There are many conflicting theories about how, why and by who created the universe. But everyone knows how the universe was almost destroyed, and how it came to it's present condition. Thousands of millennia ago, the universe was filled with many worlds and many gods and goddesses. It was a paradise, full of the many wonderful creations of the gods and goddesses, who were all brothers and sisters of The Lady. There were so many of them, that they each had names, even The Lady herself.
In this paradise there also lived a great serpent, who had been created to keep this paradise free of vermin that might accidentally come to be from the frolicking of the gods. The Great Serpent grew jealous of the gods, for he wanted to play and frolic as they did. So he began a campaign to the gods to become one of them. His campaigning caused factions to form among the gods, first about him, but then about other things. Eventually, the gods went to war with each other.
Seeing his chance, the Great Serpent waited for the first god to fall in battle. When she did, he was there, and stole what he could of her power as she died. As more gods and goddesses fell, the Great Serpent was there, taking their power for himself. Before too long, he was more powerful than any ten of the gods, though they didn't know it. The Great Serpent bided his time, gathering the powers of the fallen gods, all the while creating his own army, now known only as the Old Ones.
Eventually, the gods figured out what he was doing, and the survivors set aside their own differences to face this new threat. But it was too late, the Great Serpent was too strong. The final battle between the gods and the Great Serpent led to the destruction of the universe, killing the remaining gods and trapping the Great Serpent within infinite and eternal ice.
When the wars between the gods began, The Lady foresaw that her favored people, the elves, would be in harms way, and so she created a shell to protect them and their world. She used much of her own essence to create this armored shell. When the ice filled the universe, the shell, and the elves survived. Unbeknownst to The Lady, the Great Serpent discovered the shell shortly before the final battle. He sent an army of Old Ones to conquer it for himself. When the Ice came, only the shell and it's contents survived.
The elves fought valiantly for centuries, but the Old Ones vastly outnumbered them. Eventually, the elves were enslaved, and the Old Ones ruled with an iron fist. After a few thousand years, the Old Ones grew frustrated with the slow birth rate of the elves. There simply weren't enough slaves to go around. They began tampering with the elves bloodlines, creating new and specialized slaves. Some were meant for mining, while others were made for war. It was in this way that goblins, orcs, dwarves, gnomes, hobgoblins and dozens of other races came to be.
Humans were the last of the races to be created, a general purpose slave, with a high birth rate, fairly long life and suitable for work or war, they were the Old One's greatest accomplishment, and later the cause of their demise. For twenty thousand years the OldOnes Old Ones ruled over their slaves with a cruel domination. But their creation of the perfect slaves, humans, proved to be their undoing.
Even in the darkest hours, the elves kept their faith in their goddess, he Lady, even despite forgetting her true name. The humans inherited this faith from their elven kin, unlike many of the other slave races. But humans took this faith even farther, with a devotion and worship that amazed the elves, and amused the Old Ones. As their numbers grew, their overwhelming faith awakened The Lady's essence within their world, resurrecting her. She was horrified at what had become of her people.
Weakened, and unable to directly affect the Great Serpent's servants, she began a campaign to embolden her people's faith and weaken the Old Ones. When the Great War began, she was ready to step forth and lead her people to throw off the yoke of oppression the Old Ones held on them. The Old Ones finally realized the woman leading the slave revolt was no ordinary sorceress, but a goddess reborn.
Panicked, they began a plan to awaken their god, the Great Serpent, figuring if a goddess could be resurrected, so too could the Great Serpent. That plan went terribly wrong, and the world was broken. Billions died. The Lady saved all she could, focusing on and using the faith of those who believed in her the most. Those pieces of land that had the most of her faithful she lifted into the sky. She fought off the encroaching ice by turning herself into the sun. When all was said and done, she managed to save less than 1/100th of her world and people.
