The Creation and the two Creators

Anciently the Land of Song was home to two peoples: human-like creatures and elf-like creatures, who lived in and explored the world. What raised some of them to god-like power was the Tree.

The Tree

One of the princes of the human-like people discovered a tree whose fruit granted a kind of immortality. He gained great magical strength and could no longer die of old age or sickness; he could still be killed, but he healed faster from injury. His royal family ate of the fruit, and then the rest of his people. The royal family and certain others gained powers that rivaled the gods and became known as the Great Aesir; the human-like people as a whole became the Aesir.

In time the elf-like people also found the Tree and ate of its fruit. They too became god-like, and among them arose the Great Vaenir and the lesser Vaenir. The Tree itself was later destroyed in the Great War.

The Aesir

The Aesir are human-like in form and made creatures of order and peace. Among their creations are humans, dwarves, giants, the nymphs, and the lobine, wolf-like guardians descended from the first Great Wolf. Certain Aesir also learned to raise rainbow bridges to other worlds.

The Vaenir

The Vaenir are elf-like in form and made creatures of chaos and passion. Among their creations are elves, dragons, the shapeshifting trow, and the vested races — including the Celeste, the feather-winged people who would later side against the Vaenir who made them.

The Great War and after

A Great War broke out between the Aesir and the Vaenir. It nearly shattered the world and destroyed the Tree, and killed millions of mortals and thousands of the Aesir and Vaenir. In the end the Aesir banished the Great Vaenir, and many Vaenir with them, from the Land of Song, and sealed the rainbow bridges behind them. The Great Aesir afterward became lost, forgotten, or dead — some are said to have died in the sealing.

Out of the war's wreckage rose the Reavers, mortals who would suffer no god-like ruler, and the world settled into the wary balance of the present age.