Creation of the Multiverse

The multiverse’s creation, at least the part beyond mortal reckoning, was outlined by Covoran to the clergy of the Crystal City during his Hundred Day Stay.

One: The Primordials & The Three Eternities

Covoran explains that before time there were the Three Eternities, times which were so long that to count them in years would be impossible. In the beginning there was Chaos, or the Void, depending on how you chose to perceive it. This is the First Eternity, the Eternity of Nothing. For all divine and primordial creatures, the First Eternity is considered the longest—longer than all known spans of time, longer than the Second and Third Eternities, longer than any concept of time, all put together. In fact, it is likely that time itself did not even exist during the First Eternity.

Eventually, for reasons unknown, over a period of time longer than anyone could ever know, the Void slowly coalesced into the six Great Primordials. This was the Second Eternity, the Eternity of Cohesion. These primordials represented the raw elements and energy that would eventually create the material world: Air, Earth, Fire, and Water were the physical material; Syntropy, or Something, and Entropy, or Nothing, were the materials of energy and non-energy. Their forms began to emerge through the raw Void, being both primordial avatars as well as the planes in which they resided. These primordials embodied massive impossible elemental power, as well as the energy required to manipulate those elements. The power to shape the Chaos into something else.

And so began the formation of the Elemental Planes, six realms in which the original primordials lived. At this time, there were no boundaries that separated these primordial planes, causing them to intermingle. This created the para- and quasi-elemental planes, and with them, new primordials (sometimes called the Primordial Children or the Lesser Primordials) that embodied those elements. Magma, Salt, Ash, etc.

Syntropy, the primordial who embodied Something (which we might call Life), coalesced the Positive Energy Plane, which became the first light of a new multiverse. In return, however, this light cast a shadow against the Elemental Planes, which Entropy, who embodied Nothing (which we might call Death) warped into the Negative Energy Plane below.

The primordials existed like this for the Third Eternity, the Eternity of Sleep, during which they rested and their elements commingled.

Meanwhile, in the center of these new primordial planes, a new plane began to emerge: the Material Plane. Acting as a balance against the Elemental Chaos (the outer edge of the Inner Planes, where all the elements roiled against each other), the Material Plane was essentially a blank slate, an area where the raw Chaos was refined to a more applicable Order. The only problem was that it was small, impossibly small compared to the greatness of the Elemental Planes. The primordials literally could not do anything with it due to their immense size and innate connection to their own planes. A pinpoint amid the Chaos.

So, in concordance with Syntropy, the primordial of Life, who had distanced themselves from the others long ago for reasons unknown, the primordials undertook the arduous task of creating the Titans.

Two: The Titans & The Creation of Worlds

The Leophynsian Hendecagoi makes us believe that there were only 11 titans originally, but in fact the primordials created hundreds of thousands of them within the Material Plane. Why they did this is not entirely known; even Covoran did not know his purpose other than to create worlds.

Three types of titans were created: Creators, Shapers, and Destroyers. Each group had a specific purpose— Creators made the basic raw elemental materials out of “nothing” (in reality coalescing elements from chaotic matter), Shapers shaped those elements into things, and Destroyers destroyed what was made. And while the titans were tiny compared to the primordials, they were enormous by our standards; a Creator could fit an entire world in between their hands, pressing it into shape like a snowball. Titans were also humanoid in structure, serving, presumably, as a concept for humanoids as we know them now.

So the titans began to create worlds. As they did, the primordials fell into arguing and in-fighting. They had begun to create other creatures, namely the Elementals, acting as avatars and aspects of the primordials within their planes as well as the Material, but also other various elemental-based creatures. They fought over ownership of the Para- and Quasi-elemental Planes— even though those planes had their own rulers now: lesser primordials who coalesced on their own. Syntropy suffused herself into her own plane, never to be seen again. In order to keep the peace, the remaining primordials agreed to create boundaries between their worlds, and the Para- and Quasi-elemental planes, so that each primordial could rule over their own plane in peace.

In doing so, they unintentionally created a boundary around the Material Plane as well, which had the consequence of sealing the titans inside, preventing them from returning to their creators. This angered the titans. A lot. But there was little they could do — they had no ability to leave the Material Plane. So instead they became nomadic wanderers within the Material, using their powers to construct the first generation of worlds.

Three: The Arbiters & The Concept of Beauty

A surprisingly large and important issue within the titanomachy was the issue of aesthetics. The primordials, and by extension their titans, were creatures entirely and wholly created from natural, terrestrial Chaos. The primordials created Creators and Shapers to make worlds, and Destroyers to destroy them, but they never taught the titans why they should make or destroy worlds. And so, for a very long time, the Destroyers never destroyed anything, because there was no reason to, no standard for what made a world destroyable. This, as you might expect, caused a tremendous amount of frustration from them.

Eventually this frustration bubbled over and the Destroyers destroyed everything in a fit of rage. Every world that had been created, the Destroyers destroyed. And they nearly destroyed their own brethren in their fury as well.

The Material Plane a wreck, the other titans convened, agreeing that they needed a rubric by which to assess whether or not a world was “good” enough to not be destroyed. The problem was that the titans had no earthly concept of aesthetics, beauty, or utility. Many of the first generation worlds were aberrant or absurd in their creation — worlds made entirely out of silt, worlds where water flowed upwards, worlds composed of deadly gasses. In short, the titans didn’t know what they were doing. They wanted to ask the primordials for help, but A) they could no longer contact them due to the planar barrier that they could not cross, and B) even if they could, they would quickly realize that the primordial planes were effectively as bad or worse in their own creations.

The issue was that the titans at the time had no concept of what made a world “good,” and at their titanic convention, they tried to devise a standard which would make that determination. They ultimately decided to take a fragment of their separate powers and combine them, to make a new entity they called Arbiters. These entities were simply glowing orbs of light that had a fragment of the powers of all three types of titans. They were “learning” entities, as Covoran described it, created to analyze and judge worlds to decide if they were worth saving. What the titans didn’t know is that these Arbiters were created out of a power we now call the divine essence, or Divinity.

The Arbiters were little more than balls of sentient light. When titans created a world, the Arbiters would inspect it and determine if it satisfied two functions: Beauty and Utility. If it did, the world was saved; otherwise, the Destroyers would consume it.

This was how the second generation of worlds were created. It was not easy. Originally, the Arbiters had to learn what constituted Beauty and Utility, which resulted in millions of “imperfect” worlds; however, as time went on the Arbiters became better and better at analyzing worlds, eventually reaching a point where they began to help the titans create worlds as well as judging them. This was the beginning of the end for the titans.

Four: The Divine Sundering

The Arbiters were imbued with divine power from the onset, but did not have the self-awareness capable of realizing it. The titans expressly forbade them from using their powers and used them only as advisers. They were unaware that the Divinity they had formed would become the ultimate power of the multiverse. As they continued to refine their concepts of Beauty and Utility, the Arbiters began to expand upon a philosophical concept they called the Aesthetic Axiom, which is when they argued that Beauty was ultimately subjective (in the eye of the beholder), while Utility was ultimately objective (utility was either useful, or not). Covoran explained that this began with the investigation of flowers. The titans had begun constructing numerous plants of different styles, heights, and colors, and the Arbiters could not agree on which flowers were Beautiful, and which were not. They noted that these plants could be any type of Beauty, but regardless of their subjectivity on which flowers were Beautiful and which were not, they all served the same ultimate purpose, or Utility, within the context of that world.  This meant that a world could be wholly Utilitarian, but the Beauty of it could be expressed in different ways. This is when the Arbiters began to be more invested in the creation of worlds, helping the Shapers to apply their individual Beauty to each realm.

Meanwhile, some Arbiters wondered if there was an opposite axiom: an objective Beauty and a subjective Utility. These Arbiters called themselves the Philosophica. They began to seek answers to their fundamental questions. Creating subjective Utility was a nebulous “yes”; they discovered numerous other ways to create similar functions from different things. Objective Beauty, however, was nearly impossible to create. No matter how hard they tried, the Philosophica could not get the Shapers to make something so Beautiful that all of the beings enjoyed it.

Over time, the Philosophica came to believe that the titans were at fault for the subjectivity of Beauty — that their powers fundamentally made them incapable of creating True Beauty. The Philosophica broke away from the other Arbiters and began to create their own things, using their nearly limitless power, expressly against the titans’ wishes. But even the Philosophica couldn’t decide on Objective Beauty, and in their arguments came the fundamental concept of the nine alignments, as each Arbiter explained how their alignment was the most perfect. This led to a lot of infighting, and the worlds they created became strict interpretations of their own personal alignments. And while they fought, they also began creating other things— creatures, concepts, ideas— all in service of trying to find the ultimate Beauty.

The closest the Philosophica ever came to Objective Beauty was in the creation of the Feywild. The Arbiters thought perhaps a “heightened” version of the Material Plane would suffice in creating Beauty, and used their collective powers to create a copy of the Material Plane, which they suffused with divine energy, brightening colors and creating fey creatures which were imbued with a particular substance that had yet to exist: emotion. Emotion was the Philosophica’s attempt at creating a reaction to Beauty, but with no guide, fey creatures became very emotional.

The Feywild is the reason the titans discovered the Philosophica’s plans, as this Beauty and Emotional Chaos was so big and bold that it was impossible to not notice.

The titans were furious. In one fell swoop they converged upon the Philosophica and coalesced all of their essences into one force, Divinity, which they expelled into the Feywild, as at this point the Feywild was still largely connected to the Material. The titans then, concerned about the power of the rest of the Arbiters, attempted to expel them into the Feywild as well. However, these Arbiters had seen the Philosophica’s independence destroyed and essence expelled, and fought back. The ensuing war was the Divine Sundering. The titans found they were unable to hold back the power of the Arbiters, who cut through them like butter.

In a desperate effort to take control of the Material Plane, the Destroyer titans combined their power and weakened the boundary between the Material and the Inner planes, giving them the chance to contact their primordial creators and ask for aid. They succeeded, but the elements from the Inner Planes began to flood into the Material, creating a maelstrom of elemental chaos as the planes began to converge, nearly destroying the Material Plane. The primordials worked with the Arbiters to reseal the Material Plane, which was now surrounded by the roiling Elemental Chaos, further separating the titans from their creators. This was the first time the primordials came in contact with divine power, but it would not be the last.

In addition, sundering the boundaries accidentally ripped a hole into the Far Realm, which is what turned the Astral Sea into a waste and turned the primordials insane. More on that later.

Five: The Rise of the Gods

The Arbiters rose in power following the Divine Sundering, having the space and freedom outside the Inner Planes to grow and prosper. They created their own Outer Planes, considered by them to be “perfect” planes based on their alignments. Arbiters of similar alignments convened with each other, coalescing into the core divine essences seen in the Outer Planes today. They also created their own divine creations and creatures, known as Celestials, to act as messengers to other planes.

A few Arbiters opted to remain separate from the divine essence, instead creating celestial forms, such as the Dragon Gods Bahamut, Sardior, and Tiamat.

Meanwhile, the Philosophica remained in the Feywild and split into the Archfey, emotional fey creatures of tremendous power. As the Feywild was still connected with the Material, many Archfey opted to reign over beasts of the Material, and created the Seelie and Unseelie Courts. These Archfey never grew in power like the Arbiters and, while powerful, are not as powerful as the gods.

Six: The Primordials Chained

With little warning, the primordials began wreaking havoc on their own planes, threatening to smash through the boundaries between their realms and the Material Plane. Their reason for doing this was unclear until the gods discovered several planar holes torn in the Elemental Chaos, seeping energy from the Far Realm into the Inner Planes and causing the primordials to go insane. Not wanting a second Sundering or for this energy to reach the Outer Planes, the gods entered the Elemental Planes and attempted to seal these rifts. The primordials fought back and the Primordial War began. The gods quickly realized they could not kill or destroy the primordials, so one of them (likely a Loki or trickster type god) pulled a stunt that forever altered the Inner Planes and forced the gods to create the Prism: the god punctured the boundary of the Negative Energy Plane, suffusing the Inner Planes with entropy, or death.

Why this god did this is unknown. Most believe it was a desperate bid to kill the primordials using entropy, but others believe this god was tricked by the primordials to release entropy into the multiverse. In any case, the primordials were unaffected by entropy, as Entropy himself was one of them. Meanwhile, the gods were affected and became “infected” with entropy, which caused them to quickly wither and die. Many of the ancient gods were heavily injured or even killed outright by the primordials during this time. As they died, their essence of divinity mixed with the powerful forces of the elements as well as the positive and negative energies, creating a colorful swirl of new arcane energy we call the Weave. Yes, that’s right — the Spellweave is made out of dead gods. This energy was suffused in the Inner Planes, particularly the Material Plane, in which it filled the void between the worlds.

Meanwhile, the primordials found the gods’ Divinity as noxious as entropy was to the gods, and thus the gods finally discovered a way to weaken the primordials enough to trap them: basically bleed on them.

In a last ditch effort, the gods, through a great and terrible crusade, managed to chain the primordials in the depths of the Elemental Chaos, using powerful wards created with their own divine blood to prevent them from escaping. They then departed the Inner Planes, with a few neutral good gods sacrificing themselves to seal the Negative Energy Plane prior to leaving. Then one of the gods used the Weave to create the Prism, constructing a powerful gate separating the Inner Planes, the primordials, and mortality, from the Outer Planes. In doing so, this god/dess became the god/dess of magic, and the only god capable of destroying the Prism.

Despite their quarantining of the Inner Planes, many of the gods were infected with entropy, and many of them perished. Some gods did not die, however, despite being infected. It was discovered that these gods continued to exist because beings in various worlds in the Material Plane had heard about them by titans who were also living in those worlds. The gods were being worshiped by some of these beings. Ironically, the beings considered the gods “perfect” in all things. They were, essentially, Objective Beauty, infallible in every way. That worship acted as a healing salve of sorts to the gods, who were able to sustain their presence in the multiverse due to this worship. Thus, some gods formed a symbiotic relationship with their worshipers, giving some of them a sliver of their power in exchange for their continued worship.

Seven: The Gift of Knowledge

At this point, all creatures in the Material Plane were still devoid of Souls. They were creations of the titans, with a few exceptions (such as the eladrin, who were created by the Arbiters in the Feywild). They wandered in their worlds like animals, without purpose, goals, dreams, desires, or self-awareness.

But some creatures showed slight signs of intelligence. These creatures were some of the later creations by the titans. They were smart enough to listen to and understand the titans who had fled to their worlds. They showed great reverence for these titans and for the gods, who reigned from above. This reverence was felt by the gods, and kept them alive, from decaying due to entropy. And so the gods decided to imbue a sliver of their divine essence into these creatures to increase their worship, thinking that perhaps enough worship would cure them of their entropic decay.

This is how the beings we know today were created. Humans, dwarves, halflings, gnomes — all were given free will and sentience, the capability of self-awareness and advanced thought. A sliver of the Arbiters’ spirit — literally, a soul.

(Some exceptions: elves, which were created by the Arbiters, and dragonborn, which were created by the dragon gods.)

Beings were given sentience and began to awaken, aside from the eladrin, who were awake in the Feywild for much longer thanks to direct manipulation by the Philosophica. This is why elves are immortal unless killed, and why elves are generally so full of themselves. The gods used this sentience to try to get more and more beings to worship them, thus keeping them alive. It has worked, generally speaking. Some gods, the ones lucky enough to not be affected by Entropy, are known as the Greater Gods, and are often completely unknown to beings, and aloof, as they do not require worship in order to function. The Greater Gods tend to be “the gods of the gods.”

This was the end of the time before time. The gods cemented their place as the rulers of the Material Plane, distant as they may be, as the plane lacked authority. The titans were a shadow of their former selves; smaller and weaker, those who were not killed, captured, or exiled by the gods chose to hide within their worlds and lead relatively normal lives.

The primordials, meanwhile, remain chained within the Elemental Chaos, slowly waiting for their time to break free and rise up once again.

Eight: The Age of Beings

This is our time. The gift of the soul has given beings a greater intelligence and wisdom, the ability to harness and utilize magic, and the innovation of their own creations. Beings across the worlds of the Material Plane begin to utilize their intelligence and document their own history. Mortals tapped into the Weave, allowing them access to magic and occasionally making them a little too powerful for the gods to handle.

TL;DR:

• Nothing, then primordials, then more primordials, then long sleep.
• Material Plane is a little bubble in the middle; primordials create titans there.
• Titans create worlds.
• Destroyer titans are like “When do we get to destroy worlds?”
• Destroyer titans just fuck shit up.
• Titans create Arbiters to judge worlds fit for destruction.
• Arbiters keep learning.
• Some Arbiters (Philosophica) create the Feywild: "ultimate Beauty."
• Titans are mad and exile the Arbiters to the Feywild.
• Arbiters are mad back, big fight happens.
• Titans weaken the Material planar boundary to ask primordials for aid.
• Weakening the boundary nearly destroys the Material Plane.
• Primordials reseal the boundary.
• Most Arbiters leave the Feywild and create the Outer Planes.
• Many Arbiters become divine essences, or gods.
• Primordials go insane because of rifts seeping in Far Realm energy.
• Gods fight primordials.
• One god punctures the Negative Energy Plane, sending entropy into the multiverse.
• Entropy kills lots of gods. God death is the Weave.
• Gods flee and create the Prism to escape entropy.
• Some mortals worship gods, keep them from dying.
• Gods gift those mortals with a Soul, so that they will continue worshiping them.
• Souls = higher intelligence, beginning of mortal advancement.