Matt thought I should post this for consumption outside my soon-to-be Dungeons & Dragons group. So here it be. A creation story and a few associated notes that are of minimal interest to those not likely to play in said game, but possibly amusing nonetheless.

In the Beginning—if there is a Beginning, for you know that there are many worlds, waning and waxing like the ringing waves of a raindrop in water—in the beginning of our own world, then, it is said there were only the Stars and the blackness. The Stars gave light through the blackness, and with their light they sang each other songs. There was one Star, however, who began to think how the songs of the Stars differed, and decided that, since the Stars’ songs were different, one song must naturally be best—and, as you may expect, he decided that the best was his own.

The Star turned inwards, then, and kept all his songs, his light, love and attention, for himself. “This is folly!” cried the other Stars, “No Star can hold within him all his light!” And so it was, for the Star began to burn, his light escaping despite himself in tongues of destructive fire, and he became the Sun.

The other Stars feared the fiery Sun, and sang together of a way to turn him from himself. “Why are the other Stars,” they said, “turned outwards to their brothers and sisters?”

“Because we are all joined in a fellowship of love,” sang the Evening Star, and they knew that it was so.

“But this Sun has rejected us,” they mused, and so it was they came to fashion a bride for the Sun, to turn him from himself and back to ways of love.

They formed her out of the blackness, that she might need his light, and adorned her with their songs, that she might be beautiful in his fiery eye. The younger stars sang her a body of stone, and the Evening Star sang her clothes of water, and all the stars together sang her into beauty and life, their choruses bringing forth leaves and fruit, birds and beasts, a million forms and ideas wherever the songs touched.

At first, the Sun looked upon this bride, the Earth, and found her beautiful. He touched her, and kindled within her his own heat, and so it was both that she came to have mountains of fire, and her child the Moon. The Moon was as both of them—both of the dark stone of her mother, and of the light, albeit pale, of her father. But the Sun looked on the Moon and saw only how his purity had been tainted, and he threw her angrily into the starry sky before turning in rage to her mother.

For now the Sun had been reminded of his own beauty, and now the shapely Earth seemed only competition. He rushed against the Earth with songs of burning hatred and destruction, and only the songs of the Stars and the new, strong voice of the Earth kept him at bay. Long they wrestled with him, and at length with songs they bound him out of the darkness and away from the Stars, beaming his hatred and his escaping light at the Earth his mistress.

And now the Earth was quite alone, save for her daughter tumbling crazily in the sky afar. She turned to the beasts and plants, but they heeded her not, and she asked the Stars once again to sing her life. From herself she took stone, and formed the dwarves, that they might be at home in the deep places and the high of her stony mountains. From the clay she formed the halflings, that they might ever change and adapt, and be too slippery to be long caught. From the rich loam she shaped the elves, that they might live and thrive with the trees and flowers. From the dust she shaped the gnomes, that like that medium they might fly far and wild on the waves and wind. And last she took from herself sand, and made humans, that they might be as plentiful and wide-spreading as the sand itself. And while the beasts and birds multiplied across the earth, those few that had heard the First Song now grew and changed in the Second, so they were strong in the songs of being, and became the Gods of the many peoples.

And how did the evil things come to the Earth-mother? Did they spring unseen from her soil in the birthing songs of the world, planted by the jealous songs of the Sun or the crazed Moon? There is no one, now, who knows, but many tell this tale of the birth of the Earth and her people. And many of those people think it’s rot.

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Further roleplaying info:
Most people worship a totemic animal. This seems to work fairly well, though I will note for those of you who have played D&D before that the totemic animal gods are a little more…direct and hands-on than you may be used to. I like my animal gods. If you want one, let me know :)

Worshipping the larger entities is a little more fraught with peril. For instance, in order to get any favors out of the Sun, you have to sacrifice sentient beings to him approximately 12 times a day. Hence the Mectul, the cruel conquerors of the North, who constantly make war upon their ever-further neighbors in order to feed the sacrificial altars of their cities.

The Moon, by contrast, is easier to get along with. You just have to give up your sanity. I guess every little bit helps when you are as crazy as her.

The Stars are kind, but in order to hear them you must never step on the noisy face of the land. The Gnomes, therefore, live at sea, and only one Gnome per boat has made the ultimate sacrifice and stepped onto the land to deal with its peoples, giving up the soft songs and wise counsel of the Stars.

The Earth is the softest touch, but in order to get any more favors than the usual—you know, the bounty of food, shelter, et cetera she gives to all her chillins—you have to pretty much swear yourself to do what she wants. The dwarves as a people have done this, and she has given them a general commandment. Any individual dwarf can decide he is special and ask for a more specific command, but it’s kind of uppitty and the rest of the dwarves find it Shocking.