Ch. 0: ORIGIN
Few deities remain in a world once lush with life.
The rivers, the mountains; the shadows, the light; trees and birds and creatures of the deep...
Of once-vibrant glories, only colorless shades remain.
Where there was once Balance-
-there is now naught but Chaos.
This world- this is a land that is... dying. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that this world has long since died.
The people fell to hubris-
-the earth fell to ruin.
The countless deities of the living world suffered- when the waters dried; when the earth cracked and split- amongst skeletal beds and the bones of the children they once sheltered, the old gods lay dead.
...No. The old gods have been dead since the earliest days; their power, their roles of such importance; these things comprising the natural order of living beings have passed down their powers and their names.
This natural order gave the world and its overseers countless constraints:
A deity may not initiate aggression, nor induce malevolent chaos.
A deity may not intercede in any jurisdiction that is not their own.
A deity may freely choose their successor.
...and so on. Of this list of laws deities may not transgress, they are all, while vital to keeping order, still only things deities may not do.
All deities were once mortal. Or more accurately, all deities are a single, mortal entry in a long record of inheritance, stretching all the way back to when the earth was young and the old gods newly born.
...As the saying goes, rules are made to be broken. Mortals, even inheritors of a deity's role, are still who they were before apotheosis, and will remain who they are after and henceforth.
No, while violating the natural orders brings only disaster, consequences are always recoverable. Only one law cannot be broken, and that is-
A deity cannot pass on without a successor.
These laws kept balance. Rather than chains, they were a cradle; a net of safety rather than captivity.
And then the day came when the world's balance reached its tipping point. The catalyst; a spirit of an ancient forest- a lesser deity- burned, beyond all hope of recovery. Their death was agonizing; their grave a forever-ruinous earth scorched with toxin.
Death and rebirth is part of that natural order; death without rebirth is... unnatural. Without a successor, the deity's role passed to the strongest of other nearby deities.
When something impossible happens, one can only scramble to control the damage in an unprecedented situation.
And so the balance began to warp further.
One death without rebirth was the catalyst needed for the inevitable end.
In this time of corrupted earths and infertile soil, rejected offspring and rain tinted red like rust; balance has twisted; the earth shudders in its death throes and on the wind- the unnatural, unholy wind- there can be felt shades of the old gods.
-and they are laughing.
In these end times, few deities remain. A cursed, agonized few; unlucky gods who bear the scars of countless deaths.
Yin. Mora. Ouka.
The Peaceful Darkness; the Quiet Depths. Half of Balance; a half who is now whole, yet... such a thing should never be. Yin who once maintained balance; now takes the last threads of stability and tears them asunder.
The Guardian of the Boundary; a deity once known as Sancta. A deity who once kept the living and the dead separated in harmony. In these times, Mora's same role now has a different purpose. In these times, death is given life without rebirth; such lives are unable to rest in death.
The Wilds God; the ephemerality of paradise. Parenthood. Birth. Farewells- the cyclical nature of mortality. Ouka once held the noblest of deities; sharing with every creature the instinct to protect their own. With the end at hand, the warped deity instead imparts only rejection and wreckage.
Balance shines whole and complete; bright with lunar insanity.
The Boundary invites a perversion of rebirth.
The children of the Wild feed on anything they can put in their mouths and regurgitate only acid to their young.
Such a world can only be called a Mausoleum.