An Atheist Anuad

It is my desperate hope that the wayward adventure who should stumble upon these writings not burn them as heresy, but embrace them as all the pantheons are currently embraced as varieties of the same Truth. Dedicated to my love and saviour, Ibthld.

—Lyenwen

In the beginning there was pure Stasis and pure Change. Stasis was an immovable and perfect crystal and Change a powerful unstoppable wind When the infinite energy of one touched the infinite stillness of the other, the crystal shattered into an infinite number of pieces and scattered into the infinite wind in a burst of infinite power. This is what we call Creation. The possibilities were literally endless in the chaos. This chaotic, creative process formed the Aurbis.

Most of the possibilities were not sustainable in all that chaos, and would be immediately torn apart, but there were a few shards of Stasis that could stick together, before inevitably being torn apart and destroyed. But there developed a rhythm, as pieces of creation stuck together and came apart at increasingly regular intervals. There was no recognizable form, it was more of a pulse of being and not being. This relative predictability, this basic rhythm of nature and the universe is called Time. This new thing, this pattern, Time, allowed new interactions, allowed new patterns in the chaos to emerge, giving context and meaning to these outcomes.

Through all this, not only did pure Stasis and pure Change continue to Create and Destroy, Time began to Create and Destroy as it interacted with the primordial chaos as well. New things were created, new concepts, new distinctions. Things that were not possible before became possible.

Instead of Stasis and Change being everywhere and everything, it was statistically more likely that certain things would happen at certain points in Time. These clusters of Creation were surrounded by a state of un-Creation, which we call the Void.

The Void is somewhat of a misnomer. It’s not that there is nothing in the Void, it’s that there is nothing constant in the Void.

Within these clusters of Creation in the Void, there are forces that are more static than others, and there are forces that are more volatile than others, and like their primordial predecessors, everything interacts with everything else. Stable outcomes form and are undone by Unstable things, and Unstable outcomes can crystallize into Static beings.

But the possibilities within these clusters are more likely to be stable than those outside these clusters. The first layers of Creation to form our world are the strongest, most Static of Forces, the laws of nature, of physics. Layers of Creation form in the Void, this new system, interspersed with the energy of the Void, but governed by Static Laws, formed the Mundus.

The Mundus is, compared to the Void or the Aurbis, a relatively stable system which allowed for possibilities outcomes that could have occurred in the raw creation before Time, but never would have survived long enough to be remembered or replicated. The stability of the Mundus allowed for the formation of Nirn, which provided an even more insulate place for what we call Life to form and flourish.

The newborn Nirn did not resemble the placid place it is now. The laws of nature, newly formed and newly potent in the shelter of the Mundus, had violent effects on the terrain. Energy trapped from the Void and the elemental Creation strained to escape from the layers of Stasis that were crushed together to form the world. The life forms that flourished then were by necessity strongly connected to the forces of Stasis and Change within themselves, and used those powers to create a better landscape and environment for their own creations. They were so successful in taming that newborn world that as Time wore on, such great powers would no longer be required for survival, and the creations that followed would pursue other skills and interests instead, so that they could continue the work of their forbears, albeit in a different, smaller-scale way.

As with each passing generation, the world became more and more stable, allowing for even weaker and weaker life forms and possibilities to emerge and thrive.

So it goes on and on for eternity…statistically speaking. However as the system approaches Stasis, it becomes brittle, like that primordial, perfect crystal. While unlikely it is statistically possible that the primordial interplay between Order and Chaos will occasionally spawn an outcome, a life form, a creation that is a disproportionately powerful force for one or the other. This will enable it to exert disproportionate power over those around it, the world, the forces of nature and physics, Creation or sometimes even restore a state of pure Stasis and Change, even if only for limited periods and geographies. Such events are so unstable that they are usually self-limiting, but there is always the statistical possibility that a single life form could trigger an unstoppable chain reaction that may engulf all of Creation, returning us to the primordial state.

And so the cycle repeats itself infinitely.