BARTENDER 10.0 SR1 B2843 MPT 64 Bit
Kelsi Corsi
In the beginning, the Primordial God made 365 creations - the sun, the moon, the stones, the trees, the wind, the rivers, the seas, and countless others - each adhering to 365 laws that governed the universe. From these 365 creations that made up the world, powerful beings were brought into existence that embodied these natural laws. Over time, these beings were revered as gods by mortals, and ages later, they would be known as the Ancient Gods.
These Ancient Gods were unpredictable and uncontrollable, each with their own independent aims and goals, causing them to come into conflict with each other. Their incredible power and disregard for the natural order created an age of immense chaos that led to devastation and destruction in the mortal world. Unable to abide such chaos, the Primordial God created three beings known as the Overseers in order to restore balance to the universe.
To defeat the Ancient Gods, the Overseers created a relic known as the World Heart, capable of stripping the gods of their power. The World Heart was given to the elders of Grandis, who used it as a template to mass-produce weaker imitations known as the Godspheres, which responded to the collective determination of the masses in order to channel their power. The elders then fused the Godspheres with certain mortals, which gave them the power to match the Ancient Gods. These mortals became the first Adversaries and fought against the gods in the Ancient War.
After a fierce struggle, the Adversaries successfully defeated the Ancient Gods. who were cast down from power. To bring absolute order and certainty back to the universe, the Overseers reorganized all of creation such that only three worlds - Maple World, Grandis, and Tynerum - would exist, separated into different dimensions and governed only by the three laws of light, life, and time. In this way, the countless variables that once existed in the era of the Ancient Gods would be removed, creating a fixed and predictable future.
Though the Ancient Gods had been forced into an unnatural slumber, the Overseers feared that they may awaken someday. To prevent this, they created three Transcendents for each world, with each representing one of the three laws of light, life, and time. The Transcendents served as jailors the Ancient Gods and enforcers of order, with their mere existence keeping the gods tethered to dormancy.
Countless centuries later, the White Mage began researching the ultimate light in his quest to bring salvation to humanity. At the end of his research, he discovered that the Overseers had created a fixed future that left the world broken and incomplete. Vowing to defy them, he awakened as the Black Mage - Maple World's Transcendent of Light - and put into motion a plan that would bring about the end of the Transcendents, thus depriving the Overseers of their enforcers of order.
After centuries, the Black Mage succeeded in his plan, which resulted in the elimination of all three Transcendents of Maple World, including himself. With the age of the Transcendents ending, the dimensional barrier between Maple World and Grandis was destroyed, causing the two worlds to merge back into one, just as they had been during the era of the Ancient Gods.
As the Transcendents began falling out of power, the Ancient Gods began reawakening, causing their once-dormant relics to reawaken. With the Ancient Gods returning, the Maple Alliance launched an expedition to find relics of the Ancient Gods, hoping to use the divine power of the relics in their battle against Gerand Darmoor, Grandis' Transcendent of Life.
Soon after the fusion of Maple World and Grandis, Gerand Darmoor led the High Flora on a mission to target and absorb the power of the gods inside special draining crystals. During their quest to stop him, the Adversary recovered the World Heart, which the elders had drained of its power in order to prevent others from misusing it. In order to restore its power to defeat Darmoor, the Adversary began seeking the power of the Ancient Gods and the Transcendents, hoping to absorb that strength and fill the World Heart.
As higher beings, the Ancient Gods boast power on a scale that transcends the mortal plane. Because of their nature, the Ancient Gods are incapable of being harmed by any mortal attack. This property led to a popular maxim in ancient times, which stated that only gods had the power to challenge other gods. Like all higher beings, the Ancient Gods were immortal, unable to die unless they were killed by a god or a weapon containing divine power.
The Ancient Gods boasted a variety of different powers, with many gods even coming to be associated as the god of a certain domain. One example of this was Mitra, whom many regarded as the Sun God because of her solar powers. During the Ancient War, each god ruled their own domain with their own set of natural laws, which resulted in conflict between the gods quarreling over their laws and beliefs.
Unlike the Overseers, who were abstract, impersonal gods with no shape or form, the Ancient Gods - like the Transcendents - were personal gods, having physical forms that could directly interact with the physical plane. Many of these gods boasted enormous forms, such as Archelon being a tortoise the size of a city, or Satiras being a large dragon. The immense size of these beings added to their legendary status as gods, for which mortals worshiped them as greater powers.
However, according to Rupamo, not all gods boasted such intimidating forms, as some gods were instead small and weak. Nevertheless, their ability to change the natural laws of the world was what gave them the status of gods. Because of this, Rupamo speculated that it was possible that there may even be gods walking amongst mortals, hiding their powers and disguising themselves as ordinary people.
Some gods, such as Mitra, have different aspects, such as how the various sects of Cernium worshiped Mitra in three different forms: Mitra, Spisa, and Nerota. Despite the fact that these forms have different names and abilities, all of them collectively fall under the domain of Mitra as the Sun God, such as Spisa representing sunset and Nerota representing dawn.
Like all higher beings, the Ancient Gods were able to pass on their divine powers to mortals, either through the form of blessings or holy relics. Keira was able to bless the waters of Carcion in order to heal and strengthen the Anima under her protection, while Satiras was able to bless the Black Nova with the power of Malice. These blessings are dependent on the strength of the god who bestows them.
During the age of the Transcendents, the waters of Carcion gradually weakened in power with Keira sealed away, and it was presumed that the power of Malice did as well inside the Black Nova. In the case of Mitra's followers, the followers of Spisa lost their flame powers completely. The criteria that determines whether a divine blessing is erased or simply weakened currently remains unknown.
Despite the fact that divine blessings contain the power of the gods, every known instance of such a blessing has been depicted as a weak manifestation of a god's power. These blessings appear to only strengthen mortal abilities to a finite degree, giving them superior power over other mortals, but not a god. Because of this, mortals blessed with the power of a god do not appear to have enough power to match a god in combat.
Holy relics are artifacts infused with the power of the gods. Unlike blessings, holy relics hold a significant amount of divine power, such that a mortal wielding a holy relic can injure or even kill a god. Many of the holy relics of the gods share a specific property, such that the relics will only respond to one whom the followers of that god believe in. For instance, the holy sword of Mitra only recognizes a Chosen One who has the full support of Mitra's followers. This property was adapted by the elders of Grandis when they created the Godspheres, designing them such that they would only respond to collective desire of the entire world, rather than the followers of any specific deity.
Because the holy relics contained immense divine power, these items shared a similar property with the Ancient Gods themselves, rendering them indestructible to anything except the power of a god. One example of this was the holy sword of Mitra, which was only destroyed by the Adversary wielding the power of the Seal Stone, which held the Overseers' power. Similarly, the relics of Archelon - large mechanical sentinels infused with his divine power - were invulnerable to the Adversary's attacks after the destruction of their Seal Stone.
Demigods are beings descended from the gods, wielding a portion of their divine power. The Celestials of Mitra, for instance, were heavenly beings with feathery wings, said to have descended from the heavens when Mitra first appeared in the world. Similar to holy blessings and relics, the source of demigods' powers are their godly ancestor. Because of this, demigods will lose their power if their connection to their god is severed, such as when the Celestials lost their solar abilities when Mitra was sealed away.
In certain writings, the Adversaries were said to have attained the comparative status of demigod after fusing with the Godspheres, although the Adversaries do not trace their ancestry directly the the Overseers, unlike true demigods.
One property shared by the Ancient Gods is that their mere existence is a harbinger of chaos. This is largely because of the fact that the gods, as beings with extraordinary power, have the ability to impact the world in a much stronger way than mortals, which gives them higher influence over the course of the future.
As a result of countless gods fighting over their domains, disregarding the natural order and the mortals inhabiting their worlds, chaos naturally manifested in the universe - not only in terms of war, but also in terms of making the future indeterministic, as the gods were unpredictable variables that made the future impossible to predict.
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