, it's not the first civilization, but merely one of the earliest and most well-known.
* All kings of the Edenith civilization took the surname Enoch after its first king.
	+ Members of the civilization are known as the Edenim in official records.
* The capital city of the civilization was named Edinnu, which means "Plain of Pleasure".
* The civilization itself was said to be a combination of dictatorship and theocracy.
* According to Azazel, the written language of the Edenith civilization resembles a mixture of Sumerian language, Biblical Hebrew, Mycenaean Greek, and Egyptian hieroglyphs.