Chapter One
Now in The 5,982 Year From The Beginning of Our Faith, I, Gray Boar, sit down to write of The Beginning of All Things. For it is said that I am wise in these matters, but it is not so. I have only The Light of Those That Have Come Before Me. My wisdom is only the product of Their long study, research, and suffering. I am wise only because I stand upon the mountain made by Those Who Came Before Me.
2 Now as to The Beginning Of All Things, there are three theories held by The Great Races, but in one thing these theories agree....
3 In The Beginning there was only the vast, empty darkness of space....the soft dark velvet of nothingness was everywhere. Then, something came to be, and how it came to be, no one is sure. For it was long before there was anything that had reason, it was long before there was anything that thought.
4 Now, the first and most popular theory as to how this something came to be, was that it condensed out of the darkness of space, itself.
5 The second theory held by many, was that a rift opened in the fabric of space, and the something poured through from some other form of existence.
6 The third theory was that the something was created by a divine being of super intelligence, a controller of all the universe. But few of The Great Races held much faith in this last theory. For if a divine being created everything, where did the divine being come from?
7 But after the something came to be, there is general agreement in all the theories. The something began to gather together and press upon itself, and it began to change. And The Ancients called this great gathering of the something The Mega.
8 And The Mega pressed within itself until the pressure was so great that it exploded, throwing great chunks of itself out into the darkness, to orbit what had once been its center.
9 And these great chunks were called the universes. And the universes pressed within themselves, and they, too, exploded, throwing fragments into vast orbits around their centers, also. And these fragments were called galaxies.
10 Now, the galaxies did not have enough mass to fall in upon themselves, so they began to cool, and suns began to form. They were born, died, and were born again, scattering the new elements they were producing throughout the galaxies.
11 Then, slowly, about some of the suns as they cooled, planets formed. Out of the billions of planets that formed, only a few milliion had life. Out of the millions of worlds that had life, only on a few thousand did that life reach intelligence. Out of all those thousands of worlds we know only four well....Hades, The Beloved, Haven, The Despised, Peepi, The Friend, Earth, The Hope.
12 Now Hades was a harsh world, and perhaps the strangest of all the known worlds, for its very existence was a mystery. Its orbit was five-hundred of its revolutions. It had three sisters and four brothers, but it did not share their orbits.
13 Where its brothers and sisters had orbits slightly inclined above and below their sun's equator, Hades' orbit was almost exactly on its sun's equator. And where its brothers and sisters tilted on their axis so that their seasons came alternately, north and south, Hades' axis always stayed parallel to its sun, so that its seasons only changed as its orbit carried it closer and further from its sun.
14 But strangest of all, Hades did not travel in the same direction as its brothers and sisters, but orbited its sun in reverse, and rotated in the reverse direction.
15 So strange were all the conditions on Hades, many belieevd it was not a natural planet. It had been made by some Ancient Race for some unknown purpose, and for some strange reason it had never been used, for it lay barren for millions of years. The rains came, and fell on muddy ground. There were no plants, no animals; the clear waters of its beautiful lakes lay empty. The world was silent and bare.
16 Then, one day a Visitor came- an Ancient Traveller who had long journeyed from star to star. And when his great ship settled upon the barren ground, he emerged, and looked upon the empty world. "What a pity," he thought, "that this world has no life. Though it is a harsh place, life could survive here, but the Spark has never come. I am old; tired. Let me end my journeys here. I will bring life to this world. I will spread myself into its waters, that each part of me will become new life, adapting to its environment, growing, changing, filling this world with all kinds of living things, that each spark of me may again reach for the stars."
17 Now, The Old One had many plants and small animals on his ship, and he very carefully planted them here and there on the land. And when the plants had taken, so the small animals would have food, he released them. And when this was done, he sent his ship into Hades' sun, so it would be destroyed, for it was too dangerous, he thought, for just anyone to find.
18 And he rose into the sky and broke himself into many pieces, and each piece hovered over one of Hades' lakes, and there broke up into its smallest parts.
19 The Ancient One's intelligence was gone....split up into the tiny sparks he had left behind. The sparks grew, devided, grew again, living on the richness of the water. But slowly some began to grow. They fed on the tiny plants in the water, or on their tiny neighbors, and they grew still larger. Fins came, and, scales, and some of the creatures of the water began to venture onto the land.
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