The Two Worlds
From Shadow Academy
In the beginning, there was a great void - a void which the Ancients called the "Well of Souls", and it was formless, empty of anything except mindless, undirected energies - raw chaos.
But into the Well of Souls came the Divine Spark, and it created a tower of light - the Axis Mundi - which cut through the void and brought order to the energies that dwelled in the Well of Souls. As the Axis spun, it wove the energies into a vast tapestry - what some would call Fate, and others Order. Its tapestry spread out to form a million stars - galaxies born and dying as they orbited the Tower of Light in perfect order and peace. This was the First World - the World of Light.
Peace was...short-lived, however. Where the edges of Fate's tapestry touched the void of the Well of Souls, it began to fray. Monsters appeared, galaxies were thrown into disorder. Entropy, chaos and slow dissolution entered into the "perfect" Tapestry that the Tower created. Life was born in the universe, and with it came the spectre of death. Unable to end the "infection" of "uncontrolled energies", the Tower instead sought to prevent their spread. It created a wall between the chaotic energies of the Well, and the orderly energies of the Tapestry - closing them off from one another so that it could work to repair the damage done to its Tapestry. To this end, the Tower created the first Angels, powerful, immortal beings - servant programs of the Tower, designed to seek out the forces of chaos and purge them from the Tower's perfect system.
When the Angels discovered the Ancients, they set to destroy them as they would any other infection in the Divine Order. But one brave man, born of the union between an Ancient and a "monster", traveled to the Tower of Light itself, and stole from it a shard of the Divine Spark contained within. With the power of the Spark, the Ancients fought a brutal war against the Angels, building a vast empire fueled by the Spark's power. In the end, the Angels relented, and swore never again to interfere in the universe's fate, content to let the Ancients kill themselves or be killed by the monsters born of Chaos that infested their worlds.
In time, the Empire of the Ancients grew great, and spread across the universe, but these first men were prideful, arrogant in their disregard for Order, and they sought to break the Wall and enter the Well of Souls. That they succeeded is known, but little else. The magics they used, the forces they called, these things fundamentally altered the universe on both sides of the Wall. Where once the Well of Souls was unshaped, its power only mindless Chaos, now the greatest of the Ancients bent it to their will, creating the first and oldest Nether-Realms. Meanwhile, the Tower - no longer able to contain the influx of chaotic energies - could not seal the Wall, and to this day, it remains little more than a veil between our world and the vast, endless realities of the Nether-Realm.
What happened to the Ancients? We do not know, except that many of them became the first Overlords of the Nether-Realms. Their empire in the world of light was lost, replaced by new empires, and eons passed between their final Great Act and the birth of mankind.
[edit] The World of Light
When it was first created, the World of Light was a place of perfect order and peace, a vast and complicated web of fate radiating outward from the Tower of Light - the Axis Mundi around which the universe spins. The Tower still stands, but the World of Light is no longer its ideal paradise. Now, life thrives there, and death as well. It is our world as we know it today and countless millions of other worlds, where fate and chance - Order and Chaos - mingle into something fair greater than either of its constituent parts can understand.
To narrow the focus somewhat, the World of Light is the world of humanity. It is Earth and the universe in which Earth resides, created by a confluence of events too grand and mysterious to really understand. Other creatures live there, of course - alien species are not uncommon, many of which are more advanced technologically than humans. There are also nature spirits, ghosts, faeries and other "spirits of light", created when parts of the Tower's plan were given consciousness in the days of the Ancientsm or - in the case of ghosts - when the soul of a living being cannot or will not pass into the Nether-Realms or enter the Tower of Light. The most powerful of these are the gods and demigods of old, whose adventures and might sparked religions and fueled myth and legend for millions of years. The Angels still dwell in the World of Light, seeking to do their appointed duty and preserve Order and Fate in the Tower's creation. Lastly, there are Fiends - creatures born of the first touch of Chaos on the Tower's perfect order. Many of these have spawned entire races of beings as their corrupting touch spread over the world - vampires, werewolves and the like. Others are powerful ,singular entities who dwell in the deep, hidden recesses of the universe.
[edit] The Nether-Realms
Where once there was a shapeless void, there is now endless variation. The Nether-Realms are the domain of the primordial Chaos that existed before the Divine Spark, but when the Ancients entered that realm, they took it for themselves, shaping it with their will and power. Now, the ancient, mindless chaos of the Void has been replaced by the will of the Overlords, powerful beings who shape their Nether-Worlds in whatever manner they wish. The Overlords rule over the legions of "Demons" - creatures touched, warped or even created whole-cloth out of Chaos, but most Overlords spend their time seeking to expand their power, often at the expense of their fellows. Though fractious and alien, however, the Nether-Realms are not entirely unlike the World of Light. Like the more familiar worlds of human experience, the Nether-Realms are built on an Axis, the last remnant of the true Well of Souls, a place of primal darkness so powerful that only the mightiest and most ancient Overlords can dare to touch it.
The most peculiar facet of the Nether-Realms is that almost anyone can become an Overlord, provided they can find their way into the Nether-Realms, and have the will and power to carve out a Nether-Realm of their own, often at the expense of other Overlords. This is one of the many reasons that the Overlords watch the World of Light closely, though there are others. For one, they fuel their magic and increase their power using the souls of the dead, and so they often seek to capture the souls of living beings from the World of Light to bolster their might. For this reason, among others, they hate and fear the Angels of the World of Light, who still seek to shut them off completely.
