The Great Game

The Great Game is the phrase used to refer to the time of interest, between the Fall of Auanduana, and the Ascendence of the Angel's Honoured. The word also refers to the struggle between the Angel of Pohm and the Beast of Korbaal.

Long ago, God made the heavens and all the life beneath. There were three worlds, all without sky, without souls, and to each of them God gave a blue sky and green grasses. And upon the first world, God's children emerged, and flourished, and grew great. God was proud, and God's children were proud. As they kept growing, God set life upon the second world, human life, and it prospered and grew, building great structures and monuments which now lie in ruin. And as the two worlds grew, the Silence grew, and God withdrew, little by little, leaving only an angel behind for each of the three worlds. And the First became fabulously prosperous and grew and grew, and kept growing beyond what their angel said was right for them. Then they wanted to grow onto their neighbours, the second and third planets. Their Angel said no, and they fought a great internal war, and billions died, and it kept going, for generations, flaring up every century or so for millenia. Over time the balance of power stabilized, and new gods took control the planet, immortalized citizens who'd become one with the systems they owned, and thus would live for as long as the companies they commanded. These new gods fought in the wars, emerging as the dominant political and thus military forces on the planet, constantly being manipulated by, and instinctively working against, the Angel. The trend among the gods became towards cruelty, due to the psychopathy needed to attain such a position, and the several millennia of conditioning the planet to be ruled by fear. Due to the losing position of the rebels, sadism amongst them was especially high. Eventually there was only one left, a mega-conglomorate represented by beings of incredible cruelty. A mind so ancient, and so corrupted by want and hatred and cruelty, that it became an enemy to all the others, and together they overcame its main defences, and backed it into a corner. Afraid of what it lashing out might mean, they got it to surrender, and it was forced to live in the deepest crevices of the city, both it and the Angel locked in perpetual battle.

The other gods, however, were not nice people either. As stated, leadership favoured cruelty, because cruelty, betrayal, selfishness, and lies had been so engrained into the general culture of the planet for so long, that the genome of the average person had been altered because of it. They knew the Angel would not stand for it, for them, and what they wanted to do. They kept their promise to stay on their world, in order to prevent the Angel from ceasing its battle with the fallen god, and coming to fight them. However they also wanted to keep the Angel in that pit of eternal battle, so that they could operate freely upon their planet. In doing so, they collaborated to control the environment of the duel, keeping the fight forever balanced. Meanwhile, their people lived in a world without an outside. The very sky that was gifted to them by God had fallen off, and the only thing which kept what oxygen they had left from spilling out was the fact that the rich preferred the top, ensuring a tight seal all around. Beneath, there was no human rights, no health and safety laws, no regard for liberty or human happiness. There was only a constant struggle for existence, with trees replaced by reactors, and dead zones around the chemical leaks. A million religions existed, all of them started as scams. If a mother dies of sickness, leaving her baby alone, the body will only be moved and the baby only picked up when someone wants to sell them. If a rich person wants to kill, or rape, or torture, they simply do so. The only thing that could be relied on was power, and the powerful were done fighting.

They celebrated for thousands of years. Initially mostly retaining a level of dignity or sense of disgust, however eventually growing bored, and delving into deeper and more fetishized ways to entertain themselves. Minor conflicts existed, minor in that they were no taken seriously. Millions of people died each time, but the gods were essentially play-fighting. They were simple minded as any regular person, but could place their minds into as many different bodies, or computer networks, or killing machines, as they wanted. A person was now a cell, and a organization, an organism. The vast majority of people were simply bacteria, living their own lives, and treated absolutely without regard.

Inevitably, some of the new gods grew bored with their limitations, and saw great oppurtunity on their neighbouring planets.