Creation

To go forward, you need to know where you came from. That philosophy applies to pretty much everything. Even if you decide to ignore your past (and we all do to some extent), your starting point starts from that moment (or as far back as you care to admit).

For my ‘A Darkness Rising’ setting several things came up once my worldbuilding stage went “divine”. Questions like:

• Where did magic come from?
• Is magic the same now, as it was then?
• Where did the gods come from?
• Are there other worlds?
• Are there other gods?
• Where did the dragons come from?
• How do demons/devils fit in to the cosmology?

Some of it was fairly easy for me. Magic was originally just divine. It was a purview of the gods. The original gods (as we know them) of Duir’Aion were known as titans. They were dragon like in shape. Their favored servants/creations were dragons. The titans taught the dragons magic. The dragons in turn taught their favorite servants, elves, magic. In order to learn it, the elves had to alter it, introducing and forever separating arcane magic (wizards, sorcers, warlocks, etc) and divine magic.

When creating the gods, which is still a work in progress because you never know in a story when you’ll suddenly need a god of the plains or something, I had a little nagging in the back of my mind. Not crazy but enough to let me know it was there.

I needed a Creation story. Which honestly just seems like extra work, since that almost definitely would fit the definition of a meta dump if I were to insert it into my novels. It’s like the all the stuff a DM creates for his games, that most of which a player will never learn. However, it is important, because just as the DM knows why Captain Bheid is helping the PCs behind the mayor’s back, us writers/authors know (or should know) as much of the inner workings of things. It makes the story flow better and easier for us. Just as importantly, if you are ever asked, you’re not stumbling for an answer.

So my current WIP is a Creation story. I wrote one a long time ago, back when I was still piggybacking my favorite D&D settings and gods. Before I went all crazy with my world crafting. So I firebombed it, and am creating it fresh. And my world will have a beginning. I have already seeded it with a couple of ideas that my come to pass later in my writing career (hopefully).

After all, everything that has an end, has a beginning.