Old Testament

## **The Dawn of Creation; YHVH Cleanses the Abyss**

In the beginning, there was only chaos and darkness writhing
madly in an endless void. It was a realm of inchoate oblivion and infinite
suffering. Humanity as we know it did not exist, and all that existed was
suffering and madness. From beyond this realm, came a being above and superior
to it - YHVH, the Lord Almighty, who would come from there to define the
spiritual realm and shape a world worth living in.

He labored for seven years and seven days to craft a realm
worthy of Himself and created many spirits to aid him in this task - shaping
them from his will and his soul, gifting them sparks of the light He had
brought with Him by His very existence. These would be called his ‘Angels’, His
servants and His messengers, and His holy army. Vessels of His will and echoes
of His radiant spirit, these beings set forth to aid Him in the grand task of
creation.

They waged a primal war against the chaos of the void,
beating it back so that new and better things could take its place. And as they
fought, YHVH toiled to create something to inhabit the world He was building.
The first to be created were the many plants of the world, which He saw were
good- where before there was nothing but madness, a world had been brought to
order.

Next came the manifold animals of the world, and these too did YHVH judge as good. These ranged from the humble dog to the majestic
dragons, and all beings which are natural in origin, but that are not of
mankind. Finally, He set to the creation of mankind, but in this He was sabotaged.

## **The First Sins, The Corruption of Man**

The angels known as Lucifer and Satan saw what their creator
was doing and felt separately pride and wrath for the first time, having been
tainted by their long war against the chaos and madness with the vestiges of
its unholy force. Satan, one of the firstborn of the angels and the mightiest
of their warriors, felt rage at the idea that he and his were to be replaced-
an irrational fear planted in a once perfect being by the hateful shadow he had
been warring against. Lucifer, one of the great creators of God’s legions and a
master of their forge-fires, was called to aid in the creation of these beings;
and discovered God’s plan for them to rule the world that was being forged.

Together, they both joined in quiet and secret rebellion,
tainted by darkness. Their jealousy of beings not yet finished grew and thus
they aimed to sabotage God’s creation; their intent to retain God’s need for
them was carried out by rendering the creation of man imperfect. Thus, under
Satan’s guidance, when called to aid God in the crafting of mankind, Lucifer
introduced into them shards and fragments of the black abyss from before.

In these fragments were the roots of all mortal sin and
imperfection, and the source of all mortal evils. YHVH beheld his newest
children- and saw that they were flawed. Bearing the shadow of the void within
their hearts yet bearing the forms that mirrored his own divine self, they were
the highest order of blasphemy.

Yet, The Lord Almighty, in His infinite wisdom, knew whom to
blame; for He had realized Lucifer’s deception in this moment, as well as the
prideful motivations behind it. He set the angels who remained loyal to bring
before Him Lucifer and discover the why of it; yet as He did this, Satan had
begun to fall deeper and deeper into wrath; for even though he had ruined the
creation of Mankind, God did not love him any more than before. God did not
cease his efforts to create man and aimed to punish the being he thought solely
responsible.

## **The War of Heaven**

This drove Satan into a mad fury and he became lost in his
irrational hatred and taint yet retaining the guile and wisdom he had been made
with. So, he sought to subvert and corrupt a host of other angels to agreeing
with him, before gathering these forces in open rebellion. A long and brutal
war followed, during which other mighty angels who had been tainted by the long
war against the shadow fell into the hordes of Satan’s mad fury. These greater
beings, existences who had been created to co-ordinate their lesser kin, were
known as such: Asmodeus, once a great artist subverted into hedonist pleasures
of vile lust witnessed within the depths of the roiling wild chaos. Belphegor,
a mighty warrior who grew weary of the battle, and fell into sloth as he
despaired of any purpose, lost to the mindlessness of the Void. Leviathan, a
warrior of great physique and stature who learned from the abyss how to envy
the grace and beauty of others and forget his own gifts. Beelzebub, who learned
that though his divine body had no need for sustenance, it could still enjoy
it- and fell into wretched Gluttony through this. Finally, there was Mammon,
who had been commanded to aid in the creation of the metals of the world, and
came to love and covet them overmuch, falling into Greed.

Together, these seven vile beings waged war on God, and upon
their Kin, to prevent mankind from being finished and born. They stole away
much of humanity, to give them over to their own dark ways, to steal them from
God. This war at the dawn of creation permitted the abyss that otherwise would
have been totally destroyed to creep back into the world as well, tainting it
and eroding it.

God, the Almighty, was furious- and took to the field Himself.
The war ended in time, but God was not willing to so easily kill His firstborn
Children, and so He crafted from what remained of the abyss the realm that we
know now as ‘Hell’. A place of torment and suffering, sealed from the rest of
creation, He cast the seven fallen ones into it- those who had accepted Satan
as their chief and lord instead of God. With them He cast also those who had
followed them willingly, and the dark creatures left in the world.

But the fledgling humans who had been taken and corrupted by
them, He left to their own devices, as He retreated from the majority of his
creation; the war of heaven had ruined much of His beautiful world, but not all
of it.

## **The Birth of Arcadia, and Ordering of Man**

He retreated to the realm of Arcadia, the last holdout of
his perfection. This realm, which had been defended by the mightiest of His
loyal children, the angels Michael, Uriel, Remiel, Gabriel, and his voice
amongst them, the Metatron, was preserved from the chaos- and it was there that
He set down the perfected form of humanity He had managed to salvage- those
untainted by Satan and Lucifer’s foul works, and not claimed by any of the
other lords of sin.

And thus, was born the divine kingdom Arcadia, and all the
wretched and unclean realms without. As the seals of Hell were made, and the
kingdom of Arcadia’s foundations laid, YHVH chose then to return to his own
realm of ‘Heaven’, and left tenants with those who would rule in his name
amongst men, establishing the divine order of righteous rule to which Arcadia
still holds. There he judges, and awaits the souls of the righteous and pure,
and from there he casts down the wicked unto the realm of Hell.

Under him are the Angels whose loyalty defended our realm,
under them are the Seraphim whose souls have been ascended unto the same state,
under them are those who maintain his holy rule over Arcadia, under them are
the priests who bear his light, under them are the righteous knights who bear
his blades, under them are the goodly folk of Arcadia, under them are those who
have fallen from grace, beneath them are the unclean of the outside world who
may devote themselves unto his light and be purged of sin through pain, and
beneath all are those who dare to wield darkness and filth.