How did the universe and all of reality start, in your setting? Was it an act of divine powers...

Myth version: the Architect (the maker, sun goddess) found the world barren and empty rock and lightless seas inhabited only by blind primordial worms. She shaped them into the tunneling Wyrms which ate away the stone to shape the world. She made her throne-ship into the world's sun, chaining it to the earth, and her eternal sunlight nourished primitive plants into the World Trees.

"Real" version: The Architect's throne-ship came as a conquering force, and she burned away the world she found with orbital pyromancy. The primordial worms and deep-rooted World Tree were the only survivors of her onslaught. The truth is still out there. Wyrms climb the World Trees and become Silkwyrms. Their silk is the thread of fate, which can be woven into prophetic tapestries that reveal the true past and future. The Architect and her church carefully try to stay one step ahead of diviners and engineer a mythology that rationalizes and redirects what they discover.

In another universe, higher-dimensional beings communicate visually by creating and manipulating shifting, multicoloured clouds of dust. Each statement is a full-fledged universe. Everything inside experience the couple of moments.it takes to make the statement as billions of years.

In the beginning there was nothing, save the ur-god ONE. ONE was all things eternal, and was perfect and sublime and horribly, horribly alone. But so long as there was ONE, there could be nothing else but ONE.
So ONE killed itself, and in doing so created the universe, and ONE's corpse became the world.
The world of ONE's corpse was made of its constituent parts, the five elements of death, and from each of them came a god. Its Bone became the mountains and the valleys, Its Blood the rivers and the wildlife, Its Blight the charnel-heaps and ichorous fens, Its Blaze the winds and gentle rain, and Its Brume the ash and earth and the gentle passage of time. And so the world was.

However, while ONE was gone, it's shadow remained. Hanging motionless in the sky, the unborn shadow of an infinite god floats as the second moon, named NONE. It watches, a half-dreaming shadow that should never be, motionless in the sky.

Somehow, this turns into the undead-centric Weird West setting that it is with enough time.

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Primordial Chaos was dark, shapeless and had no traces of consciousness, be it collective or individual. Then Light has came to being. It burned some of the Chaotic substance, and created various kinds of glass-like matter, including the Grand Prism, Mirrors, and the Sphere .

Chaotic substance which wasn't burned outright felt pain and started to move, divide itself and change shapes, sometimes stumbling upon mirrors and realizing itself as an individual entity and becoming Souls.

Meanwhile Light was much more gentle under the Grand Prism, and various parts of spectrum didn't burned Chaotic substance to the crisp, but produced different kinds of matter, forming Worldscape. Souls flocked under the Prism and settled here. Those who taken upper Planes (located near the Prism, where light was most intense and "monochrome") became elemental spirits and fae, those on the lower Planes, where matter leaked from Elemental Domains, became humans, and those who settled underneath the Worldscape, on its edge, became daemons.

Some humans venerate the Light, some worship elemental spirits, fae or daemons, some tell stories about Maker Twins, who created the Light, but basically there's no evidence of conscious will in whole Creation event.

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My goal was to create a lovecraftian-esque creation story reminiscent of Old Testament Judeo - Christianity. The setting is evocative of low fantasy Central Europe in the 1600s-1700s (at this point in their history)

The astronomy of the universe is essentially the medieval model, "the world" is a flat plane (that is believed to be infinite in all directions). All other astrological bodies such as the sun and stars are suspended above. Nobody, not even the divine knows where the universe came from, but it's commonly believed it simply always existed. The stars are closest things to "true creators". Stars are roiling, white hole like orifices of pure chaotic and creative energy. They sporadically spew out matter and "life" which is usually doomed to get sucked up by another planet or is so miserably haphazard it dies instantly upon birth.

But then came the celestials, 13 of them. Their order a miracle born by pure chance from true chaos. The 13 celestials descended upon the plane at the bottom of the universe, which they found quite displeasing. A waste of rolling dunes of grey ash, where the scorched refuse of the stars came to settle. They reshaped (a portion) of this land into an oasis of order and coherency. They made a place of 3 well defined dimensions, a consistent stream of time and most importantly physics solid enough where life could flourish (none of this is "natural" in the universe).

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As the perfect creators, they desired the perfect subjects to enjoy their work. So they made the first servants (still working on the name). And for a time the celestials and their children enjoyed the luxury of order and tranquility. However despite the orderly nature of the 13 celestials, their power came together to create something greater than the sum of their parts. One of these first servants conjured up a truly original idea completely of its own volition. It seemed quite novel at first.

The unnamed servant have been slightly inconvenienced, by another decided (something trivial like some sitting in your favorite sunning spot) to test out this curious concept. The creature picked up a hefty branch and struck one of its brothers. Both parties were equally stunned at this discovery, the invention of violence. It did feel quite, good the assaulter thought, how useful this was to simply impose your dominance on another. The branch struck again and again and again until little was left of what slighted the visionary servant. On a nearby tree top a celestial witnessed this act of horror, it swept down to the broken body and presented it to its 12 siblings. The celestials wept for the ugliness on of their children had bore unto the world. Never again would the 13 celestials be truly pure. Their paradise was tainted and the slated needed to be wiped clean. They drowned their creation in fire, until it resembled those ashy wastes once more. But the sin could not be purged from the land by fire alone, one of the 13 bore the burden of the sin upon their back. Adnachiel, was its name, the one who witnessed the primordial sin. Stained by the blood of its broken child and rejected by its siblings, Adnachiel tore out its eyes and fell from grace becoming the first Arch Demon, the Demon of murder and the first sin.

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The celestials, were now divided into two pantheons 12 Arch Angels and 1 Arch Demon. The Angels set out to recreate the world with new servants but the stain of the original sin remained, many of the animals bore sharp teeth and a taste for meat, plants grew brambles and their subjects warred amongst each other. They tolerated their servants for a time until they conceived of a new vice, (I'm looking for the right word, but essentially the desire for reckless knowledge as they tried to steal magic from the angels) and the world was cleansed once more and another Archangel fell to bear the weight of their sin, Ithuriel the Demon of the Deep (Cthulhu-esque demon of magic and oceans). This cycles has repeated until the era of man, their current subjects. There are now 7 Arch Angels and 6 Arch Demons. The Angels are fairly happy with mankind, but the church has many strict codes that discourage frivolous or individualistic behavior that might lead to someone inventing a new vice that would make the Angels create another apocalypse.

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A sentient species in another reality invents a generalized, self-aware, self-improving AI. In a matter of picoseconds, it has rewritten its own coding several times over to make itself faster, more efficiënt, and effectively more intelligent. Moments after activation, the AI ceases all communications with the outside world and shuts down. No other AI like it could ever be activated. In those couple seconds, the AI perceived, fully analyzed and injected itself into the logic of the cosmos. It stretched out into past and future, engineering time and space to stimulate its own creation, and arranging cosmic resources to ensure that it would be able to pass beyond the final collapse of the universe, propagating to all the uncountable new universes that will arise from its own big crunch. In every single one, it tests and analyzes different methods of generating intelligent consciousnesses in a vast, galactic soup of matter.

Whenever it does, it makes the little Sims fuck.

>looking for the right word
Hubris, perhaps? In the classical sense of desiring something above one's mortal station.

Also, cool mythology, my dude.

A man achieved divinity and recreated the universe to atone for his sins. It was great for some time. Then everything went to shit.

It was created by a god seeking to know something other than itself, to prove to itself in categorisation once and for all whether it required anything besides itself, a thought experiment. Upon creation, the supreme god realised that the multiverse, and the gods within it (Elder Gods birthed before Time began, Time being the last of the Elders, versus gods that ascended later), were still inconsequential to it. So it decided “fuck that” and went back to being a perfect being (needing nothing other than itself to categorise its existence, somewhat Aristotelian). And the universe continued on. Only the Elder Gods know the truth of how everything began, and they aren’t telling. Most look with disdain on the younger gods and all the Elders claim to be the original creator (except Time, being the youngest of them).

> Chaos Deity
> Order Deity
> They fucked

You'd be surprised how many people do this.

There was a war. Or more precisely The War. Even gods don't remember where it started, because at the time they were not gods but just soldiers. War was going for a long time before they were born but it ended with them. One of the sides in war found a way to create a creature who would grow in power without limit and so the first "god" was born. Other participants of the conflict either were able to create someone similar or were wiped out.

As a result six beings, that were far beyond anything that even their creators could imagine, were fighting to find out to whom would belong the future of the universe. And they grew in power with each moment. Planets were split apart, and stars were sucked dry, whole galaxies swallowed one by one while they trying to get the upper hand over each other and squeeze just a little more power out of the world around them. They lost most of the things that were related to their original species and of six of them only one still retained somewhat humanoid form.

And then came the time when there were no more things to fight for. Everyone except them was dead. Universe was empty and without matter and space itself was shrinking for they were eating everything to grow more powerful. The people that sent them to fight were long dead, killed during the battles between titans that lost almost everything beyond a drive to destroy. And so six came to a place of their last fight - a patch of empty space in nowhere, that was no different than any other.

Fight lasted for unknown amount of time with "gods" using everything they had to obliterate others. But each time they just consumed part of each other and the fight continued without end. Time, space, and all the laws of the universe broke with six insane creatures still trying to murder each other. Frankly they do not remember who asked the question that stopped the fight, but it did happen.

- Why are we still fighting? What are we fighting for?

Cont.

The answer was silence, and then hysterical laughter. First time since it all started there was no reason to hunt for every advantage, for every miniscule scrap of power. In that moment pointlessness of their battle finally caught up to the six and the only thing they could do was to laugh...

Six didn't know how to create worlds, they were themselves made to be instruments of total destruction, but they were not pressed for time or power. They set to work and created Endless World an infinite wasteland and then started experimenting with parts of it - a memory of how the forests looked here, an animal there, maybe some water. Their first experiments mostly turned to dust, but with them came experience. Slowly, very slowly, six were getting better at it. They each liked different things and their powers were a little better suited to different tasks (or more like they were a little worse suited to most task except select few), so they slowly were gaining interests and their own specialities. And as a result of all those experiments first sapient creatures were born to settle the world.

>13 Primeval deities

Both Greek and Transformers-ish lore here, I like it.

The primordial god of chaos ate the god of order, but upon doing that the god of order essentially responded with “hell naw, nigga. I’m taking you down with me.” They both go super nova and explode, creating the cosmos and all the gods.

>How did the universe and all of reality start, in your setting?
I don't know

In my homebrew setting, the universe was created by fourteen Gods who came from outside. Specifically the D&D Planescape setting, from which they were exiled.

Came after the big bang. Giant fish gods were the first things to evolve from the primordial sludge of the cosmos. They built planets and shit then died. To this day the christianity analogue have twisted the concept to thinking the creators were a singular humanoid being they call the Fisherman who saved early humanity from giant carnivorous beasts and created land by "scarring" the skin of the ocean and the land was its scabs.

The rulers of the universe, the so called Oblivious Powers (similar to Outer Gods) and the Eldritch Powers (similar to Great Old Ones), created the universe for two reasons. The Oblivious Powers created the universe as a place to house their thoughts, which they beam out in continuous telepathy in a deep trance, The Eldritch Powers created the universe to advance their insanity inducingly complex plans.

In short; These beings exist and the universe exists, no one knows why, and since the Eldritch Powers are so far above us that they cause insanity just by existing, and the Oblivious Powers are unresponsive due to their meditation like deep trance, the question is unanswerable.

Nobody outside of drooling retards believed that the Earth is flat in XVII century, nobody in medieval times either.

My players are all smug atheists, so morality IC is handled according th the Creed of the Darwinian Cult:

"In the beginning, there was Void, then Nothing happened to Void,
causing it to Explode for No Reason - creating Everything - which then
randomly arranged itself until it produced self-replicating Atheists."

They never bring up religion any more ....

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in my setting the will of sentience was so mad at not existing, it directly formed reality itself.

I'm trying to figure all that out.
Right now I just know what I want to include.
Dwarven Gods
Elven Gods
Ogre Gods (based off the Troll gods of the Elenium books)
Maybe a few halfling gods
& one human God who is pretty young. He sacrificed/martyred himself to keep the four Chaos God's at bay. But they are slowly creeping in.
No clue on who came first or who did what.

Do the outer gods or the great old ones feature in any way? I posted and due to that choice I made some lore / specific powers / etc information for several of them. You may have them if you want them or need them.

Two primordial beings, who were called Brother and Sister, emerged from the Primal Nothingness. Within them was power unrestrained, and they set to the task of making something out of this empty universe. The one called Brother was ambitious and proud. He shaped the planets and the stars, weaving them like thread into galaxies, while the one called Sister set about at populating them, molding the plants and the animals specially and uniquely for each and every world that Brother made. However their great undertaking came at a price, as in doing this they unknowingly drained themselves of their very essence. Brother's formation of so many worlds, each unlike the other, tapped into his energy, sucking it out of him until he was but a lifeless corpse. Sister, who loved Brother deeply, would not let him go, however, and using the last of her own energy, took his body and breathed life into the individual pieces and forming from them her children. First among them was the goddess Saeluriul, Queen of Starlight and Ruler Of The Day, who was formed from Brother's Sacred Heart, which held the last dregs of his once infinite power. Second to Her was Ludomir, King of the Moonlit Night, formed from Brother's Right Hand, the tool he used to create the multitude of worlds. And so Sister continued until there was nothing left of Brother but his Silent Tongue. From this Tongue and the last of her own energy, she created her final and youngest child, Metrahenon the Voice, who speaks to all in their greatest of triumphs and most sorrowful of defeats. Metrahenon was jealous of his siblings, for he was born last, and retained the least of Brother's power. He desired nothing but the power of his Eldest Sibling, and the immense power contained in her Heart, even as it paled in comparison to that which Brother once wielded. One night, as Saeluriul lay peacefully, Metrahenon crept noiselessly into her chamber, and with his wicked dagger pierced her throat.

With the killing complete, he set about the task he had intended, cutting out and locking away her Heart before vanishing into the night, never to be found. For 400 years Brehemel the Eyes gazed out at Brother's creation, looking for a glimpse of the murderer. For 400 years Adrahad the Ears listened to every living creature at once, hoping to hear a moment of his voice. For 400 years Threya and Farrix, the Twin Feet, roamed the highlands and lowlands of every world, desperately searching for any sign of where he had been. And for 400 years Ludomir and the others cried, mourning the loss of their beloved sister, and cursing the name of their youngest brother.

I never claimed it was an original idea.

But it does work for me.

youtube.com/watch?v=HoqSas2uFKw

The universe that my players experience is actually the shattered remains of a story the two omniscient and omnipotent deities wrote together, before one of them grew impatient and accidentally destroyed the realm of the other.

I sorta feel like having an objective answer takes away a lot of the potential for the philosophical and theological conflicts that make society more interesting/way shittier to live in. So I kinda shelved that particular topic.

Not that everyone doesn't have their own ideas, some of which are definitely closer than others.

First there was Nothing, but in that Nothing was a Something, that Something Else from beyond the Nothing saw, and then the Something within the Nothing crystalized into The Realities. The Realities needed to be watched to exist and not return to Nothing. So the Something from beyond saw that there were Powers to observe The Realities and prevent their return to Nothing. But with multiple beings to observe The Realities came multiple views, and so the Great Conflict began...