What came before ...
My name is Isaac Thoma, and unless something goes terribly wrong, this recording will never see the light of day. I don’t want to cause a crisis of faith in anyone who’s been fortunate enough to live in a somewhat sane world up until now.
Now, if you’re watching this within a few centuries of this being recorded, you might find most of this superfluous, you’ve learned all of this in school.
However, if you’d like some context for everything, well, I’m providing it.
But I also know that I can’t guarantee that this information won’t be needed, and considering that, starting two weeks from now, I’ll be off exploring the galaxy, I won’t necessarily be around to share this knowledge myself, I’ll be leaving copies of this recording with several trusted confidants.
Fundamentally, there is much more to this universe than meets the eye, and not just in the sense that there will always be something to discover.
Gods exist, but they aren’t what you imagine. They’re powerful, but bound by their own rules, split up into three factions.
The neutral gods balance themselves, but the others, well, they are split up into a faction that is ostensibly good, and one that is ostensibly evil. And those last two are eternally struggling for control.
Anytime one of them takes an action, it disrupts the balance of the universe, and the other is able to take an action of equal gravity. It becomes an eternal chess match of taking action after action, trying to coax the sapient beings of this universe to make things happen without requiring divine action.
As far as I know, things were calm for a long time, until the “good” side created the System. A way for anyone who wanted to to grow beyond their normal limitations, acquiring magic and supernatural skill if they just put in the effort.