Remove ads by subscribing to Kanka or enabling premium features for the campaign.

  1. Journals

The Creation of the Universe

Myth

In the beginning, there was nothing but the Astral Sea.  The sea was pure and chaotic, timeless and eternal. In an infinite stream that flowed, unbroken, through the cosmos. In the infinite chaos, the stream broke, giving life to the First of all Things. This would become Jak’ra, but he was small and weak as he hurtled through the Astral Sea. Jak’ra grew in strength and power as his body absorbed the raw chaos and pure energies from the Sea to a point where he could control the ebb and flow of the infinite stream.

Jak’ra created Oerth to anchor himself in the infinite chaos and stop his eternal drifting but he scorched the land on which he stood.  He immediately abandoned Oerth, not wanting to damage his immaculate land any more than he already had. He created a protective cube that would become the centre of the Astral Sea and would link all that will be.

His power drained, Jak’ra sat in the cube, upon his golden throne, observing the formation of the universe as the Astral Sea reacted to the new obstructions within its flow. The stars were formed and new galaxies, all materials before his all-seeing eyes while he sat alone and in the dark.

This darkness drove him to create the sun, a huge mass of perpetually burning gas to light the whole of the cosmos. The sun allowed plants to grow on Oerth and he knew that the land could now support life, similar to his own. He took a hand full of the new sun to adorn his head and a trophy to this life giving triumph.

Jak’ra took handfuls of fertile earth to create the animals that would populate Oerth, tending it as he could not touch its surface directly. The furrows on Oerth began to fill with water and Jak’ra created the Kraken to care for the new ocean.

Jak’ra looked at the Oerth fondly and watched the beings he created thrive. This filled him with love and joy but also something he had never before experienced in the eons of his existence: he felt loneliness for the first time, as he realised they were mindless and not aware of anything other than what they were doing. 

He longed for someone to share his creations so he set about to create something of the scale of his own life. Creating life as simple as that on Oerth was one thing but creating something like like himself may prove beyond even his power. Jak’ra took his materials: water and clay from Oerth, stardust and galaxies from the cosmos and chaos from the infinite stream. He had formed the body of his Companion and bathed her in the Astral Sea. She emerged from the Sea and Jak’ra embraced her but something was missing deep within his new Companion.  Jak’ra loved his Companion with all of his heart but she could not love back for she lacked a heart, and though she knew what he was giving her was good she did not know what love was and how it felt. Try as he might, Jak’ra couldn’t build her a heart and instead had to settle with a hollow heart that did not beat.

Jak’ra built The Companion a garden full of silver flowers for her to sit in where she could watch over Oerth in the hope that her heart would fill with the same love and joy he had felt.  The garden was in situated so she could absorb the chaos of the Astral Sea and the rays of the life giving sun.  The Companion’s power grew, as Jak’ra’s had done, and she allowed darkness to fall over Oerth so the animals may see her garden but she would bring the light back to she could see the animals.  

Jak’ra visited The Companion and always she would smile but she wouldn’t feel for her heart would still not beat. Eventually, The Companion fell pregnant and gave birth to Jak’ra’s first son, The Nameless. This new life matched Jak’ra’s. He had succeeded in creating a second life on his scale. He took some of The Nameless’s body and placed it in the Companion in the hopes that new life will make her heart finally beat. It did not work, as while she could now speak and think, and now knew what the word "love" meant, she could not truly understand it as she could not feel it and did not know why it was important.

The Nameless observed the world his father had created and judged it unfinished and lacking, and began his masterplan to correct the flaws he perceived.

Jak’ra gifted his firstborn with a chaotic fountain pen, capable of writing a stream of pure chaos on both paper and in the air. Taking this gift, the Nameless wrote the concepts of Time and Death into the foundations of the universe, forever changing its nature and bringing order and organisation to the maelstrom. This action broke apart the endless sea of chaos, scattering it into millions of pieces, both large and small.

Some sizeable pieces were lost in time and space, left to their own devices they formed themselves into primordial beings of near God-like power. 

Time in the early cosmos passed. Eventually, the Companion fell pregnant again, this time with twins. Jak'ra was overjoyed and filled the sky with tiny lights in celebration of his new children. This attracted several of the Elder Beings, who at this point had been floating through the cosmos unaware of the existence of any other than themselves, much like Jak'ra himself had been so long ago. 

Eventually, the Companion gave birth. The first of the twins was a girl, Leànnan, who hugged herself tightly to her mother's chest, and as she did so, the Companion felt the first true emotion of her existence - love, as her heart began to beat for the first time. 

With the second, Dezrael, there was a problem. Dezrael was malformed, simply a pool of toxic liquid and raw, chaotic divine essence, and the birth caused the Companion unspeakable pain, her screams causing earthquakes, floods and volcanic eruptions across Oerth, dividing the planet into many masses of land. And thus she was complete, as she now truly knew what love was, as though he caused her immense pain, both physically with his birth and mentally with the grief of seeing his incomplete body, she still loved her son despite this. 

Once she was strong enough, she walked out into her garden, for she still did not have a name and this troubled her greatly as she was otherwise whole. She sat on the ground, and looked around as she took in her new emotions and thought. Then she spotted something as Jak'ra came out to join her. It was a flower she had never seen before, beautiful and pink with bell-shaped petals, and it stirred in her a feeling of joy like nothing else she saw, bar those she loved. "Love," she asked him, "what is this?" 

"I created it for you after our twins were born," said Jak'ra. "I call it an amaryllis."

"Then that I will also be, and this flower will be a symbol of our love forevermore."