Before time, before Eternals, before worlds, there was only the Pool, the infinite source from which all existence emerged.
It is the first answer to the first question, the still water beneath every story the world has ever told about itself. Everything that is, was drawn from it; everything that ends, is drawn back.
“Ask not what came before the Pool. There is no before. There is only the Pool, and everything the Pool has not yet become.”
The Pool
Within the Pool dwelled the dual essence of Matter and Oblivion, locked in an eternal struggle of creation and destruction, the one forever shaping, the other forever unmaking. Neither could win; neither could rest. From the friction of that endless contest, the first sparks of reality were struck.
| Duality | The shaping force | The unmaking force |
|---|---|---|
| Existence | Matter | Oblivion |
| Cosmic order | Harmony | Entropy |
Harmony and Entropy
From the conflict of Matter and Oblivion came Harmony and Entropy, and with them the first foundations of reality. They are not gods to be prayed to but the two great currents beneath all things, the will toward order and the pull toward ruin, and every age since has been a measure of which one holds the upper hand.
To understand the balance of these two forces is to understand the deepest engine of the world: read on in Light & Shadow.
The First Division
As the foundations settled, the raw power of creation broke into countless fragments. Those fragments became the planes, the celestial bodies, and the first of the Eternals, among them Thera and Zoodotis, whose union birthed the world known today.
From their union came the lands the living still walk: the world of Thera, shaped and named and given to time.
The Turning of Spires
Since that first division, existence has moved in endless cycles, the Spires, repeating patterns of rise and fall, each age raised upon the ruin of the last. It is the same motion the chronicle of the ages records and the whole world turns upon: all things, in the end, seeking their long path back to the Pool.
“The Pool remembers every shape it has ever worn, and waits, patient as still water, for each to return.”
Eolon of Oemon · Loremaster
