History of Ethereoson

***(WIP)***

## Ethereoson's Origin

At the beginning of time, the force of Order, which, along with its sister, the force of Chaos, transcends time itself, created the goddess, the Mother of All, Ethereosa, and the heavens for her to live within. She blinked her eyes to the empty expanse, and knew what she must do. She created Ethereoson. When it was first created, only the Mortal Plane existed, and under Ethereosa's kind touch it was lush, beautiful, and full of full grass, vines, flowers, and delicious fruits. The only thing the world needed was something to enjoy it, so Ethereosa created the Holy Animals. These are does, sheep, songbirds, rabbits, mice, and most plant-eating animals we know today.

But while the force of Order was helping her with this delicate act, the force of Chaos was looking on with jealousy and bitterness. In response, it hijacked the energy that was used to create such animals to create its own, the Unholy Animals; serpents, scorpions, wolves, large cats, goats, raptors, and most predatorial animals. The ensuing, short-lived battle between Order and Chaos created the four seasons, allowed the Mortal Plane decay from its once perfectly holy state, and created the Neither Animals; animals that were neither holy nor unholy, morally gray in most regards. The king of this clan was the human, surprisingly the most intelligent, most curious, most interesting of them all. Ethereosa saw that the humans had great value and worth. Despite not being holy, they had the strong potential to be, if they had help. So, she selected them as her Chosen Animal, and hence took a foggy version of their form.

For the first few hundred years, Ethereosa helped the humans along. Despite their sharp intellect, their instincts and physical capabilities were rather flawed, causing them to be easy meals for many unholy predators at first. So she taught them how to plant and raise crops and other animals, how to build shelters, how to use tools- she even made up the earliest form of Ethereoht- the language of Ethereoson- for them to use. After a thousand years, the humans had built many villages and spread out across the land, had even developed writing and primitive technology. Their population was becoming too numerous for Ethereosa to keep up with them all.

So Ethereosa created the angels. The holiest of all beings, modeled after humans but with bird-like wings and halos of light, they were her messengers. Together, the newborn angels and Ethereosa created The Garden Above, a perfect paradise that mirrored how The Mortal Plane once was before the force of Chaos took hold of it. The Garden was to be their headquarters. The Garden also housed a sub-realm of infinite size where the humans and holy animals would go after they die.

For over a thousand years more, the angels and Ethereosa watched over The Mortal Plane as the humans grew their villages into towns. She soon picked the town of Yannhah (Ethereoht for faith) as her chosen town, for the populous was more devoted than any other, and sent down the Scripture, her holy list of commands, for them to read. But the humans were slowly forgetting that they were Ethereosa's chosen. They let themself act in chaotic, unholy manners- they fought, they brutalized, they committed sins. Some even stopped believing in Ethereosa and her angels all together. Their barbarity grew and grew, as what would become known as The Great War between the factions of The Mortal Plane fell into full swing. Ethereoson became a bloodbath, towns were being burned to the ground, mothers and children were being slaughtered for disobeying faction leaders. The world was lawless.

And Ethereosa knew, albeit with a heavy heart, that she must teach them a great lesson they would never forget.

## The Great Purification

The angels helped carry out the mission. Near wordlessly, with heavy hearts, the angels and Ethereosa forged The Darkness Below. It was a realm of dark, grimy tunnels, relentlessly hot, with a large pit of fire in the center of it all. No light touched it except for the light of the great fire. It was as far away from Ethereosa's divine grace as possible.

In one, great move, Ethereosa casted all the unholy humans who had tortured, who had maimed, who had stopped believing into The Darkness Below. There was a great cry of agony well over half the human population were dragged into the darkest depths of Ethereoson, away from anything that they loved.

Ethereosa gathered all of the leftover humans and commanded them to follow her Scripture, else they meet the same fate as the ones who had been casted beneath. With this divine lesson at heart, the humans raised their offspring devoutly, with the word of the Scripture and love and righteous fear of Ethereosa inside their hearts.

However, this event was not without its consequences. The force of Order's shield on the world had become cracked, allowing Chaos to come spilling in. There was Chaos from The Darkness Below seeping into the Mortal Plane from the entryway between the two realms, situated in what is now known as the Briarlands. The earth started becoming corrupted, and little by little turned from lush green stalks of grass to hot sand. The sand spread like a plague throughout the Mortal Plane, and by the time Ethereosa had been able to stop it, nearly half of The Mortal Plane was a dry, barren desert with the only fertile area being a patch of thirsty grass by the river cutting through it. This area of sand is now known as the Serpentlands, for the worst of the Unholy Animals- the serpents, especially- quickly made their home there.

But there was another consequence, that would prove even more disastrous- angels were being born with a strange defect. That defect was high amounts of free will. The levels were negligible and rare, at first, but more angels were being born with more and more free will until one late autumn night, almost a thousand years after The Great Purification, an angel with the highest amount of free will anyone had ever seen and ever will see was born.

## The Rise of Exousian

*Main article: Exousian*

There was something wrong with Exousian the second he was born. His parents could sense the great amount of Chaos within him, and quickly ran to consult Ethereosa on what to do about the baby angel. Ethereosa said she would help raise him herself, giving him daily personal lessons on controlling his chaotic nature as he grew up.

Exousian was prevented from attending angelic parades down in Yannhah. When he turned 30, old enough to be given his own personal cloud like all the other angels, he wasn't allowed one. He was to sleep in private quarters within the Garden's castle with the angelic Knights of Ethereosa guarding the door.

Exousian grew up extremely devout, believing whole-heartedly in Ethereosa's goodness and purity. He became more devoted to his duties than any other angel, treating Ethereosa with great respect. To his peers, he was known as kind, polite, and highly respectable. He became proficient in harp-playing and hymns, so proficient in fact that Ethereosa appointed him as assistant to Archangel Ergatyk, patron of hard work, perseverance, and the holy arts, in teaching the choir.

Exousian had worked so hard to prove that he was not dangerous, that he could overcome his free will and choose to be with the Mother of Order instead of with Chaos, that Ethereosa eventually crowned him as Archangel. Exousian ended up replacing Ergatyk as leader of the choir, and the little choir angels liked him much better; he was playful, kind, and listened to whatever troubled them.

Exousian, however, was certainly not without his darkness. Secretly, all along, he had been working up a front, and no angel, not even Ethereosa, could have caught wind of his true intentions. They were not necessarily evil at first; simply sinful. It began when he started gaining influence and power within his angelic circles; he was grateful, but it gave him such a rush of happiness that it intoxicated him with greed. The taste of power was delicious to his chaotic internal soul, and he wanted more. He didn't see why Ethereosa had to be the only one who could play with the world like clay; he wanted to create, too.

With his newfound powers as an archangel, Exousian devised a great invention, an invention that would bring more Chaos into Ethereoson than ever before, even during The Great War, even during The Great Purification; *magic*.

Magic allows its user to wield the force of Chaos itself, to bend it to their will. This created many possibilities. A mage- as magic-users came to be called- could teleport from one place to another, could cast harmful and beneficial spells of varying effects, and so much more. Magic is inextricably tied to Exousian himself. Ultimately, he says what goes with it. With it, Exousian became the chosen master of Chaos itself, like Ethereosa was the chosen master of Order.

But at first, Exousian's intentions with magic was benign. He wanted to help angels, and he wanted to learn more about the humans he had been kept from all his life.

He disguised himself as human and teleported down to The Mortal Plane often. He interacted with the humans and other animals as though one of them. He made friends, helped them, even dined with them, and with that learned much that Ethereosa had never allowed him to know. He fell in love with humanity and The Mortal Plane, with what they had that the angels did not- *freedom*. He visited Murra'sha in the Serpentlands, a city who's patron deity was Exousian himself. He learned about The Great Purification, and how it was still affecting humanity almost two thousand years later. He even spoke to serpents and learned how unfairly maligned they had become; he listened to them as nothing else had listened to them.

He discovered the serpents weren't evil, not malignant or wanting to cause harm, just misunderstood- just like Chaos itself, Exousian realized. That was when Exousian was chosen as the official embodiment of Chaos.

Exousian decided to go to The Darkness Below himself, and when he saw the suffering- the eternal suffering- of the people within, he became extremely angry with Ethereosa and the force of Order, angry that they had allowed so many beings to suffer for so long. He believed no one deserved to be in so much agony, no matter what they had done. He had fallen in love with The Mortal Plane and humanity, and he wanted the best for *all* of the mortal beings.

So Exousian, in his torturous anger, crafted his great plan. He would raise the forces of The Darkness Beneath to The Garden Above, and he would take it over, and he would give the angels the gift of freedom, of Sin.