BRINGING OF EXISTENCE (ERA) — THE GREAT EXPANSE
In the beginning, before any form of life existed, Dézhira, the goddess and creator of all, wandered about a large island covered in rough terrain that pierced through the skies. She had named the island Elisium. She shaped its lands. Its rises and falls. The waters' curves as they cut through the soil. She dressed the fields in green, and her tall sanctuaries in white; but Dézhira grew bored and tired of molding her paradise. She set her intentions on creating animations to entertain herself with. She created children.
She sculpted sixteen figures embodying the elements—four of each, two male and two females. She called her children “ellestrians”. She granted them the power to create more children in their own likeness, but their powers would be lesser and submissive to their creators, just as they were to theirs. She provided them all with the knowledge to survive and feed off the land. She created the fauna of the sky, land, and sea, but these creatures lived for the use of her children as they desired.
After five millennia, Dézhira’s children quit thanking and worshiping her, believing they were as holy as she. Disappointed with being shunned and belittled by her children, Dézhira made her world more diverse of inhabitants, thus creating a second wave of children—a new race: djinns. She molded them and stretched their bodies to be taller than the ellestrians two-fold, and anointed them with vibrant colors and the power to wield more than one element of magic. Dézhira showed favoritism toward her new children and made it known to the ellestrians of what they could’ve been. But though the ellestrians had become disobedient, and most cursed her name, they were still her children, and she still loved them.
So, with the creation of the djinns, she put a limit on their enhanced magical abilities—they could not use them against any of her children to seek revenge. Also, she decided to only give them a limited time to inhabit Elisium, to lessen the likelihood of them too becoming self-centered and disobedient. But like the first, the djinns started to think of themselves as higher entities than Dézhira. So for a third time, she created children: elves.
The elves were as small as the ellestrians. They were cast to be plain and bare of any magic, and their lifespan was even shorter than the djinns, limited to only a thousand years.
Another five millennia passed, and Dézhira noticed the elves differed from the others. With the passing of each generation, they stayed loyal and obedient. Dézhira was relieved that her children still praised her and were thankful for their existence. In return, she created a new race of children: liches.
The liches were created in the exact likeness of the elves but were granted magical abilities—powers even stronger than the djinns. But as a precaution, they were given an even shorter life to live and their bodies were cursed to age each time they used their magic.
After a millennium of the liches staying faithful, Dézhira created six new races to populate the rest of Elisium. They each had a lesser lifespan than the former: selkies, treefolk, dryads, incubi and succubi, trolls, and cryters.
Centuries passed. Some of the new children turned against Dézhira, cursing her for making them lesser than the first, while others remained faithful. Until one day, a few of the ellestrians cursed the ground, contaminating all the crops, and poisoning all the wildlife that ate upon the patch of land. A plague quickly spread across Elisium, causing the majority of the population to fall victim to the sting of death. The ellestrians struggled, trying to undo the wrong they had done, but to no avail. All the surviving children, from ellestrians to cryters, prayed for Dézhira to give them somewhere to go to escape the plague.
Dézhira was hurt and upset with how her children had been treating one another; but they were still her children, so she answered their prayers—but not without demonstrating the might of her wrath. She shattered what was once her paradise and expanded the waters, forcing her children to flee into the ocean’s abyss.
She found favor in one of her first children, Trillis. After all the millennia that had passed, Trillis had never once acted negatively toward Dézhira or thought of herself as better than her creator. Dézhira granted Trillis an unimaginable power to create new lands for all the children.
After several moons had passed, the children grew tired of sailing. Trillis finally felt they had traveled far enough into the abyss, and used her new-found ability to construct a landmass for them to live on. Some of the children didn’t feel comfortable living on the same land as the others, so they traveled further into the waters they had started to call the Abyss Ocean. Trillis created more lands and environments that met the needs of the other children.
After the plague and the expanse had killed most of the children, Dézhira repopulated the lands, old and new, with new races, each with a lesser lifespan than the one before.
After a few years, some children chose to sail back to what was once Elisium, but the lands had separated and were far apart. The children started a new life for themselves, but the plague still existed in small portions upon three of the lands that were once part of Elisium: Aikia, Metagore, and Penora.