The hearts of men are naturally biased towards their preference for, “good,” and such, will actively seek it out whenever and where-ever thought possible. Even men who intentionally do evil do so either because of their lust and appreciation for the art of enacting evil in the moment, which they see their practice and personal development of as a, “good,” or because they believe that doing evil is the only way for them to get ahead and make gains, something they value above all else as a quantifiable, “good.” However, the ability to pin down and define, “good,” intrinsically implies an equal opposite of that which is, “less-than-good,” or sometimes even, “not-good,” which in the ancients’ dubbed, “bad.” As immortal manifestations of one’s jivatma, often referred to as the local, “petty,” halve of a partitioned soul, the hearts of men are naturally imbued with concupiscence; a concupiscence that drives the heart, (dragging along the soul by extension,) to gamble on the material planes and seek out mortal incarnations. However, as abdication of the soul’s dominion over its own omnipotence is intrinsic to the partitioning of the soul into jivatma and paramatma that occurs as a metaphysical reaction whenever a new soul binds itself to its mortal trial of Samsara the end result is that no one mortal hearted man is ever truly in complete control of their, “fate,” with the remaining power vacuum being filled by a joint-custody with, “Lady Destiny,” the governess of butterfly breaths. As such no man is ever solely capable of ensuring that they experience only their vision of, “good,” thus making it so that to experience some measure of both, “good,” and, “bad,” is intrinsic to each and every mortal lifetime lived. Nonetheless, men and their hearts, as manifestations of their souls, are mere extensions of the universe, grown from it in an unlimited quantity at the same time of the universe’s own birth by a partitioning of a quarter of the infinite power that lies beyond the firmament of the universe as according to the Empyrean’s concupiscence; the first, primordial concupiscence in all the worlds. And as an extension of the universe, the biases of men’s hearts for their own visions of, “good,” and drive to seek it out and enact it where-ever and whenever possible are not their own unique desires, but rather an inherited trait of the greater universe.

Looking down upon the material plane and seeing the fruits of men’s efforts to seek out good across all the earths, a portion of the engram-isvaras in the newborn universe at that time, themselves the remnants of the Empyrean’s prior dreams of past kalpas materialized into molted engrams, were inspired by the good of the efforts of men to themselves take a chance, gambling on the, “risk-reward,” factor of the material plane created by the Empyrean Dreamer’s oneiric-limbs just as the souls of men had, and they descended to the earths below. Styling themselves as, “gods,” as they traveled amongst the men of earth they would become deified as the gods of the kenotic pantheon, and they would be the first to disseminate the secret plemoras of waidan, “outer-alchemy,” and thaumaturgy to humanity through those they took for themselves as neophytes, concubines, consorts and proselytes, transmogrifying those they took into forms more akin to their own images, the way a dog marks it’s territory. Beseeching their devout to honour them with grand ziggurats and legendary pitched battles in the name of blood sport, it would not be long before a great many of the remaining population of unchanged humans began to resent the shackles of the kenotic gods and their acceleration of the cycle of, “good,” and, “bad,” mortal experiences, wishing deep within their hearts for a reprieve of samsara and the material plane. Hearing a kindred desire within the pleas of the disenfranchised humans to escape the material plane and be reabsorbed into the full might of the Empyrean Dreamer beyond the firmament, the molted engram-isvaras who hadn’t descended upon the earths in the hopes of carving out a kingdom, who would later come to be known as the gods of the henotic pantheon, deigned to answer the prayers of the disillusioned men of earth by themselves now descending upon the world; Taking concubines and consorts for themselves as well, transmogrifying them into new shapes through the formerly secret arts of Neidan, “inner-alchemy,” and theurgy for the sake of doing battle with their kenotic cousins and bringing about the end of the newborn universe through glorious tandava.

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Even now, untold centuries and a myriad of kingdoms later the descendant generations of the transmogrified races of men still warred with each other in bitter memory of their long since slain gods. Faint starlight glinted off silvery steel in the predawn darkness as the deep blue of night slowly brightened to the light teal of day, but the marketplace had already been abuzz with the din of the city’s denizens for some hours now. Grey skinned men with slender, clipped ears like a pitbull’s stood in elvish battledress opposite an equal regiment of men who’s eyes had been all but seemingly swallowed by their sallets; lop-sided grins stretched the corners of their mouths, while lipless pink gums and bone white teeth sprouted from the steel of their sallets’ visors where there should’ve been eye slits. Only the road separated them, while behind them a myriad of tents, pavilions, food carts and shell shanties had been erected by the merchants and labourers who called the market-square hall and home,