Brain drippings Universe Building for Drow (and a lot of my writing, to be honest) (Patreon)

First, the stones are passed and now my kidneys get to recover.  Had to go into urgent care to get the last one, which lodged in the canal, but they were able to get it out without surgery so... yay.  Need to move somewhere with less hard water.

Anyway, you've all been patient so I thought I'd share what was rattling around in my head before I lay down again: universes!

Once upon a time, the universe existed, and did not exist.  This was intolerable, and so the universe split in two, becoming all which was and all which was not.  This was good.

Existence was a maelstrom of change and possibility.  If all things were possible, then it was possible to change from a person to a potato to the great pyramid of egypt to a painting of a person all within the time it took to think it.  This roiling, chaotic stew of being surged and boiled for many eternities before something strange happened.

Within that sea of infinite possibility, islands of stability formed.  After all, if all things were possible, then it had to be possible to have places with less possibility than others.  Like pearls, these islands of stable existance formed.  Some were no larger than a single room.  Some encompassed vast distances of billions and billions of galaxies.  The size was immaterial, as all sizes are the same to infinitity: less, but it created worlds in which life and existance could follow a predictable course.

Within some of these tiny islands, a curiosity occured: intelligence, and with intelligence, awareness.  Existance is largely meaningless if you can't understand what a person, a potato, a pyramid, or a painting.  Changing from one to the next is pointless unless you are aware of the differences in each.  As intelligence developed, so to did awareness.  Abstract thinking became more and more pronounced.  What is.  What could be.

This had a profound change on the maelstrom that surrounded these pearls.  They changed the fluid flux into something more stable, yet not concrete.  Bubbles of stability that clung to the edges of these spheres of stability.  These bubbles mutated and changed to reflect the beliefs and superstitions of the thoughts below.  Gods, angels, demons, faerie, heavens and hells, all manifested from the ideas of the people within.  These beings were not limited by the strict rules inside the world, and yet they had to follow some rules as set by those that imagined them into being.  And the more the imaginings were shared, the sharper and more enduring the beings inside became.

It was inevitable that mortals within and their dreams without pressed hard against the wall of ontological possibility that seperated the two.  In dreams, inspiration, and desire the two worked to breach the seperation between the two.

It was folly.  Time and time again, the shell would be pierced, and the infinite chaos of the maelstrom would rush through without warning, annhilating the orderly world within.  Without mortal thoughts and dreams, the realms melted away, and the world was absorbed into the endless chaos of the Maelstrom.

And yet, where there is infinite possibility, the was the occasion where the shell would crack, but not break.  These cracks allowed contact between the realms and the world.  Possibility bled from finite into infinite, and this infinite possibility, breaking the laws of that world, was magic.  Magic is the impossible made possible.

The effect also had a far more profound effect on the worlds within.  Change.  Development.  Advancement and understanding.  Faith and miracles.  Art and creativity.  All these developed wildly in worlds where the shell was weakened, but not broken.  Inspirational madness and inspirational genius changed the world as people never imagined.  Rules thought set in stone changed.  Societies in rigid, stable units were thrown into flux.  Disasters and chaos stirred up the development of new life.  Mutation.  Alteration.  Adaptation.

The realms became ever more varied and deliberate.  Some sought to increase the cracks.  To induce more change.  More interaction.  More concrete existence.  Others realized the peril to these worlds, and sought to maintain the status quo.  In countless worlds, this pressure breached the shell of the world, to the loss of both.  Some times deliberate, other times accidental, such breaches imperiled the worlds within, and destroyed many.

And yet, these worlds enriched the maelstrom itself, creating more and more possibility with every imagining.  You can not become the great pyramid if there is no world where anyone has imagined a great pyramid.

This was intolerable to nothingness, which simply wished to be nothing, and was harried with endless additions to infinite being.  One by one, nothingness began to snip away as the most useless thoughs, ideals, and dreams, to create balance between existance and nothingness.  The nothingness became complex, which was anathma to it, aggrivating and disturbing.  The nothingness began to want.  To need.  It recognized these worlds as the source of its aggrivation and so reached out to touch them.

In many worlds, this touch was enough to annihilate them utterly.  Others, however, resisted the annihilation.  Realms rallied in defense against the nothingness that sought to destroy the worlds they depended upon.  Some realms, wicked and petty ones, sought to aid the nothingness, certain that in the death burst of the world, some revelation would be released.  One common effect was the formation of a realm betwen the world and nothingness and formed like a callus, protecting it from the touch of annihilation.  These worlds were repositories of mortal identities.  The being of the people inside shielded the world from its touch.  The realms were frequently thought of as underworlds, where the souls of the dead travelled until they were obliterated.

In Drow Story, the ancients of the first age cracked the sphere gently, and the people of the one world drew on its inspiration to create wonders of magic and technology.  They cultivated realms of powerful gods of thought.  And then they grew proud, and then foolish.  they sought to widen the crack and breach the sphere.  To create a deliberate conduit between their world and the realms beyond.

It nearly destroyed everything.  For the briefest moment, finite touched infinite, and the finite was swept away.  The great continent shattered, the pieces driven apart from each other.  It was only through great effort by mortals and the inhabitants of the realms that the breach closed, the shell cracked, but intact.

The survivors did what they could to stabilize the weaknesses in their world before they collapsed completely.  The first age collapsed into dust and ashes on a broken world.  The beings that had assisted selected a group of survivors and entrusted to them the necessity for keeping the world stable and preventing another disaster.  Considering themselves the eldest of all people, they called themselves the Eld, and with the assistance of the beings of the realms, forged a civilization that would protect their mandate. 

However, they were not the only ones changed.  Many of the survivors became tall and strong and short lived, so they might endure the disasters spawned by the cataclysm.  These people were called the Mayn by the Eld, meaning many.  The Eld thought little of them, for they were mortal and what could they accomplish in their meager life spans?

The Dhelves were survivors of the protorace that survived in the stability beneath the earth.  Utilizing their knowledge of building, they turned mountains into fortresses.  Though not immortal, they were longer lived, and thus afforded more respect and worry by the Eld.  Still, they assured themselves that longer life would afford a greater protection, and since the Dhelves focused on manipulating the rules of the world rather than seeking the beyond, gave them more respect.

A few feral survivors turned back to savage primitives, living in the jungles and forests as senitent beasts.  They indulged themselves in carnal, visceral pleasures of food and mating.  They devolved to superstition and whispered to fallen beings.  These were named Hoyb by the Eld, meaning broken.  The Eld had great worries about their fallen cousins.

Finally were those that survived in the dark shadows of the world.  The small folk, made their communities where they would not be noticed or endangered.  Their lives were little longer than the Huym, and thus the Eld paid them little mind.  "Haf" they were named, meaning 'small' and then ignored.

For a time, it was good.  The Huym spread and multiplied, as did the Hoyb.  The new races made the world their own, with Eld carefully watching for new breaks, the Dhelves re-discovering the science of the first age, and the Hoyb becoming a dangerous nusance.  The Eld tried to teach them the folly of their ways, but the Hoyb refused.

Among the Hoyb rose great members that towered over their fellows.  The Gians, using the Eld word for 'Great', organized the Hoyb mobs into a mockery of Eld cities.  Unlike their fellows, the Gians could live for centuries, and build up forbidden knowledge.  They built their own fortresses across the lands and consorted with dangerous beings through breaks in the wall.  Seduced by promises of power greater than the Eld, the Gians thought to break it by capturing millions of mortals, entrapping their souls, and releasing the energy in one spiritual burst.  The Eld rallied Mahn, Dhelves, and even Hafs in a struggle against the Gians.  The war tore the world apart in a bloody conflict that would mark the end of the second age with the ultimate genocide of the Gians.

The Eld, pushed to this point, withdrew from the world to their own, and sought to recover from the trauma of the Great War.  Mahn tribes wandered their territory, interested in little other than survival and struggle against their own or the many monsters created by the Gians.  Dvelvers continued to develop their knowledge, and ran into a connundrum.  Dvelvers were poisoned by prolonged exposure to the sun.  Their food were various fungi they could cultivate in the depths, as well as fish that fed on streams bringing nutrients in from above.  Thus, the Dvelvers began a great experiment.  They would take Mahn tribes and teach them their knowledge, in exchange for food grown on the surface.

For a time, it was good.  Dvelver and Mayn populations exploded as knowledge for ironwork and mathematics were introduced to the Mahn.  It was thought that, should Mahn grow unmanageable, they could withhold the knowledge for a generation or two and death would rob the Mahn of their knowledge.  But some Mahn stole from Dvelvers a far more dangerous weapon that iron or numbers: writing.  These people were named Huyms as they began to teach themselves the ancient knowledge of the Dvelvers.

The Dvelvers, in a panic, sent their Mahn proxies to war against the Huyms that had taken the fire of knowledge.  However, instead of snuffing it out, they pushed Huyms into organizing for war.  Huym civilization, something the Eld and Dvelvers thought impossible, took root.  The Dvelvers in multiple lands found themselves hard pressed when Huym armies wiped out their Mahn workers.  Many starved in famines as populations too large to be sustained by subterrarean agriculture crashed.  Only in the continent of Aurum did the Mahns remain loyal to their Dvelves.

Eld paid little care, certain that this rebellion would die out like all things Huym did.  They forgot, however, about the Haf.  Always watching, and employed as servants of the Eld.  The Haf took knowledge of how to extract energy from the Maelstrom beyond and gave it to the Huyms for their freedom and protection.  Now able to directly contact the beings beyond, the Eld started to worry.  The Haf, for their reward, went from being servants of the Eld to being servants of the Huym.

Three great human empires arose, seeking the knowledge of the beings beyond.   The Eld, unsure that they could defeat them directly, employed subterfuge instead.  They started a conflict between the three, playing one against the other, in a bid to tear down the Huym before they repeated the mistakes of the first age.  It backfired.  When one of the three was on the verge of being destroyed by the two, they summoned in a great being that nearly shattered the shell protecting the world.  Once again, finite brushed infinite, and the finite was swept away.

The Eld managed to contain the being inside a prison, sealing it at the bottom of the sea.  The humans were now broken and scattered, like the Hoybs and Hafs.  The Eld resolved to never allow Hyums to rise so high again in the fourth age.  Dvelves of Aurum turned inward, focusing on their own survival.  The fourth age would be called the age of strife, as the Eld worked to manage huyms, an attempt that would break down as numbers grew ever higher.

Worse, the influx of magic was producing new races.  Infinite had given beasts the mind and tongue of Huyms.  Even plants quickened and became aware.  The Eld, strained, broke and withdrew.  They would withdraw to their world and let the world do as it would, manipulating from the shadows, as they struggled to fulfill their protection of the world.

And in the fourth age, the story begins.