The Age of Void
We came from the Void, that was what we knew. From our rock bodies, we attained form, and within our gemstone hearts that were encoded the memories of countless past lives of sentient creatures, we knew our essence. We stood stout and stocky, in squat forms, and as we gazed at the night sky coloured with the rainbow clouds of the Warpstorm, we knew of a more perfect form, filled with grace, of taller figures that haunt our dreams. We called them our Ancestors, Ancestor Gods. We created myths of them, recollected from the memories that laid in our hearts. We thus knew we came from the Void, and our speech, Khuzdulid, was formed of a vulgarised and bastardised version of the myriad tongues our consciousness, that which originated from countless other lifeforms, spoke. Thus we knew, however dimly, that we came from beyond the depths of space, of that great void above us, from which dotted the sky the presence of distant lights. We were not true in our forms, stout and stocky as a result of some warped evolution. When we first came to sentience, we took to hiding in the great caves of the regions of our world Vatn. When the dangers passed, we would come out and gaze under the night sky, at a sea of light, and dreamt of foreign lands where once roamed our Ancestry, our origins.
We spoke of our Ancestor Gods, in our minds' visions' great warriors of old, to explain our origins, from which we say we descended from the Gods of the Void. There, in the history of other worlds, lie our explanations of our origins. The Ancestor Gods, the people within our memories that we carried on in our consciousness, were thought of as perfect in form, graceful and tall in shape, completely unlike us. They were inspired by the real life peoples from which our memories and consciousness took registry from. Thus we called ourselves Demiurg, or "Squat" in our vulgar language.
Gazing at the worlds that dotted the starscape above us, we named them each after elements in our language. Jord, 1st within the star system, meaning "Earth" for being exceptionally dense and extremely rich in rare minerals and metals, a dense black ball in the sky above us. Ginnungagap, 2nd within the star system; the Yawning Gap, a miniaturised blackhole caused by the unnatural phenomenon of the Warpstorm. The reason why venturing near Jord is dangerous, due to their proximtiy. Himinn, 3rd within the star system; in stark contrast to Ginnungagap, the lofty Himinn, Sphere of Lights is an almost divine heaven that is as yet devoid of life. Himinn naturally generates an exceptionally large magnetic field that makes entry beyond that planet difficult, another reason the resource-laden world of Jord has yet to be plundered; the hall of Valhalla is said to reside here, awaiting fallen warriors who have fought valiantly in battle, to carry them to the feast of Saehrimnir on the wings of the Valkyrie, a divine boar that is cooked every night and returns whole the next day, while the Valkyries' existence were divined from the flashing sparks that would be visible from Vatn's night sky, carried by the solar winds that collide with the magnetic field of Himinn. Vindr, 4th within the star system; the Shell of Shattered Winds, Vindr, is a planet that has been shattered into 7 floating world shells over its core, by the incidence of a gigantic Warplightning from the Warpstorm that tore the planet asunder. Vatn, Homeworld of the Demiurg; 5th within the star system, so named being the only planet with water, apart from Himinn. Agnirheimr, the Home of Melding Fire, 6th planet within the star system; this world is constantly ablazed with heat reaching temperatures far in excess of what any planet would normally generate in any circumstances. It was to be used by the Demiurg as a forge world, due its great heat, which they use as a giant furnace to forge their most rarest and precious of metals into the greatest weapons of all. As the truly powerful Master Runes can only be inscripted within the fiery depths of Agnirheimr, which the Demiurg do so with the aid of Exo-Armours, Agnirheimr is also called the Runeworld, and Agnir Firehammer himself was named after this glowing planet, such was his skill as the first Runesmith. And finally Prymja, the 7th and last of the Homeworlds; world of the Xenarch, the Thunder Arches, the strange beings made of living Warp energy that was formed from the coalescing of Warplightning within the unique environment of Prymja. The entire world is perpetually clouded over by great black clouds that constantly generate charges of lightning, and that is how new Xenarches are born.
Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.
At first the world was hostile, and we took to defending ourselves by hiding in the mountain caves to keep away from the many predatory beasts that roam the land. There, inspired by the myth of the Ancestor God Grungni, who was the god of the mountains, we took to mining and smithing, upon chancing upon in some distant recollection of the use of the minerals within the heart of the mountains, and upon meeting with lava; "Fire". With fire, the heat of the lava within the backbones of the mountains, did we smith, and with it we forged great weapons of yore, with which we did battle with the predators of the lands. Soon the hunted became the hunter, and these first, brave Demiurg whose "lineage" came from the myths of Grungni, were the Blacksmiths, forgers of fire and iron.