.
It is unknown how the world of Enelis truly came to exist. However, there many common themes and stories told across the disparate cultures of Ularin. These commonalities suggest that there may be an element of truth to these creation stories, or rather that these stories simply do a more-than-adequate job of explaining how the world came to be. The following is a common creation myth told by those dwelling on the eastern coasts of Ularin.
Creation Myth
Only twilight existed in the endless void, where Enis, the Earthmother, Goddess of Creation existed. Enis desired a child, something that would grow and evolve with time and let her mark the passing of time in the void.
To help her on this task, Enis created four powerful energies required for life to thrive, the four elements: fire, earth, water, and air. She created and personified these elements as powerful elemental queens who would work together to create the living world so that she may grow and infuse it with the cycle of life and death. Favra, the Fire Queen, burned bright creating the warm center of the world as a burning ball of the purest fire, to warm the world from within. Broga, the Stone Queen, created the stone and earth to surround and absorb the heat of the flame. Myra, the Water Queen, filled the cracks of the rocky ball with life-giving waters, as Athes, the Storm Queen, surrounded the new land with life-giving air and winds to move the waters about.
The new world was filled with the life of birds, beasts, and green plants as Enis became one with her new creation, a new living world called Enelis. However, it was in perpetual twilight, a natural, wild world with neither order nor chaos, nor good, nor evil. It was a world in perpetual balance, life and death, a great and endless cycle.
After the creation of Enis’s living world, Enis honored the Elemental Queens by creating the first fully sentient beings, the dragons. Each offshoot of these creatures would be tied to the power and element of one of the Elemental Queens. However, the Queens no longer worked in harmony. There was strife among the Elemental Queens, as each believed their personal element and power to be superior to the others. It spawned a war between the elements and a shadow war between the dragons upon Enelis that were tied to their creators. To protect her creation, Enis banished the Elemental Queens to beyond the void, where they then created their own individual realities, each subsumed in their own particular element. Thus the elemental planes were born.
Over countless eons, small regions of the twilight in the infinite void surrounding Enelis coalesced into a collection of light and a collection of darkness. Over countless more eons, these collections grew infinite in size, into what are now known as the positive and negative energy planes. At the heart of these regions the waves of positive and negative energy each sweep out across the living world of Enelis, keeping it within the balanced forces of life and death. However, as these regions grew in size, they each birthed a powerful sentient force within. The essence of light became the sun goddess Solarus, and the essence of darkness, became the dark god, Nembral.
These new gods were immediately in conflict, finding their energies equal and opposite. It was then that Good and Evil existed for the first time. Good being the proliferation and cultivation of life, and Evil being the destruction and diminishment of life. The time of Light and Darkness began. The outer planes, where belief took material form, began to take shape, as Good and Evil beget Law and Chaos and all forms of morality came into being.
Solarus and Nembral made all of the void their battleground, with Enelis caught at the center of their strife. At one point during the seemingly endless war between light and darkness, Nembral blasted Solarus, fracturing her glowing form and scattering pieces of her across the void. Thus, motes of her light flew out into the vast expanse, becoming the stars. Solarus then retaliated and fractured Nembral as well, and his portions coalesced into dense, dark crystals that flew around the twilight with great momentum, seen now as dark shadows in the night sky. A great portion of the twilight expanse was destroyed in this great battle, as positive and negative energy collided, creating empty void in its place. All that remained of the once endless twilight, was Solarus, the golden sun, with her shattered remnants of scattered stars across the expanse; and the dark, empty void, the darkness that was Nembral. The fighting had grown into a rhythm, where either Solarus or Nembral would gain the upper hand temporarily, but then their positions would exchange. Thus, we have the day and the night, respectively, as each battle continues; as well as the seasons that mark the rhythms of the ongoing war.
During the time of Light and Darkness, the ongoing war seeped upon Enelis and her creations. The dragons would become divided not just by their elemental affinity, but also by their philosophical and moral view of Good and Evil. The dragons separated into factions and ideologies, and their respect for Enis diminished. The Earthmother felt abandoned by her pregenital creations and thus sought to create new children who might better appreciate her world. Thus, the first humanoids, the First-born were created, free to choose their moral path and form. Enis scattered the firstborn across the myriad world of Enelis, knowing that the very land would reshape the First-born, allowing them to evolve within their environment.
It was not long before the War of Light and Darkness found itself upon Enelis directly. It is said that Nembral was the first to disregard Enis, and intrude upon her creation. Nembral corrupted some of the First-born upon what would become the small continent of Nastus. He instilled in them a desire to extinguish life and light, to be his servants upon Enelis. In retaliation, Solarus did likewise, implanting the desire to proliferate life and light into another group of the First-born, on the continent of Alarus. Enis soon discovered these manipulations, and in her infinite wisdom, she foresaw how the battle between Good and Evil would forever reshape her creation. She then banished the Solarus and Nembral and all their progenitor gods from ever interfering directly with her creation. Enelis was forever protected from direct divine intervention.
Enelis created Pelaria, the moon goddess, as the Guardian of Fate, who was composed of both the essences of Nembral and Solarus, light and dark. She became the moon and would encircle Enelis, protecting the world and its inhabitants from divine intervention, ensuring that the mortal First-born and their descendants would be free to choose their own moral path, guided by their own fate. Enis then divided Enelis, rising the ocean waters and dividing the continents, creating the god Erean to oversee the separation of these lands and their people. He would be tasked with ensuring the corrupted First-born of Alarus and Nastus would remain separated from the other First-born elsewhere, who had yet to evolve and harmonize with their environments. Erean, of course, would fail at this task in at least two instances.
Over many eons, the rule of the dragons would eventually dwindle, as the First-born increased in numbers and complexity. Most of the dragons would flee to Terra Draconis, leaving Ularin to be ruled by humanoids. The mystical nature of the First-born allowed them to evolve into their environment. Those that dwelt in the great forests would became the elves. Those that dwelt in the mountains would become the giants, those that dwelt deep under those mountains would become the dwarves. Those that dwelt in the rolling grasslands became the halflings, and those that dwelt in the temperate swamps became the orcs and goblinoids, and so on. Over time, many of the First-born lost touch with their magical connection to Enis becoming all the mortal ancestries we know today.
Where humans came from, is often disputed. It was eight or nine millennia ago that the first humans began to appear on the eastern coasts. Some say they either evolved from some unknown descendants of the First-born (a theory often touted by humans themselves), or, as some have said, often in jest, they were spawned from the mating of halflings and giants. Regardless, the humans slowly began to spread along the eastern coasts of Ularin, from north to south, living in primitive bands of hunters and gatherers, taking up the void where a vast empire of elves once existed. As time went by, these tribes became clans, clans became kingdoms, and Ularin was soon dominated by the short-lived humans and their kin.