The following is a rough draft of a creation myth. I was thinking about calling the related campaign world Seventh Sun, but that sounded rather familiar, so it might have been done before. The story is admittedly basic at the moment. Ignoring the campaign setting itself for the moment, is this mythology alone worth developing further?
At the beginning of time, two races of deities emerged unbidden from the illusion that obscures the Source of All. Members of the first race, the gods, would strive to create the cosmos. Members of the second, the elder fiends, would strive just as hard to destroy it.
While the elder fiends cavorted in the primordial void, the gods carefully developed physical laws and used them to create the Heavens and the Earth Realm. The gods made their home in the Heavens, which they populated with their angelic servants. The Earth Realm was their garden, which they filled with mortal beasts and fey.
Envious of the godsâ,¬,,¢ creation, the elder fiends crafted an endless array of Demon Worlds, each a failed plane of darkness and despair. Enraged by this failure, the elder fiends and their demonic progeny took out their frustrations upon the realms of the gods, devastating the Heavens and snuffing out the Sun that illuminated the Earth Realm.
The surviving gods rebuilt the Heavens and made the Sun anew, but the elder fiends returned to repeat their campaign of destruction. Four more times, the cycle repeated itself, unchanged. The gods and elder fiends were locked in a seemingly endless struggle to control the shape of the cosmos.
At the dawn of the Sixth Sun, the gods were approached by the Deceiver, an elder fiend who grew tired of mindlessly dismantling the planes. To prove his commitment to the defense of the godsâ,¬,,¢ cosmos, the Deceiver added his own planes and his own race to those of the gods, creating the Hells and devil-kind, respectively.
At the Deceiverâ,¬,,¢s suggestion, the gods created the human race to help defend the Earth Realm, and arranged a contest between god and devil for the souls of humanity. This conflict readied the human race for the final battle, tempering its faith and teaching its warriors the art of battle. In the end, the armies of the human race slowed the advance of the elder fiendsâ,¬,,¢ demons, but the Sun of Earth Realm was still extinguished in the end.
Impressed by the performance of the human race, the gods created it anew when they forged the Seventh Sun. This time, the gods insured that evolution would produce a generation of human champions. To equip these heroes, the Deceiver developed a weapon never before seen in any world â,¬' arcane magic. Sparing no effort, he crafted godlike artifacts and developed epic spells of unrivalled power.
Bestowed with these gifts at the proper time, the champions of humankind led a strike against the gathering demons and accomplished the impossible: aside from their ally, every elder fiend was slain. The heroes returned triumphant, and became the prideful Mage Kings of the Earth Realm.
But now the Deceiverâ,¬,,¢s gambit has played out in full. Instead of dispelling the magic he developed for the war, the Deceiver has left the powers of the Mage Kings intact. For centuries now, the Earth Realm has been ruled by mortals more powerful than gods, mortals who fear only the Deceiverâ,¬,,¢s ability to revoke their arcane power. And much to their patronâ,¬,,¢s delight, they have left world-shattering devastation in their wake.
It sounds very cool, and if you can build a setting from this, then go ahead. I don't necessarily think the story itself needs anything more, as creation stories can be vague and still effective.
It's not exactly my thing, but it has promise, and I look forward to more if you choose to develop this.
I like the story, so I think it is worth developing further. However, this is IMO not enough to hang a world on. Creation myths rarely are, and this one is no exception.
That's just my two cents though.
Túrin
I suppose I should clarify that I'm asking whether the mythology is worth developing further, not the campaign world as a whole. The campaign world itself is fairly disconnected from the creation myth because the myth describes beings that are, for all intents and purposes, immutable forces of nature.
EDIT: I've changed the original post to clarify that point.