Like so many things in life, Ruinous started out as a fairly simple excuse to have a half-demonic cow, who was also a Princess, stuff herself silly in an elevator. But like so many things in life, it soon started to get more complicated than that, as we met Christine, gluttonous foxtaur mafiosa, and Leya, a very unhappy individual and officially Most Delicious Person In the Universe. The actual lore and mythology of my world has grown more and more complicated, and so I finally decided to get the key points down in one handy document. Hopefully it doesn't feel too much like a history lesson (although c'mon, how many history lessons include the origin of dragons and a war so bad it broke reality itself?).

If anyone has any questions about anything, feel free to enquire. Rose and Christine are always listening. Always. < 3

A History Lesson: The World of Ruinous

In the beginning, there was the world.

And this is important, because it was the world. When the universe began, there was not the innumerable billions of different parallel realities which we know today. There was only one world, and one race living in it.

This didn’t last long.

This species may have had its own name, but it is lost, and today they are known only for being the first Immortals. What is known about them is that they, like any other living creature, desired to know who or what had made them, and why they had done it. To this end, they examined their world constantly, slowly discovering the laws which governed it and the principles which it ran on. They were immensely powerful creatures, and they had only one world to explore, and so it should have been easy to understand all of it. And yet they could not. They were never fast enough to observe everything, never precise enough to comprehend things truly. They lacked the perfect knowledge which their Creator must have possessed, and so they could never hope to communicate with Them, or even comprehend Them.

To this end, they decreed that they would learn the world properly, even if only for a single moment. Though they were a young race, they were immensely powerful, and as there was only one world young and malleable, it was very easy to split one second of it into an entire lifetime.

And so the ancient Immortals stopped time within their world, and within their frozen moment, they built a great civilisation. According to these legends, the ur-race lived in harmony and peace for an incredible length of time, content to exist within their unchanging world, always finding that there was more of it they could learn, never quite reaching a stage of absolute omniscience. For untold aeons, they lived and searched and studied.

It could not last.

Not even they could live forever without the passing of time, and not even they could sustain such a thing forever. They began to sicken, growing weaker and weaker, becoming far less than they were. But still they kept on, so hopeful that at any moment, the truth they desired might reveal itself to them, and they would at last be able to understand their true place in the world.

But as time passed, some began to disagree. One day, two unknown Immortals, their names and motives lost to time, started to argue that they had to let time progress, and see what the world would become. They proclaimed that nothing could live in this unnatural world, and they were slowly dooming themselves to extinction in their hubris. Many of the ancient race disagreed, fearing the loss of their perfect world, and all their work to understand it, if change was introduced. They became known as Inertials, for their desire to keep the world from moving. Others joined the cause, crying out that they were perverting the intent of their Creator by stopping the world from progressing. They were called Sorceries, for their belief in the power and the righteousness of change. The conflict escalated, and culminated in an act of unimaginable violence, a terrorism of the self, a ruination of such sheer power that it will never be equalled.

We know this act as the Big Bang.

The Sorceries and Inertials, however, call it Nulusanda or "The Multifurcation". Its effect was to turn Creation from a single, frozen moment into a multiverse, a world of billions of different realities in which time progressed steadily, and could never again be truly halted. This was the last straw, and the two sides turned on each other even as the newborn multiverse finally took its first breath.

No-one knows who did the deed itself. Perhaps it was committed by the two unnamed Immortals. Perhaps it was simply the world snapping under the pressure of an entire civilisation living within a single moment. Perhaps it was indeed the Creator, punishing their children for their sin in meddling with their perfect world.

Of course, just because no-one knew was no reason not blame anyone. The Sorceries accused the Inertials of causing this ruin of the "true world", through their unwillingness to change. The Inertials claimed that the Sorceries had shattered reality into uncountable different universes deliberately, in order to ensure that no-one could ever truly control the entirety of Creation again. Today no-one knows the truth, but what is known is that the First Eternity War began here, a war which lasted a million years and took place in the churning miasma of a thousand different worlds, each one so young that even stars had not been born within them.

And the Sorceries won.

There were several reasons for this. The two unknown Sorceries who had started this whole argument proved themselves to be exceptional commanders, capable of conducting warfare on a scale of universes. The Inertials, meanwhile were hesitant to use all the power at their disposal, fearing that by changing the universe now that time progressed within it, they would irreversibly damage its purity. Since their foes had no such reservations, they were always weaker. But the biggest reason why they lost was very simple.

Dragons.

Once again, the name of the Sorcery who performed the act is lost to history. But for the first time ever, life was created not by some Creator, but a simple young Immortal. They forged their creation in the hearts of atomic vortices, and armoured them in starlight, and they called them dragons. These creatures were beings of incredible power, and yet they were created to be slaves to their masters, fed into the furnace of the Eternity War in their billions. By their bloody sacrifice, the Immortals were shattered, broken into a thousand fleeing factions, and the Sorceries were, for a time, ascendant among the universes.

It did not last, of course.

The dragons rebelled against their enslavement, led by the original prototype, a creature named Calascion, and split to find their own path. The Inertials, although they never regrouped enough to challenge the Sorceries again, grew into whole new civilisations, each with a cause of their own. Some sought to stop time again, some sought to turn it back, some sought to understand the worlds completely, some sought only to control them. The Sorceries could have assimilated them completely, but now that their objective had been achieved, they had no banner to unite around. They dissolved, like the Roman Empire of our own world, into a morass of different creeds and allegiances, and the two of their number who had led them to victory vanished into the unknown forever.

But the story wasn't over. Within only a few billion years, some of the new universes began to produce living organisms on their own, a new form of life: "mortal" creatures. The Sorceries and Inertials watched in bewildered awe as this new creation evolved in a way that they never could, driven by natural selection and a furious desire to survive into becoming more advanced, more complicated, more capable. Before too long, some were starting to actually think.

This was when Heaven and the Hells appeared. There isn't really any other way to put it. One day, out of nowhere, in two worlds which had never been seen before, two colossal, solar-system-sized islands of stone drifted in space, and from deep within them, two different races crawled out, blinking in the starshine.

(Some ancient stories claim that in the days before their appearance, the worlds shook and shuddered, and torrents of pure anger and dismay flooded the very fabric of reality like the roars of titans. Perhaps these were the birth screams of the universe creating its offspring, perhaps the fabled duel between the two parents of the two species, the Damned One and the Master of Light, perhaps the anger of the Creator as they discovered what had happened to their world in their Absence. Who can know?

Regardless of their origin, this sudden creation did not go unnoticed. To traditionalist Sorceries and Inertials, it was a Sign. With a capital S. This was an omen from the Creator, the being which had made them and then left them no clues as to why - indeed, left them so much in the dark that They were starting to be referred to, with bitter humour, as the Absent Creator. The creation of two new races of Immortals, at the same time as an entirely new form of life - the Mortals of the other universes - had to be a message from beyond, signifying that they had not ruined Creation beyond repair with their petty squabbling. For once, Sorceries and Inertials worked side by side, teaching this message to the young new species, the “Angels” and “Demons”, and fostering diplomatic relations between them, hoping that they would discover a true purpose of their own, in the way that the ancient Immortals had not.

And they did. After much debate, much observation, and much meditation, the two races announced that they believed they had discovered their true role in the great plan. They were to be the shepherds of the Mortal races, to teach them and guide them to their fate themselves. To this end, they would act as advisors and adjucants, taking a different side of each issue and helping Mortals to find the truth of it. The Heavens would embody the seven great Virtues (from the Angelic Virtaeum, meaning “Society”). They were to represent the strength of unity, and selflessness, and working for the good of others. The Hells would embody the seven great Sins (from the Infernal Ssin, meaning “Independence”). They were to represent the strength of individualism, and self-interest, and working for the good of oneself. In this way, they would guide their young charges on two sides of all issues, but allow them the final choice, working cohesively in a way which the fractured Sorceries and Inertials never could.

And so they did. Seven great temples were formed in the Heavens, and seven more in the Hells, each dedicated to the study and practice of a Virtue or a Sin. Each temple was ruled by a council of seven mighty leaders, and together, they taught untold thousands of worlds to govern themselves well, teaching them not only scientific and magical knowledge, but the moral wisdom to choose between their two extremes and use it well.

And once again, it was not as simple as that.

Today, each side blames the other for their relationship souring. The Hells claim that the Heavens started to cast them as “evil” and “monstrous” simply for what they believed, in order to turn more to their own side. The Heavens claim that the Hells began to utilise their own underhand methods, encouraging mortals to give up their souls, murder their opponents, and perform all manner of acts which were not just sinful but downright monstrous. It’s quite likely both were right. Maybe it was the fact that millions of years of fairness and sensible counselling had utterly failed to elicit even the tiniest response from the Absent Creator, leaving the Heavens and Hells utterly in the dark as to whether or not they were following the right path. Maybe it was just that that two civilisations of great power could not dedicate themselves to totally different ideals, each of them becoming the perfect opposite of the other, and yet remain friends.

And so the Second Eternity War began. And this time it never ended. Angels now taught Mortals to fear all Demons, claiming them to be emissaries of evil themselves, and that they themselves were good, pure servants of the Creator. Demons conversely taught Mortals that Angels were cruel, oppressive monsters, who sought to deny every enjoyment or curiosity, and turn them into a blinkered, blinded slave.

Why do we live in a world in which one version of these events is entirely unknown? Very simple. The Angels got here first.

By this point, neither side really cared for the Mortals they were supposedly “saving”. They were pawns in the war. The Heavens formulated themselves into a militaristic dictatorship, taking their belief of the power of unity and communal good - a belief they’d only adopted in order to teach it to their pupils - to the logical extreme. The Hells, meanwhile, became an anarchic meritocracy, where no laws governed save for strength and selfishness - again, a society based on their own doctrine. There was no more debate between the two sides - as one of my stories points out, any meeting between an Angel and a Demon was now historically classed as a battle. There was nothing more left but war.

Beyond these four races of Immortals, there are a few other beings of note in the universe.

Most of the original dragons who rebelled under the leadership of Calascion are dead, but their children, though nowhere near as powerful as their parents, live on in many worlds, legendary and terrifying beasts all. Calascion himself is still alive, his ever-present smirk hiding the aching hunger within him as he constantly schemes to fill the hole in his soul, left when he ripped himself free to save his kind from their enforced bondage.

The Gods came into existence with the advent of truly intelligent life, for they are the living, breathing result of a million identical thoughts by a million different minds. Gods are meant to embody ideas, such as Beauty, Love, or in the case of one poor Lady Leya Aurelia Hopesoft, how it feels to be Prey to another. Gods cannot choose their role or how they feel about it - they are born to be what they are meant to represent, and even death cannot stop them. There will always be gods, so long as people think.

Some mortals, meanwhile, have become so powerful that they are players in their own right - the Solara, for example, a race of mortal aliens who live in the hearts of stars, and form symbiotic relationships with them.

Even on worlds populated only by ordinary, low-powered mortals, a rare few are often born able to tap into the forces of Creation which they call magic. Most of these are weaklings compared to the power of an Immortal, their powers limited and specific but some are capable of truly astonishing things.

This, roughly, is where we are today, in the midst of the Second Eternity War. The Sorceries and Inertials, split into many different factions, pursue their own goals. The Heavens and Hells fight each other, no longer for the soul of Mortalkind, but simply for the sake of seeing each others’ ruination and to gain their own power. The poor Mortal worlds are caught in the middle of it all. Beings of immense power clash on all sides, but no-one is ever truly on top, for this is a world where only power, cleverness, and raw determination matter, and there is always someone who is either more powerful than you, cleverer than you, or simply hungrier than you.

This is the world where my story series, Ruinous, takes place. Have fun with it.