A summary of the ages of history as recognized by Celesia up to 118 6A, by by Argent Rose initiate Nefersi of Menkheb.
The First Age
The Age of Creation. The Primordial Age.
Birth of Creation
First was the Void. Empty, silent, and dark, it had no beginning, and stretched into infinity. Then came the Creators, disturbing the Void for the first time.
The Creators were three beings of immense power. The Thinker. The Forger. The Dreamer.
With them was the Seed, the last remnant of the Creators' home, and the key to creating their new one.
The Creators pooled their power and knowledge into the Seed. From the Forger came the power to fuel the creation. From the Thinker came the wisdom to establish the fundamentals of the creation. From the Dreamer came the courage to conceive something better than what they knew before.
In a burst of light, the universe, simply known to the Creators as the 'Creation', was born.
Time passed as the universe unfolded according to the designs of its Creators. First came the First Axis of Reality from which all of the planes of reality would grow, known to us as the Tree of Eternity. Among those, one was chosen for its centrality amidst all of the new dimensions. The Prime Material plane, known to us as the Middle Realms, was chosen to be the Second Axis of Reality. With the Eternity Tree and the Prime Material as anchors, the universe knew stability.
But as soon as it birthed, the new universe came under attack.
Upon the coming of the Creators and the creation of the universe, the Void changed. For the first time, it knew thought and change, and it abhorred it. The Void infested the roots of the Eternity Tree, creating an Abyss to devour it. From within the Abyss emerged the Void's mutations, horrific entities with only one purpose, to annihilate all of creation. We would know these as the Udug-Hul.
The Primordials
In response, with the aid of the Thinker and the Forger, the Dreamer created the first of the entities that would be known as the Primordials, the Angels of the Celestial Host. The Angels would not only serve as the eyes and ears of the Creators, and later their messengers, but also the primary defenders of Creation. They would hold back the Udug-Hul from their vile mission of annihilation.
With the universe now defended, the Creators focused on the growth of their creation. Next came the Fey, birthed to a plane rich in magic and imagination. Known to us as Faerie, this plane would serve as inspiration in how the Prime Material could grow. The Fey would be Faerie's caretakers, and would be instrumental in gardening the Middle Realm's growth.
However, before they would be able to do so, the field of the Prime Material must be prepared. For this task, the Creators birthed the Titans. It is said that these immense builders dwarfed even the greatest of stars. Following the designs of the Creators, the Titans shaped the Prime Material, molded its stars and worlds, making them ready for the Dreamer's visions.
With one breath, the Dreamer brought life to the Middle Realm. From the pools of raw essence of power left behind in the wake of the Titans' great work emerged two creatures of powerful might and pure magic, the Begetter and the Knight. From their pairing, the Primordial Dragons, First Children of the Middle Realm, were born. The dragons would inherit the power and wisdom of their mother and sire. They were tasked by the Creators with defending the Titans' and their work, and to oversee the growth of the Children who would come after them.
The Children of the Middle Realm
One last task remained to complete the act of creation. With the Dragons being all that they wanted, the Dreamer let free one more breath into the Prime Material. The Breath of Souls, their greatest creation, promised unlimited freedom and potential for growth, and would give birth to their last children.
Among the first of these Children of the Middle Realm were the children of two of the First Fairest, the twin sisters of Day and Night. These High Fey were drawn by the Breath, and accepted it into themselves, and were reborn into the Middle Realm as the first elves.
From the Elemental Plane of Earth, natives of that realm were drawn to the hammering of the Titans. Accepting the Breath, these earth spirit emerged from the earth of the Prime Material as the first dwarves.
The Children of the Middle Realm came not only from other realms. Many children arose naturally across the worlds shaped by the Titans. Among these, humans, lucklyns, and orcs grew prominent.
As the eons passed, many more children carrying the Breath arose from the clay of the Prime Material, such as the kobolds and beastfolk, or came from other realms, such as the anthousai, gnomes, and goblins, until the Middle Realm was teeming with life. The Dreamer looked upon their children with joy and hope.
Finally, the Creators were home.
The Second Age
The Age of Horrors. The First Age of Celesia.
The Celesian Stone Age
On the world of Celesia, dragons ruled and oversaw the development of the Children of the Middle Realm that made that world their home. Under their tutelage and supervision, the Children of Celesia managed to survive the dangers of the world, both natural and those machinated by the Udug-hul. The Celesian Children during this time were mostly nomadic hunter-gatherers, but because of their nature or environmental circumstances, dwarves, elves, sserassin, and neraxin were among the first to form settled communities.
While the dwarves and the elves were able to live comfortable in their respective environments, the more predatory sserassin and neraxin were more motivated to expand their domain. They became prime targets for the Udug-hul to influence. With insidious temptations whispering into their thoughts, the neraxin and sserassin two peoples became the first to form empires, and those two disparate peoples would become known as the Dread Lords. When they finally encountered other peoples, they only saw them as prey.
For tens of thousands of years, the Dread Lords preyed upon the other Chidlren of Celesia across the world, using them as slaves, food, and sacrifices to the Udug-hul. The dragons attempted to stop them, but the sserassin and neraxin had greedily learned everything the dragons had taught them up to that point. They combined those sacred teachings with the foul secrets they earned from the Udug-hul to wield such power to withstand even the might of the great dragons. However, as time went on, the deific powers of Creation began aiding the dragons and the peoples enslaved by the Dread Lords. As the tide turned against the sserassin and the neraxin, the Udug-hul whispered to them the secret to defeating the gods.
With this forbidden knowledge, the Dread Lords enacted a great ritual. They thought they were summoning a weapon to be used against the gods. Instead, they were summoning their doom.
Horrors From Beyond
When the ritual was finished, the world of Celesia lit up as a beacon, one not meant to be seen or heard by the denizens of our reality. The call was heard, and the Creators recalled an ancient fear not felt since before the birth of Creation.
Untold numbers of Cosmic Horrors from Beyond descended upon our universe, like hunters drawn to fresh prey. Entities of power beyond mortal comprehension, alien to the very nature of the universe herself, inflicted madness and warped reality by their very presence. For an eon, the Cosmic Horrors rampaged across the cosmos, and spawned their own horrific mutations in our reality. All of the Primordials fought back, and gods would die, or worse.
On the world of Celesia, where the horror began, would be where it ended. There were those who fought to survive, and grew in knowledge and power as a result. These Heroes of Starlight, as they would be known, protected their peoples as best as they could. At the height of their power, they connected with the gods, and the Creators themselves. Together, they devised a plan, one that would demand great sacrifice.
Using the Heroes of Starlight and the world of Celesia as their medium, the Creators created their greatest array of power upon all of Creation. Upon it completion, the Horrors were cutoff of their transdimensional essence, left with physical forms that could be sealed away, if not outright destroyed, seven of which would be sealed within Celesia itself. A Veil descended upon our reality, to shield it and hide it from the Horrors that still resided Beyond.
The Scourge of Horrors came to an end, but the cost was great. The Creators sacrifice much of their cultivation to expel the Horrors and to create the Veil. No longer were they the overgods of reality, reduced to a fraction of their power. Due to the connection they forged with the Heroes of Starlight, Celesia was chosen to be the base for their influence on the Prime Material.
Once again, new gods arose to fill the void left by those who fell. The universe began to heal. However, the shadow of the Horrors would forever haunt our reality. Their spawn, such as the thul-koon, the yoch-chuls, and many other aberrations, persisted and spread to continue threatening natural life. Some mortals, driven mad by the power of the Horrors, came to worship these Great Outsiders, threatening to once more let their influence and presence infest the universe.
However, this was not the end to the horrors that would be inflicted upon Creation. The next wave of terror, however, was not born out of a desire for power, but from a powerful love.
The Great Rebellion
The Light of Morning, High Captain of the Celestial Host and the First Angel, had held the line and lead the defence against the Udug-Hul for eons, protecting the Creators' Children from their danger. They did so again against the Cosmic Horrors. The Morninglight was absolutely loyal to their Creators, and loved them more than anything in Creation. The pain they felt when the Creators had to sacrifice so much to stop the Horrors was beyond any mortal's comprehension.
That tragic act alone would not have dissuaded the Morninglight from continuing their duty to their beloved Creators. It would trying to understand why the Creators' beloved Children would do this to them.
The Creators, especially the Dreamer, had told the Morninglight that the Children of the Middle Realm were their greatest creation, that the ultimate role of the Celestial Host would be their protection. So when the Morninglight realized that these very same Children were the source of the Cosmic Horror's invasion, that they were the true cause of their beloved Creators' downfall, doubt set in the Morninglight's soul.
The Dreamer tried to assuage the Morninglight's first misgiving in their existence, but the First Angel saw how many of the Children continued to act in ways that harmed the Creators. They were still hurting their own saviours, after all they had sacrificed for them. That was when the Morninglight knew.
The Children had become the new threat, and they needed to be dealt with as with all threats to the Creators.
The Morninglight spoke to others in the Host about this, and this conviction spread. The Dreamer tried to explain to them, but their influence in their diminished state no longer held the power to sway them completely, only delaying the inevitable as the Morninglight's followers continued to witness the growing violations by the Children against their Creators.
It became too much for the Morninglight. They could not comprehend how the Creators could continue to give love to threats that harm them. The contradiction sickened the Morninglight to their core, and they and their followers were convinced that they had to act to protect their Creators. They had to either imprison the Children from committing more sins, or wipe them out completely. And yet, the Morninglight's attempts in accomplishing these goals were opposed by their very own Creators and their fellow angels. All attempts at dialog came to failure, and direct conflict between those protecting the Children and those seeking their end was inevitable. The Great Rebellion had begun.
This War Within The Heavens wrought devastation on a cosmic scale. Though only a third of the Host had come to the same conclusion as the Morninglight, these were among the most senior and most powerful of angels. Neither were they alone.
Half of all Titans joined the Rebellion, some because they too were sickened by the Children, blaming them for the ruination of all of their great works. As for the Fey, the chaos of the war infected affected them so greatly that they broke free from their original purpose, and embraced their newfound freedom with abandoned. From the depths of the Abyss, the Udug-Hul arose once more to take advantage of the chaos.
The Primordial Dragons also split in half. The Begetter, who was one half of the pair of First Dragons, felt betrayed by the Creators and her fellow First Dragon, the Knight. During the Scourge of the Cosmic Horrors, the Begetter spawned a multitude of powerful and deadly monsters to fight back against them. However, now that the danger of the Horrors have passed, the Children fought and killed her children with the help of the Creators and the Knight. The entirety of dragonkind descended from the pairing of the Begetter and the Knight eons past, and half of them followed their mother's descent into grief and thirst for destruction.
The war would last an eon, wrecking entire worlds throught Creation, but the Rebels were eventually defeated. The Children of the Middle Realm proved to be the clinchpin in their defeat. The mortals had proven once again why the Creators considered them their greatest creation. The Heroes of Starlight from the Scourge of Horrors were joined by a new generation that ascended from this Great Rebellion.
The Dreamer offered the Rebels forgiveness, but the fight against their beloved Creators had broken the Morninglight, and they rejected it. In this act, they ejected themselves from their Creator's embrace down to the lowest planes of reality, corrupted by the war and adjacency to the Abyss. In that blighted space, the Morninglight was reborn as the King of this infernal realm that they named the Seven Hells. Despite this, the Fallen Dawn still loved their Creators, but they had a new purpose now. The new King of the Seven Hells would not destroyed the Children, but would corrupt them wholly, and prove to the Creators that they do not deserve their love. The Fallen Dawn's hatred for the Children of the Middle Realm for what they did to their Creators would forever burn in these Hells, and the they would make them suffer for their sins for eternity.
The Infernal King's fall dragged their followers down with them. Many joined the new King's mission, choosing their new purpose as the Devils, corruptors of Creation. Others, however, came to hate the entity that led to their downfall, and embraced their rage against all authority to become the first Demons. Much of fallen angels' power, cultivated over eons, would be loss in the process, and they would have to restart anew. Fortunately for them, they found a new source to build off of. The souls of mortals.
Of the Titans, the Great Rebellion ended their great work. The wounds inflicted upon themselves diminished them all, both those who rebelled and those who were faithful. Some retained a glimmer of their former power, splitting into the faithful Elysians Titans and the destructive Tartarians Titans. Those who could not degenerated every generation until they became the many kinds of Giants known today.
Of the Dragons, they too lost much of their power, and they no longer had the innate sense of kinship amongst each other as well as the sense of duty bestowed upon them by the Creators. Only the Dragon Knight would remain pure as they were born.
Of the Fey, they did not participate in the Great Rebellion for either side, but neither were they unaffected. The division between light and dark became more stark. The Fey grew wilder, more selfish, and Faerie as a whole followed suit.
Finally, the unity that bonded the Creators since before time was shattered. The Forger, so affronted by the betrayal of their creations, let anger fill their heart, and became the Exalted Tyrant of Hate and Fear we now know as Zhao-Khan. The Thinker, seeing the destruction wrought by unrestricted power, chose to be a force of moderation and building, and became the Supreme Sage of Knowledge and Magic we now know as El-Sathys. The Dreamer grieved the outcome the most, yet bore witness to greatness in all of their children. They still had hope, and vowed to watch over and guide their children as the Lightbringer, Mother of Souls, Father of Life, the god we now know as Kaï-den.
To the Children of the Middle Realm, the Great Rebellion was a time of devastation. Stars winked out of existence, worlds were crushed, and entire peoples went extinct. The mortals of the Middle Realm now fully feared the wrath of powers greater than themselves. To prevent the Prime Material from futher suffering, the Creators declared all beings from other planes, even themselves, as Outside of the Middle Realm, forbidden to manifest their presence directly in that plane without abiding harsh and strict restrictions.
The Eternity Tree, too, would be bestowed a similar restriction. The Tree, common to all, would be neutral ground between all powers, with direct confrontation forbidden, enforced by the Tree itself.
Now shielded from the predation of great powers, the Children of the Middle Realm across all of the Prime Material could finally start regrowing. Many of the greatest of the Heroes of Starlight would ascend to fill the void left by the diminishment of the Creators and the destruction of other deities. Others would go on to shape their worlds. Whatever their choice, one thing was certain. The ages of gods and horrors were over. The next ages belonged to the mortals.
The Third Age
The Age of Starlight. The Bronze Age of Celesia.
(more to come)
The Fourth Age
The Age of Kings. The Iron Age of Celesia.
(more to come)
The Fifth Age
The Age of Strife. The Steel Age of Celesia.
(more to come)
The Sixth Age
The Age of Reckoning.
The present age unfolding.