The Origins of Everything

Eons ago, the world was wild and untamed. Beasts, horrors, and elementals of all sorts roamed the earth. A few of them had innate magical powers, and some of them joined forces to create a Worldwatcher, a being of nearly limitless power to reside in another plane, keep watch over the world, and shape it for the better. It took hundreds of years of rituals, countless alchemical potions, and a collection of enchanted components so large, it formed an entire mountain.

When the incantations were finally completed, the mountain was instantly drained of the magicks it possessed and became the dirt and stone that we now call Mount Olympus, and a top it stood the world’s first Dragon, and the world’s first God: Zeus.

He watched over the world for many years, carefully learning everything about the world he had been tasked with ruling. One day he decided he would create more beings like him, and so dragons of every color were spoken into existence. But being mortal versions of Zeus caused them to be selfish, ruthless, and violent to all other beings. Zeus realized a balance must be struck. And so he created thirteen more Gods to be his family and rule by his side.

Two were his parents: Kronos, God of Time and the first Drow, and Rhea, Mother of the Gods and the first Eladrin.

Three were his siblings: Hades, Lord of Death and the first Tiefling, Demeter, goddess of Life, and the first Dryad, and Poseidon, Lord of the Sea, and the first Merfolk.

Seven were his children: Apollo the first Man, Ares the first Orc, Persephone the first Elf, Hephaestus the first Dwarf, Hermes the first Halfling, Dionysus the first Gnome, and Athena the first Dragonborn.

And One was his wife, lover, and mate, Hera, first of the metallic Dragons, made in Zeus’s view of ultimate beauty.

Together, the First Fourteen began filling our world with their likeness, and the many more gods and goddesses that would come to be. After some time, the Gods realized that with so many opposing sources of ultimate power trying to change the world as they saw fit, the world they were tasked with looking after was unstable. The mortal races dared not build anything permanent or they would become the target of whichever God might oppose them. They decided to come together and construct a set of rules for themselves, regulating how each God could interfere with the world. The details of these rules are too complex and numerous for mortal minds, but the general result of these rules was that the more the people of the world proved thier belief in a deity, the more that deity would be able to affect the world. These rules also strictly deny Gods from making any other Gods.

Eventually, however, new Gods would rise from mortal origin, mighty Nords who through sheer force of will and might of spirit would ascend to Godhood, the first of whom was Odin of Nordsted. These mortals turned deities would eventually form their own homerealm of Asgard. Most of the Gods of Olympus recognize the Lords of Asgard as equals, though there are some that see them as pretenders, or even as usurpers of the laws the Gods had so carefully set for themselves. For the most part, the two pantheons share the same uneasy peace as the empires that they have come to represent.