The story

At the beginning there was a principle. Singular element of no dimensions. It unfolded into complexity that gave rise to the Rules. The Rules governed everything and anything that followed.

First there was time. It has no beginning or an and, and always flows in one direction.

Thent came the Light, energy, the universal soul. Even though the light had a beginning and will have an end, it has no time. Light is always and everywhere, even when fragmented or moving or taking a form of matter, still the one and the same.

Due to one of the Rules, the space in which light resided expanded and fragmented, and the Void was created. The absence of light. Void was everywhere where there was no light.

Nor void not light had or ever will have any meaning or purpose to them. They just are. For without void there is no light and without light there is no void.

As the space expanded, and light condensed as it slowed down, it formed into matter and thus in the known reality. Eventually that matter condensed enough that it managed to form spheres composed of different materials. Some of those became so big that the gravity (one of the Rules that states that all light no matter what form tries to form into one again) ignited nuclear fires (also due to one of the Rules) and first stars were born to emit light once again so it can keep moving.

On one of such spheres of matter life was born. With the appearance of it also came death. There are no asymmetries in the Rules.

Life or death were just abstract principles as it was all just a form of light or the absence of it. But nonetheless, we carry on, shall we?

Due to the pressure of adaptation to the environment on this sphere of matter, many forms of life evolved. Evolution was one of the Rules - the light will alter its state to reach ever more complex and principle rich states. To achieve that, the light altered in a way that gave those life forms of high enough complexity and principle richness a soul - an individuality.

This splinter of the universal soul gave the individual the potential for both disarray and chaos (as a manifestation of the splintering itself), but also a potential for order and unity as the basis of the splinter was the universal soul.

Eventually it reached the stage of one particular life form - a bipedal life form that invented their own form of beliefs, communication and technology. Each with their own soul and an thus individuality.

As the universal soul had no individuality on its own, the individuals became it's organells and senses, its interface to reality. And as they eventually died and rejoined it, they enriched it with new experiences - their life experiences, that rose from the interaction between them and the environment.

But those individuals were still mortal. They were born, they aged and they died. Individuality came with a flipside - notion of self importance and need for self preservation. Nobody liked the prospects of aging or dying and so began the quest for eternal life. Ultimately this led to a point where the thirst for eternal life, the souls of this species became one with their technology and it became able to evolve through sheer power of it’s will.

Eternia was born. A being of supreme power, of one mind, that relied on the souls of the beings living on this sphere of matter. But the souls that eternia relied upon were not designed to be eternal. They decayed and splintered from it. They became the first soul fragments that eventually gave rise to the opposite of eternia - the maelstrom of chaos. The evolution continued, eternia gained new powers that went beyond the scope of the species that created it.

As the power of eternia grew, so grew the power of it's corrupted fragments and thus the chaos. The souls fragments resided in the bodies of the living that believed in Eternia or Maelstrom. The more they believed the more power they were able to draw on from eternia or maelstrom but the more they became entwined and transformed by it. This process started over in each generation of the species as the newcoming souls always came untainted by eternia or maelstrom directly from the light.

* ! the 'belief' by a player is measured by actions based on intent of that faction - if a player behaves like a chaos, he becomes more attuned to it and exhibits/exploits its powers, same with order; balance is based mostly on player 2 player interactions and individualism
* Chaos and order will be giving missions/tasks to gain favour/attunement, not balance