The Story - Prologue - The Book of Moose

"Before the beginning, there was nothing. After there was nothing, there was a Moose."

10:2011
Few passages remain of the beginning of the world, when the Moose first walked the earth. What stories remain have been passed down - family to family, father to son, vine to sprout.

With the Moose came being, and where he landed came the world. As the Moose traversed the land, more came to exist as he willed it: the trees, the sea, the sand, the sky. Fire. Ice. Heat. Cold. The Moose traveled far and wide, until at last he stopped, bringing forth his final creations: Life and Death.

11:2011
The first to gain their own being were the elements that had unraveled beneath the Moose's hooves, those that would be the first gods - Sand, Nature, Fire, Ice, Water, and Air - and aside these first creations was also another, incomplete as the world could not sustain it. So it lay dormant, until its time drew near.

These gods of the beginning cultivated the world the Moose had brought forth, varying their elements, giving them form and function. Combining them with one another to create new, greater phases of being.

As the world expanded, the Moose again began to create. The first gods had shaped the being, and now it needed something to fit the new function the world had gained. With this, the Moose created the first mortal denizens of the world - what we know as the Endermen.

Many of the first gods left with the entrance of these new beings, to toy with their own creations and attempt their own experiments in being. Where they left to, only the Moose knew, as they had returned to whence he came. These new experiments by his creations would result in a breed of lesser gods, petty and absorbed much in their own desires.

Only the gods of Water and Air remained with the Moose, curious of the life he had created. They observed as the creatures evolved to develop tools, language, and eventually, the first civilizations. The gods helped to nurture these early beings, to share their knowledge and lend their power where needed. Such as they came into the world, they also found that after a time, the creatures left - the first evidence of the Moose's last creation, Death.

On learning of their ultimate fate, the beings grew resentful, believing to have been created only to serve as playthings to their overseers. They began building weapons, warring with one another over territory, and spurning the gifts of the Sky and Sea bestowed upon them. The gods tried many ways to placate their irate populations - everything from creating lesser beings to live with them, to creating lands of riches for the creatures to revel in.

The Endermen only defiled these gifts; killing the lesser creatures to feed on, stripping the land of its beauty, and using the resources of the world to create weapons with the aim of bringing down their self proclaimed 'tyrants', abominations of flesh and metals given life through horrid, unknown means.

The first battle between the people and the gods was also the only battle. No sooner than a single shot had been fired did the Moose step in. Unable to bear witness to the corruption of his creations any longer, he changed their form to vacuous, lanky beings. Their language was reduced to shrieks, their aggression drawn to any who would so much as gaze upon them. Their towns were flooded, their cities wiped from the land. In his final act upon the world, the Moose banished all offending creatures to a new realm, and set upon them a guardian to keep them from returning - a world forever thereafter known simply as the End.

1:2012
With the failure of his first creations, the Moose too departed the world, leaving the gods of Air and Water alone on the broken earth. Before they themselves departed, they realized that new beings had emerged upon the surface of the world; less bright than the first people, yet somehow more imaginative. These new creatures were the race of 'humans'. The gods of Sky and Sea decided to remain, to help prevent a repeat of the tragedies of the Endermen.

As the two lone gods repaired the world to suit the new beings, they found that sentience had begun to emerge in the oddest of things:

• A pumpkin gained awareness, and began to proliferate in the field where it grew.
• Remnants of the Enderman's weapons fused with a lesser creature, creating a walking explosive that would terrorize the world silently, night by night.
• The humans' dead would sometimes rise from the grave, returning to do harm to the living. The world had thrown itself into a balance of life and death, promoting growth while still maintaining order. The hoofprint of the Moose seemed to reach far, even when not present.

Eventually, the humans mimicked the accomplishments of their ancient ancestors, creating language and limited civilization. The god of Air guided a group of them far to the West and South, to start their own colonies away from the origin of the world. The god of Water followed suit, leading a band to the North to focus on art and creativity. Other humans led themselves in a migration to the west, creating forts and keeps to defend themselves against the dark things that roamed the world.

A group of adventurers, lead by a suspiciously unaging Doctor, led an expedition through a portal that unknowningly connected to the end, where they then slew the corrupted guardian of the realm. It regenerated over time, but this tiny breach still allowed a small collective of Endermen to return to the world, albeit in their deformed states.

The times that followed were considered the golden years of the world, resplendent with their fair share of hijinks and tragedy...

7:2012
The humans happen into the realm of the elder god of fire, and create an arena there in which to fight each other for sport.

8:2012
They began to develop channels of travel, railways to connect the four distant settlements back to their main place of origin.

2:2013
A mountain in the west erupts, drowning a nearby settlement in a combination of rock and fire, filling the sky with ash and darkness.

4:2013
The god of Air attempts to create a replacement for the light lost to the mountain's blanket of smoke, only to accidentally dump an ocean of liquid fire on his supporters below.

6:2013
The humans devise a way to capture the creatures that have long since threatened them, and collect them to fight within their arenas for sport and glory.

7:2013
A lone human loses itself to madness, summoning forth an army of chickens using unholy magics, all the while ranting about "the eyes in the deep".

1:2014
An abnormal mushroom grows appendages, taking on the appearance and characteristics of the humans, setting off to travel the world before finally settling far to the east.

3:2014
A ruin of the old world is discovered, inhabited entirely by the dead.

5:2014
A human attempted to summon an extradimensional being to the world, but only succeeded in bringing forth its head and neck - the portal stays open to this day, with the creature still partially emerged.

11:2015
A doorway to other worlds is discovered, and the humans are able to travel to seemingly untouched worlds created almost as mimics of their own, with subtle differences. Many attribute these worlds as having been experiments by the elder gods.

12:2016
Seven grand wonders of the ancient world are unearthed, and become popular recreational locations for the brave human.

As with all things, they discovered, the time of the gods of Air and Water came to an end. After immeasurable time spent upon the world, their power was used up. Content, weary, and without regret, the two gods passed on.

Unfortunately for the now-expansive people of the world, this was the beginning of the end.

For when the gods passed...so descended The Horsemen.

Chapter 1 - Apocalypse >