Universal Lore- Part 4, The Elemental Planes

All life has the drive to evolve, whether they know it or not. Some are fated to lose the race of genetic and intellectual superiority, some never achieve the creation of civilization, and it is debatable whether or not some will ever even achieve sentience.

Some beings are beyond evolution in the High Realms they isolate themselves in, beings that perceive themselves as the closest to the ideal of perfection and thus are stagnant so long as they believe so.

Some beings are the purest form of evolution, elemental beings that can alter the shape and thought of life through assimilation but could be mistaken as mindless to those that fail to understand a simple truth: the purest defiance of fate is evolution.

If the High Realms represent the driving hand of fate, the Elemental Planes represent the breathing will of life.

These elementals, of course, have their own realm, or rather level of existence, that they are born in- physically it is beneath the Lower Realms, but is as deeply intertwined to the other's existence as are the High Realms and Lower Planes, and is (if anything) closer to mortals than High Realms beings are.

The purest of elements are Stellar, Flame, Air, Earth- the first elements that drive evolution before water and nature come forth, and thus these elements are the ones that make up each sector of the planes where the first elementals came.

The planes form as a vast cave system would, the four largest chambers each holding an elemental core, and from these cores do the energies coalesce and birth new elementals into the current Existence.

The elementals, though beings of pure energy, are unstable lifeforms in their first century of existence, and there is a high chance for their forms to separate into core and body.

The body is capable of developing its own core through the energy created by the division, and so it becomes a physical elemental. The core does not develop its own body, but in exchange gains greater intelligence, and so it becomes an ethereal elemental. On occasion, one half may not become an elemental at all and collapses back to a basic energy state that lacks consciousness. Some elements are more prone to splitting compared to others, and some may only form as a specific type by default.

Air is closest to the ideal of formless freedom, and thus they may only become ethereal elementals.

Stars are second closest to the ideal of steadfast perpetuity, and thus they may become both physical and ethereal but have a greater tendency to form as the latter.

Flame is closest to the ideal of mastery through trial, and thus they may equally become physical or ethereal.

Earth is the closest to the ideal of corporeal self, and thus they may only become physical elementals.

The few elementals that remain whole in both physical form and ethereal mind become Potentates that anchor the Planes, voluntarily falling into eternal stasis until their cores burn out to maintain the existence of the realm.

But what of the impure elements that too drive evolution, and what of hybrids of the four?

They do not exist on the Elemental Planes, instead being born upon individual worlds in the Lower Planes and the in-betweens of space.

Some are "natural" in a sense, water and nature elementals while not being true elementals are at least considered half-elementals and naturally come into existence upon worlds with Potential, although they are a sort of byproduct of evolution. Due to this, they can freely choose between a physical or ethereal form.

Some are created unnaturally, being hybrid elementals born from the collision of pure elementals and/or half-elementals. Whether they are physical or ethereal is dependent on the property of the material they resemble, with storm elementals being ethereal and crystal elementals being physical.

All, however, are capable of assimilation and all share the drive to evolve and become greater beings. They seek Potential and to spread their influence, either being born from said Potential or drawn to it from the Elemental Planes.

When a world meets the threshold of Potential either through an event or natural evolution, Elementals will cross into it and fuse with certain mortals to their whim, merging their ideals and thought and spirit and form in order to create an "evolved being".

These evolved beings become almost a separate race from the race they came from, with some being genetically different(or may not even have genes left) and some still having genetic similarity to their original race but difference in ability and appearance, though all will now have a core akin to an elemental's, and so their lives become intertwined with the power of the core and the ability to pass onto the Realms of Death is forfeited.

When the core's energy fades or the core shatters, so will their consciousness, and they too will meet the same fate as an elemental that fails to return to their birthplace should they have one- reversion to their element's base material.

Such was the fate of the Sky Lords of Avianaen that became no more than the passing breeze, and so did the silent Åskorhaia sentries that became stone and Mountainheart.

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Taglist for writing-

@aneci

If anyone else would like to join the taglist, feel free to DM me or send in an ask! I will also have a separate taglist for art posts.

Universal Lore- Part 1, The High Realms(Voiskana- Civalthax)

Before the creation of this existence, there were four beings of immense power that dwelled in the vast darkness.

The first was named Tilisnet, who was born in the previous existence, being reborn every five cycles. He had power over the flow of time, able to bend and shape it to his whims, and he could repair or halt its flow as he wished.

The second was named Seclir, who was born near when the previous existence had ended, being reborn every eight cycles. He had power over the fabric of space, weaving the energies within it to create stable planes and quell chaos.

The third was named Avaas, who was born during the start of the first cycle and existence, and was far older than Tilisnet and Seclir. He had power over worlds and realms, able to travel between them as he wished, ensuring that the cycles could continue without issue.

The fourth had no permanent name, as he was reborn at the start of every cycle, and thus was referred to as Nix, meaning 'nothing' in a long lost tongue. He was the void and abyss, his death and rebirth ending and continuing cycles, creating a nothingness for time and space to turn into something. Without Nix, the flow of time cannot exist and space will be torn apart.

Normally, Nix would have been found by Avaas, as it was how it went all the other cycles, but this time, Avaas had chosen not to search. He believed that Nix would fare fine alone, as Tilisnet and Seclir were able to control their powers and prepare for the birth of a new existence. Nix, at first, found this to be odd, but let it be, as he assumed that Avaas would look for him at a later time. Though as more and more chaos was muted and turned into peace, he felt betrayed, believing that Avaas had chosen to ignore him despite Avaas having searched for him in every other cycle. These feelings of betrayal festered into anger as more time went by and the existence was created, developing an anger towards the light of the young stars that now flooded the skies, thinking that Avaas wanted to destroy the nothingness of Nix in this cycle.

In retaliation, Nix created an ultimate nothingness that became a hidden realm that even Avaas couldn't travel to, located far beyond the reach of the light of the stars, and there he learnt to turn his nothingness into something, with the something being the embodiment of his anger and feelings of betrayal, infusing this something with the chaotic energies of nothingness. These energies would come to be known as abyssal energies, and this hidden realm would be known as the Civalthax, the Abyss.

Nix continued to tamper with his abilities and the abyssal energies, learning to condense them into shapes and bending the energies to his will. He wielded them as Tilisnet would with the flow of time and as skillfully as Seclir would weave the other energies of space, and yet still avoided the eternally watchful gaze of Avaas, whom he still felt resentment towards. With the combination of the abyssal energies and his emotions, he created Nythokra, the first of the beings of the abyss.

Nythokra was a being of pure darkness, its appearance being a twisted image of Nix's own self. Nix was horrified of Nythokra, fearing that if he continued further down his path of anger and went on to destroy the light, everything else would fall along with it, leaving only him and his horrid creation. However, a little whisper from within the depths of his mind assured his doubts, as it was either destroy all or be destroyed, and he didn't want to disappear and be forgotten, unable to be reborn in the next cycle.

His hidden realm of Civalthax kept expanding as the millenniums passed by, the abyssal energies inside of it slowly twisting themselves into corporeal forms that eventually came close to being "living" beings, of which Nix named Abyssal Lords, while in the new existence, which had developed and grown considerably, the creation of worlds that could harbour life begun.

Nix watched one world in particular with great interest, one that was entirely dry but still seemed habitable, even after it had sustained three asteroid impacts. He envied that Tilisnet and Seclir could create such worlds and allow them to have life, and so he used his own few powers to create a small seed, infusing it with the tiniest bit of abyssal energies, and sent it to the planet, hoping that he would be able to create proper life or at least influence its evolution.*¹

Nythokra watched this alongside Nix and spoke for the first time, asking Nix if there were other ways for life to be created, and if true life could exist in Civalthax. Nix had no answer, and he did not know, but it left a single thought in his head: "Can I make life?" As he continued to watch the development of the planet and observed the evolution of its life, he began to obsess over creating similar, but perfect beings, wanting to spread his influence and gain the ability to create something directly from his nothingness.

Nythokra, being a twisted image of Nix and the reflection of his emotions, was compelled to aid Nix in the process, gathering the Abyssal Lords to find a way to make more pure beings that had solid forms and were alive. Though, they struggled, as they did not fully understand how life worked, and neither did Nix, who was only able to observe living beings from afar in all of his lives, and he, Avaas, Tilisnet, and Seclir were embodiments of the aspects of the Laws of Order, thus not making them able to be considered living.

Regardless of the many failures, they still continued, destroying and creating over and over, using abyssal energies and manipulating nothingness, even resorting to having to steal some of the energies Tilisnet and Seclir constantly created.

Eventually, they succeeded, creating the first living being of the abyss by forming the combined spatial energies into a solid being and making one of the Abyssal Lords mate with it, as was observed with the life on the planet. An unstable lifeform it was, but still a lifeform nonetheless. Though the being was corrupted in the process, it gave birth to a being that lived and breathed and could grow, and so, Nix named the being Voiska, though the being of spatial energies died. When Voiska was considered an adult- or at least based on the guessing of Nix, Nythokra, and the Abyssal Lords- they were given the chance to choose a mate in order to create more living beings in Civalthax. Voiska chose an Abyssal Lord named Kazilv, and with gender being nonexistent among the Abyssal Lords, the mating was successful once more, and this time, twins were conceived.

Nythokra and Nix decided to steal more of the spatial energies that Tilisnet and Seclir created, but found that they had both created their own realms and their own living beings using their energies, leading them to channel their energies to the realms directly rather than let it flow throughout the existence.

Nix was ambitious, determined to create more life like Voiska, and decided that he should make use of the instability that the flow of time constantly had, redirecting small channels of the energies in Tilisnet's realm of Boriasonde to Civalthax.*³ Going unnoticed by Tilisnet, he deemed his plan to be a success and created more beings of spatial energies for the Abyssal Lords be mated with, leading to more life like Voiska being born.

Nythokra named the elf-like beings Voiskanans after Voiska, and Nix established a kingdom for Voiska to rule, which would come to be known as Voiskana, the kingdom of the Abyss. However, seeing the life that so easily was created by Tilisnet and Seclir made Nix envious, reminding him of why he had started all of this, and he felt spite and anger towards Avaas once more, leading him to start using the Voiskanans to achieve his goal of destroying all of the light in existence, wanting to leave only him and his creations to roam around in his reclaimed nothingness.

This desire for the return of nothingness still burns within Nix to this day, fueled by his fear of being destroyed and by his thoughts that he had been betrayed and abandoned, with the Voiskanans having conquered and destroyed many worlds and stars in his name.

Now, Voiskana has opened rifts into the world Nix had long observed, named Elvaria, slowly planning to corrupt it from the inside out.

But, only time will tell what the fate of this existence will be, and one can only hope that Nix will see reason someday…

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¹- This seed did indeed influence the evolution of life on Elvaria, but not in the way Nix intended. It instead led to the growth of the ancient druidic race the Partoa Elva fought near the end of the Dust Era.

²- The kingdoms of Solaris, Lunaris, and Urthalis have by then been established.

³- The redirecting of the energies was the major influence that lead to the collapse of Boriasonde, unbeknownst to most including Nix.

Part 1, The High Realms(Tilemgie- Boriasonde) Drafts

The proper Boriasonde(Tilemgie) post is here: https://at.tumblr.com/elvaria-project/universal-lore-part-1-the-high-realmstilemgie/yo1donzt3f70

If I were to assign one word to each of the stories of the High Realms, Altersae's would be fear, Spaelcul's would be frustration, Voiskana's would be vengeance, and Tilemgie's would be hope.

I wanted to convey that the Tilemgians are the ones that will be able to let go and forge a future for themselves, and thus the story ends on a hopeful note, but I'm not sure if I managed that correctly, so here's the versions that didn't make the cut. I'm not going to bother adding the writing taglist to this post since it's very trivial.

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Version 1(Incomplete)

Note: This one got chopped because it would've been too long and also too dramatic. I also felt that the first part was very irrelevant so I just scrapped the whole thing.

Howling sandstorms tore across the dunes of Desaebla, leaving behind swirling grains of sand that remained afloat in the skies.

The skies would remain a burnt yellow in hue as the storms persisted for many days, but not all of the desert was battered by these storms, for far away from the Asurei-shielded Dalirnan cities was a canyon surrounded by strange magic.

To the eyes of outsiders, there was no canyon, and they felt no pull to travel across or near it. To them, it was simply another dune among the many that covered Desaebla. To those more observant, they saw the air ripple ever so slightly when sand grains passed through it, but they assumed it was only a hallucination from the scorching heat and felt a compulsion to leave it be.

But the canyon was no strange phenomena akin to the air-lands that dotted the skies or the perpetually ablaze lands of Emorscal, it was unnatural, carved by the hands and power of many that came from a realm afar.

The strange beings known as Tilemgians were once a grand race that held power over the concept of Time, for their creator Tilisnet was the embodiment of Time and the one that granted each Cycle a beginning and end and the ability to progress.

Without Time, there would have been no start of life or creation to be born upon the Space of Seclir, and there would not have been a definitive beginning of this existence for Avaas to cultivate.

This Cycle, though, was always bound to meet a short end from the circumstances Avaas had seeded. Tilisnet knew of the beginning and end of each existence, but it was not his duty to speak of these, only to ensure that Time would still flow to its natural end. His people would also know of this, and they understood that it was not their place to change fate, as no one could, and that they were not preservers of individual worlds or civilizations, as that was the duty of Avaas and his people. They had foreseen the end of their realm of Boriasonde and the disappearance of Tilisnet, but they were never able to prepare for it or warn the other High Realms of it, as this existence had an ordained fate from the start of this Cycle, and this fate dictated that their race would fall from grace.

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Version 2(Complete-ish)

Note: his was supposed to be a comic but then I realized that I cannot draw in a comic format for my life. I'll stick to single shots thank you very much. The character in yellow is not the same character as the one in the proper Tilemgie post. This would've been titled Clockwork Bird. Also please disregard any issues with the text colouring, I cannot fix it at all. Tumblr is just making it worse each time I try.

"I still hear the whispers carried by time, you know. Not ones that carry orders from Tilisnet, of course, but whispers from people."

"That's not very encouraging considering our current circumstances. Are you certain that you're not hallucinating?"

"Don't be ridiculous, I'm not hallucinating. "But it turns out there's still things to learn. "There's a word mortals have that we don't- miracles. When good things happen without reason or explanation."

"We're long past believing in that sort of thing. Our realm is gone and our powers are diminishing. Many of us are scattered across all points of existence and some of us are unfortunate enough to become sick from the memories we hold."

"But we're still alive, aren't we? Though we don't have much power compared to our past selves, we still have power and we can still survive on these mortal planets. These are miracles, if not to you then at least to me."

"At this point I don't consider our survival as a miracle, more like a tribulation. At any moment we could disappear, and at any moment time could cease to exist and this existence's past, future, and present could collide and end this Cycle."

"But that hasn't happened yet. Time still flows, even if the sands do not flow entirely in the right direction. But living on the mortal plane for the past few hundred thousand years has taught me to focus more on the little things rather than the grim bigger picture. "We're no longer bound solely to our duty- we can afford to care more about ourselves as individuals, if not be a little selfish."

"Selfishness brings irrationality. You are becoming irrational, sister. This is not good for us, and we cannot forget our duties that we were created for, as without us there is no time."

"I never said to forget our duties entirely, just that we have more "freedom"- another idea I learned from eavesdropping on mortals. "Boriasonde being destroyed and TIlisnet disappearing at first seemed like tragedy when I looked into our future eons ago. But to be honest, I've forgotten a lot of what came after. I've chosen to let go of many memories in order to live like this."

"But I have chosen to remember."

"And you've become sick as a result. "Fate is a strange thing, and I know there's no one that embodies it since it's the natural progression of entropy, but I don't see this fate as our end. "I think of it as our signal to change. It's going to hurt, but maybe change will redefine our place in this existence."

"And you think the memory overload is a "miracle"? The permanent death of many billions of us, the impending doom of our kind, and the loss of Tilisnet? "This was not a good change, and you saw how change led to our current predicament- in fact the whole of existence's predicament! The Abyss was never meant to exist, Avaas' desire for change doomed us all. The change you suggest, there is no guarantee that it will not end us."

"Tell me, when I release this clockwork bird, does it matter if it remembers me after I die?"

"Our situation is not comparable to a clockwork bird."

"Just humour me."

"...No, but birds are not bound by-"

"-When I set it free and let it pass through the barrier, this being of clockwork will become a real bird that breathes and bleeds. It has no duty other than to survive, and whether or not it does shouldn't be determined by me. When I am left in the past, the bird will have a choice to remember or forget and to stay or go. "If it stays, it will die without knowing the world outside and never realize what it could've been. If it goes, it will learn of the many wonders of life outside this canyon and be able to live a life of it's own choice. "Our fall from grace was a tragedy, yes, but we are the clockwork bird with the choices in front of us."

"...If we change, who will be left to maintain time when we become a new race?"

"As long as we still exist, Time will endure. We will never bleed red like the elves on this planet, but we'll always be connected to the Sands of Time, and so will the race that comes after us. "The bird is still a clockwork being in its heart, and the essence of clockwork will be carried by its children if it chooses to have any. "We should fly freely in order for Time to live on, we can't be afraid of mortality forever. Even if flying defies parts of our duties, we will still carry on the essence of them. "No one has to be sick anymore from the memories. Actually, we don't even need all of our memories for our duties- we just need to know how to fix and maintain Time, not all the details of said Time."

"And what if the day comes where our memories will prove crucial to whether or not this existence will outlast the Abyss?"

"Write them down and give them to the Altersaeans and Spaelculans. We can warn them now without the duty stopping us. "This is the miracle all of us have been looking for since our creation. Even if some of us never wanted to fly, we've all wanted to be able to warn others in the hope that maybe, just maybe we could change fate. We don't all have to die. This existence doesn't have to end this way."

"...Then for once I will believe in your irrationality and "miracles"...but are you certain that the sickness will end if we forget the future and past?"

"I'm not going to say certain, because I gave up foresight for my life. "But just take the chance so we can live for the first time since our creation- and that clockwork bird will be our guide."

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Okay so one last notes section. I chose to not(and also kinda forgot to) mention the whole "there's pretty much no one managing time right now except like a very small population of Tilemgians" thing. Time may or may not get messy when I work on the present and future of Elvaria itself.

Also felt the need to slightly elaborate on line "We now can evolve as the drakes on the elven planet and the crystalline structures on the pseudo-planet have done." in the proper post, mainly the crystalline part because the drake stuff is in the Dust Era post.

So I'm probably never going to talk about the pseudo-planet since that draws away from the focus on Elvaria(which the realms posts are already doing so I need to do less of that), but basically Elvaria's solar system has six planets, and of those six two of them have life, being Elvaria itself and the pseudo-planet. They'll pretty much never interact so it's very irrelevant, but the life on that planet is crystalline time-crystals and the planet itself is in a phase state because of it's composition also being mostly time crystals. Tilemgians on there are doing pretty good in comparison to the ones on Elvaria since the pseudo-planet is closer to sands of time than any other.

Universal Lore- Part 4, The Elemental Planes