When the princes were young, back before they’d been given their gifts and before they’d become jaded to the ways of their father, and even before their mother had been taken by sickness, she would tell them stories of the old gods. Titans who roamed their world back before man.

It was originally the gods that held up the sky before the She-Titan Fayeth created the great trees that now stood in the four corners of the world. It had been peaceful then. No god taking any more or less than was needed. Idyllic almost. And in this peace, they created the plants and the animals. They made the great falls to the South in which they bathed, and the Sunken Valley to the East where they buried the deceased and forgotten. They bathed the ground in warmth and breathed life into the land and everything was well. And eventually, when they had grown content but bored, they created man.

It was a lesser titan by the name of Omneros who created the first man. He wasn’t as powerful as his fellow immortals, nor as creative as the minds that had brought forth the multitude of creatures that now roamed the planet, yet he hungered. He wanted to be looked upon in awe; to be revered as a god to a creature that could only imagine a fraction of his ability. And so he brought forth a being made in his own image. 

The first man.

And it was with the first man that the balance of the world fell apart, for as he was made in the image of Omneros, he carried with him the flaws of his creator. He saw the power of his God, and wanted it for himself. He hungered for a power that was beyond his reach, and so he began a plot to overthrow the Titans. Man appealed to Omneros’ ego. He acted the willing and devoted servant, blinding the titan to his true intentions. Omneros saw man as a success, and so he made more. He did not see the secrets that laid in the shadows his man created.

But though he may have been blind, the other Titans were not. When man began to interfere with their own creations, they took notice. They tried to speak with Omneros about his creatures, but the lesser titan was deaf to their words, his mind poisoned by the praise of his subjects. He was fed lies about the jealousy of the other Titans, and so he turned them away. He was content to live in the fantasy that a being, when given the capacity for intelligent thought, would not rebel against the invisible leash that held them when treated as lesser. The other Titans however could see man clearly for what it was; could see the path their world was taking, and so they made their own preparations for the inevitable.

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They scattered across the world, creating defenses to guard themselves, and creatures to guard those.

And the inevitable came when man appealed to Omneros’ hunger for power. They asked him for a titan-killer so that they might slay the other Titans for him. They fed him lies about power and he was too far gone to see the hunger in the eyes of his own creation. And so he granted the request, though it left him in a weakened state, and so he was the first to fall by it’s blade.

And the last as well, for once word got to the other Titans, they decided to separate themselves from the mortals world. They went dormant, disappearing almost entirely. One might think they never existed at all if not for what they left behind.

Entire civilizations is what remained in the aftermath, for while it was agreed that Omneros had made a mistake in bringing about the downfall of the Titans in the first place with man, each titan wanted to be remembered when their time on the world was over. They had created their own peoples in secret, each differing from any other as their Titans had imparted a piece of themselves upon each of them. From Fayeth’s tree dwellers in the jungles to Nox’s nightmarish creatures in the Sunken Valley. 

And they were all left to find peace amongst themselves without the interference of the Titans, something that was eventually achieved with introduction of the royals. Royals were gifted by the gods upon their coming of age, their abilities helping to steer their people onto the road of peace and prosperity. No one truly knows how the gift of the royals came to be. Some theorized that it was a new Titan that gifted them their abilities, while others thought they came directly from their own God. The only thing that could be agreed upon however was that the world would still be devastated by war and sickness and famine if it weren’t for the royals and the gifts they brought with them.

And yet the peace was fragile still. It wouldn’t take much to tip the world back into the dark days that followed the fall of the Titans. One small act could set the world ablaze.