Origa Omnicum

The origin myth of Randos is as biased as it is complicated. The Elven and Mennic retellings of the story always seem to be skewed toward their gods being the most righteous and true. Through compiling the different tales, though difficult, it’s possible to reach an unbiased conclusion through shared themes in both of their stories. The men seem to believe that they and their gods were wronged by the ancient spirits of elves and their gods while elves portray it all as a misunderstanding. We will try our best to compile both myths to see what we can agree upon in both cultures and hopefully reach some sort of philosophical and theological bedrock.

In the beginning were the competing yet complimentary forces of order and chaos. The force of order, stasis and entropy is known as Ieru while the opposing force of chaos, change and energy is known as Sheol. Ieru was the vast emptiness of space and Sheol was the raging dark ocean that swirled around it. At this point, there was no time, so everything was happening all at once and, at the same time, nothing was happening at all. A consistent yet seemingly unimportant detail in both the myths of men and elves is that Ieru is referred to as “He” while Sheol is referred to as “She,” so I will be using those terms to refer to them going forward. Sheol’s chaotic sea was always trying to drown Ieru and swallow the vastness of space, yet his domain of void-like peace was never breached.

Time was established when Ieru had a thought that emanated from a dream he was having. This thought developed into something grand, the being that elves refer to as Absolon, the Godhead. Absolon was born from a thought so he began having thoughts and dreams of his own which resulted in his three sons, Manwye, Anonwye and Elonwye. They became the towers of time and cemented the first permanence in the universe. With this permanence allowed more beings to break free from the mind of Absolon, all of which would form the pantheon of elven gods. However, with permanence established, Ieru’s void was no longer and he faded away into nothingness, being replaced by the heavens that the elves call The Aparthenon.

Absolon and his three sons established light in the darkness of the void which angered Sheol. She remembered fondly a time when their was nothingness. Thus, she birthed a thought of her own from her memories that men refer to as Endurmim. He was the first born of Sheol and was a personification of the chaos that she merely represented. Endurmim looked at the order of Anonwye’s Aparthenon and felt saddened by its lack of potential. Where Absolon and his sons saw only order Endurmim gazed and saw potential and from that was born Jorn, the chief of the gods of men. Jorn was everything all at once and was the only being that could look up at the light above without being blinded. But he was filled with disgust at the order he saw up there and decided to bring disruption into the comfort of the Aparthenon.

This is where the substances of both myths begin to diverge, not necessarily in content but in context. Elves depict Jorn as launching a bloodthirsty assault on the Aparthenon to drag all of the spirits above into his misery. Whereas men believe that Jorn waged war on the elven gods as to allow the world to be born and give life to men. Either way, Jorn had a heart brimming with anger but it was also filled with hope and love. He birthed his siblings, the pantheon of Mennic gods that the elves call "The Gantas", by bringing them forth from his own heart. United as a divine family, they breached the Aparthenon and drug it down into the cosmic sea of Sheol, mingling order with chaos which resulted in endless potential. However, Sheol was wiped away in the process though she is still the mother of the Mennic gods and is alive in that sense. This act of war, seen to the elves and their gods as an attrocity, gave way to a cycle of war, destruction and creation.

As stated before, the combination of order and chaos resulted in potential which then resulted in the creation of the Nine Worlds. The most well known of these worlds is Emblar, the planet solely inhabited by men. Other worlds that are less spoken of are Aerebos, Pranth and Tia-hamat which were inhabited by Elves, Dwarves and Mer-folk respectively. The remaining five worlds of the original nine are unkown at this time and who resided there is also unknown. Accounts differ as to how and why but these worlds came to an end but it is well established by all of the origin myths that another war erupted between the Mennic and Elven gods and this war is called the War of the Nine Tribes. The fallout of this war was the destruction of the Nine Worlds and the death of Jorn at the hands of Elonwye and his champion Memnon, who was once a Mennic god known as Leki. Jorn established an afterlife for the spirits of men after his death and Elonwye went on to refashion the remnants of the Nine Worlds into the plane of Randos.