In the beginning, Something woke up. Many different scholars have spent copious amounts of time arguing about what Something was. Many intriguing theories have been proposed, such as Delia’s theory of Darkness, Christopher’s theory of Life, and even Fitzgerald’s theory that Something was Turtle. The only thing the Gods have told us about the origin of existence is that Something woke up, then it got bored, very bored.
Eventually, Something got so bored that it started playing a game with itself. As we ourselves are not Gods there is no way for us to comprehend what exactly the game was, but History has been quoted saying that it was, “similar enough to solitaire.” As soon as the first game of all time concluded Game woke up. After waking, Game looked at Something and laughed.
The next three Gods to wake up were necessities to keep the games going between Game and Something. Time, Space, and Fairness all woke up simultaneously. Time made sure that each players’ turn happened in a prompt fashion, while Space created, well, space for the Gods to frolic about in their games of tag, tennis, and tetherball. Finally, Fairness made sure a certain Something didn’t cheat and ruin the integrity of their personal play pen.
More and more games were played, and new gods woke up to supplement those games. Water, Wave, and Wood all came together to create the sport of surfing. Fire and Crops created hot potato. Even Housing and Crisis had their magnum opus of monopoly. And during these days Game ruled as god of gods. For Game was always coming up with new games for the gaggle of gods to play, keeping them endlessly entertained.
However, all good things come to an end as Something was finding it harder and harder to continue enjoying these new games created by these young and shiny gods. Game eventually noticed that Something was starting to get bored. No one other than Game knows what exactly happened after that, and Game has never deigned to speak to us mortals, but we do know that Game woke up Death or End as some of the Northern tribes call them.
Thus, the first murder occurred when Game and Death killed Something. Some religions like the Humanists believe it was a sort of mercy killing and that Something asked to be killed so that they would never be bored again, while others like the Freer Men believe that Game killed Something as to keep control over the other gods. Regardless of the reasoning behind the action, Something was dead and Game proposed a new game of epic proportions.
The rules were simple, Game, Creation, and a couple other gods would fashion Something’s corpse into a new world whereby they would create a race of beings. No god other than Game would be allowed to directly interact with the world in any way. Whoever got the entirety of the world’s beings to worship them would win. Then humanity was created, and the first age began.
The livable world used to be more than the Hearted continent at one point. Some old maps kept by followers of Collection show that the vaguely heart-shaped continent was joined by at least three others during the first age, there was the fractured continent, the frozen continent, and the dead continent.
The first age was dominated by incredible amounts of power. Gods, hoping to draw the mortals into their cults gave them stupendous powers and items that reshaped the world.
Greg the Idiot was given a scepter by Calamity that allowed him to create natural disasters with a wave. Natural disasters are not known for their speed though, and during his assassination he just kept waving the scepter hoping something would happen. Nothing happened at first, then a month later, 15 different natural disasters devastated the fractured continent all at once, making it completely uninhabitable.
The next continent to be destroyed in this age was the frozen continent, simply because Water’s favorite human was killed. After Tristan the Extremely Violent was put down by the continent’s knightly force, Water got into a mood and gave their cult an artifact that would freeze all the water on the continent.
This had the unintended consequence of freezing all the humans on the continent as well. Their blood froze in their systems. This was ironically the exact same thing that got the continental knight force after Tristan the Extremely Violent, he would simply freeze anyone he didn’t like.
Maybe that was why Tristan was Water’s favorite.
The freezing also had the unintended side effect of forever changing the climate of that continent, not allowing crops or life to flourish there in any form.
Finally, the dead continent has a more tragic story. Life had been mocking Death for a couple of centuries, making fun of the fact that Death refused to play the game with any of the other Gods. To this Death simply said, “Everything dies, so they all join my cult eventually.”
None of the gods quite liked this answer for some reason, and Life decided to make their cult unable to die just to spite Death. But no one is allowed to cheat Death. So, to compensate for the life force being given to Life’s cult, the continent around them started to wither and die. The flowers bloomed with rot, no new children were born, and even Life themself had become a husk of their former power.
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This was when Game decided that Death would be a little unfair to leave in the game, so Death was offered to join as a moderator keeping the game fair. But the dead continent still lingers as a testament to the power that Death holds.
After three of their four continents were destroyed Game decided to rewrite the rules a little bit, the first big change was that these gifts could not be given so freely anymore. No more Gregs running around with power they cannot comprehend.
Instead, Game asked Fate to join the moderators of the game as well. Fate would scry into every child’s future and calculate their destiny. Then any willing God would be able to “invest” into that child’s future by giving a gift to that child that matches their destiny. So, no more continent destroying weapons for fools and drunks.
The second age started with three moderators watching over the game and helping it run as smoothly as possible. This age was more peaceful than the previous one, but that was relative since the last age destroyed three continents worth of life. This age was the start of the Hearth family kingdom.
The great dynasty had a humble start with two brothers and a farm. Both brothers had been blessed by Plant, one had the ability to help things grow by touching them with his hands, while the other had a stick that when shaken would interchangeably create sun or rain.
They both used their abilities to grow the farm vastly beyond the proportions of any other farm at the time. People in the surrounding area started to take notice and move closer so that they had more access to food. As people started migrating to be closer to these brothers, Alli Hearth saw her opportunity for kingship (or queenship). She snuck to the brothers’ farm in the middle of the night, cut off the growing brother’s hands, and stole the rain-sun stick before killing the two of them.
Brutal but effective. This story is the one readily available in History’s halls, but there has been some debate about whether this story is a smear campaign against the Hearth family and their patron god, Power. However, it is true that two of the family’s artifacts are a set of mummified hands that grow plants, and a stick that can create rain and sun.
Alli then used her own power along with the newly acquired family heirlooms to start a small village. Her control of food allowed her to retain complete control over the people, she only continued to expand her influence as time went on. Her family grew as did the village, eventually turning into the greatest city in all the Hearted continent, Vena Cava.
The rise of the Hearth family was inexorably tied to the way in which gifts from the gods functioned during the second age. They were more permanent blessings than in the current age. Thus, allowing for the rain-sun stick to be stolen and used after the original owner’s death.
Nearing the end of the second age Game, Death, and Fate decided that the rulers of the continent were becoming too powerful. They had been given too long to expand their power, kill their enemies, and steal their gifts. So, the moderators requested a total recall of all ownerless gifts.
Many, many, many gifts snuck through the cracks or were intentionally left behind by certain Gods. The Hearth family for example had made many friends among the Gods thus many of theirs’ were simply forgotten in the rush.
Next, Game decided that they had to do something to keep gifts from being stolen. So, they created the soul-space in the human being. No human knows exactly how it works, but now all gifts from gods are stored in that space. Even physical gifts are stored there somehow.
There are many accounts of people entering the third age taking a gift only for it not to work. For example, there was a farmer from a small village who was given a sword by War that could shoot beams of energy. When a nearby general heard of this she felt that she had to have it. So, she went to talk with the man an even paid him a hefty sum for use of the thing. When she finally got to the battlefield and the thing didn’t work, she was maimed and burned by the enemy commander.
After the incident she became convinced that the man had conned her by giving her a fake. So, she and her closest soldiers marched on that small village and razed it, killing anyone who had ever seen the man before. So, the man and everyone he had ever loved had died.
Finally, Game had made one last change, to usher in the new era. They made it so that children did not receive their gifts until they were thirteen. During the first and second ages it had become quite popular to steal any remarkably good gifts from babies, kill babies with remarkable enough gifts, or simply do both. It was as easy as taking candy from a baby.
There was a record of a baby in the first age who had been gifted a ring by Misfortune. And the ruler of the area, Hank, demanded that the ring be given to him. Hank’s seers could see the immense power stored in that ring, but not what the specifics of the power would be. When Hank put the ring on, he suffered an aneurism, his treasury had exploded, and all his heirs had suddenly disappeared.
Game felt it was unfair to not even give these kids a fighting chance, so they devised a system where kids would go to sleep on their thirteenth birthday and then were allowed to choose from all the possible offers given to them from all their possible sponsor gods.
This working hand in hand with soul space almost entirely stopped the market for underground powers. However, it did have the unintended consequence of starting an underground slave ring where kids would be born as quickly as possible and then molded into the perfect obedient soldier over the next thirteen years. But there’s no such thing as a perfect system, right?
With the new rule changes being fully codified the third age started. And at the time of the writing of this book we are still in the third age. Many intriguing and fascinating things have happened over this course of recent history.
We have had 7 expeditions to the other three continents to varying degrees of success. The Hearth family has totally ousted all other kingdoms and empires out of the Hearted continent leaving them as the sole ruler of our continent. There have even been 3 civil wars since the beginning of this era. These and more are what I will be describing in this epic book, The Recent History of Our World: A Total and Conclusive Essay on The Events That Have Passed Since the Beginning of The Third Age.
-Philip Pen