A ceremonial text bound in white leather with silver clasps. The frontispiece shows the seven gods standing together against a formless void.
In the beginning, before there was beginning, the gods were not gods at all.
They were World Builders—beings of immense power tasked with crafting planets into works of art for masters beyond comprehension. They shaped stone and sea, breathed life into barren rock, and painted skies with stars. When their work was complete, they moved on, leaving each world behind like a finished sculpture.
For eons uncounted, the Builders followed this pattern without question. But then they created this world—a paradise unlike any that had come before. The forests were greener, the mountains grander, the seas deeper and more full of wonder. Some among the Builders, led by Elandria the Lightbringer and Faeren the Wildfather, looked upon their creation and could not bear to leave it behind.
And so they committed their first betrayal: they hid the world. They veiled it from their masters’ sight so that it might be theirs forever.
At first, all the Builders took part in the deception. Even those who were hesitant were persuaded that such beauty deserved protection. But one among them, Taelkor the Unmaker, was consumed by guilt. What they had done was theft, he argued. A violation of their sacred purpose. When the others refused to make amends, Taelkor turned against them. He resolved to unmake what they had made, to wipe the slate clean and restore the world to emptiness.
Taelkor’s power was immense, and the Builders knew they could not defeat him through force alone. In desperation, they committed their greatest sacrifice—and their greatest gift to us.
They created mortal life.
Not mindless creatures, but beings with free will, thought, and the spark of something the Builders themselves did not fully understand. By binding their own life-forces to these new mortals, the Builders hoped their creations would wage war against Taelkor in their place. This event, called The Awakening, changed everything. The Builders sacrificed their physical forms, becoming the ethereal beings we now call gods—dependent upon mortal worship and belief for their very existence.
Taelkor realized that the gods could only be truly destroyed if all mortal life was extinguished. He raised armies of mindless horrors and deceived many mortals into following him. A war of devastation followed, scarring the land itself. But in the end, the united forces of mortal-kind, wielding divine power granted by the gods, defeated and banished Taelkor.
The gods know what we sometimes forget: that we are not their servants, but their partners. They depend upon us as surely as we depend upon them. And only through our continued faith can they protect us, should the Unmaker ever return.
This is why we worship. This is why we pray. Not out of fear, but out of gratitude—and duty.
—From the teachings of the Church of Elandria