Chapter 3-4

“Long ago, before Draezoln, as you call it, was created, there was only great emptiness. Into this emptiness came Naishia. She looked about herself and saw how empty the universe was, and decided to fill it. First, she started with stars. For a while, she was content with their beauty, and filled the universe with them, but in time, she started to tire of nothing but endless points of light.

“So next, she created her greatest light, the Sun. However, while she took pleasure in the greatness of her work, she soon realized that the true problem was having no one to share it with. And so she decided to create Draezoln. First she created the ground, creating rocks, mountains, hills, and valleys. Then she created water to flow over the ground. Then she began to create life.

“First were plants—grasses, bushes, trees, vines, and all of the other myriad types of plants Draezoln is so rich in. Once the face of the earth was covered in plants, she started creating animals—first the small insects, then larger animals, fishes, birds, and so forth. Once she was done, she looked on her creation and rejoiced in the life she had made, for now there were others to appreciate her work—not nearly so great of understanding as herself, of course, but she who created them knew their appreciation nonetheless.

“However, she had never truly been alone. There was another great power in the great emptiness she had filled. While at first he had been uninterested in Naishia's activities, when she started to create life, he began to grow jealous. Unknown to Naishia, this other power came to Draezoln to observe her creation. And when he saw what she had created, he grew even more envious.

“And so he decided to make her creation his own. At first he interfered only unobtrusively, slightly changing the minds and forms of some of the animals. As time passed and he was unopposed, however, he grew more brazen, twisting the bodies of some creatures and even plants more blatantly. It was not long before Naishia noticed him and his interference.

“She confronted him about what he was doing. He refused to come to an agreement with her, and eventually the conflict became a war. It was a great, terrible war, in which incredible energies unimaginable to us in our age were released. Naishia did all she could to deflect these energies, but the worst of them still got through, further corrupting and twisting some of the life she had created. It is from the tampering and the war that many creatures we now call monsters came.

“However, these energies did not only affect Draezoln. From some of the clashing energies, other beings came to be, those other eight whom we now term gods—for the one other who fought with Naishia was the one we now call Jivenesh. These others joined in the conflict, four with Naishia, and four with Jivenesh.

“In time, it became clear that their war would destroy everything, even themselves. Recognizing this, all involved reluctantly agreed to make peace. All, that is, except Jivenesh.

“Maddened by the long conflict and further maddened by what he perceived as his allies turning against him, Jivenesh struck out at all of the other nine. While his attack was, indeed, mighty, his power had been weakened by the long war, and it failed to destroy as he had intended it.

“Seeing the insanity of the Mad God, the other nine agreed to bind him, chaining him in the depths of Draezoln for all time, lest he should destroy everything. And so he was cast down and bound. The place where he was cast down we now call the Madlands, for his madness has seeped into the very ground about him. There, deep beneath the ground, he lies chained, always seeking a way out and never finding it.

“Meanwhile, the nine agreed to stop their direct war, and instead agreed to fight only through mortal agents, with only limited interference from the gods. So it was that the intelligent races of the world were created to continue the long war of the gods. Naishia, meanwhile, both so as to even the sides and to protect her creations, agreed to withdraw herself from the conflict and focus on keeping Jivenesh bound, protecting all of nature and creation from his madness.”

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So we get the Druidic version of the creation of Draezoln. Creation stories have historically been a very important part of virtually all cultures and religions (and one could argue that the disagreement between Creationists and Evolutionists indicates it still is important in our day and age, but I'm not going to touch that further here), and the cultures and religions of Draezoln are no different. Of course, just like here on Earth, different Draezolnian cultures disagree as to the details of their creation stories, so if Almonihah were to ask Zrathanzon about the creation of Draezoln, he would probably get a vastly different story.

Just so you know, Llinos does have several parts of his story right, but there's a lot that's wrong, too.