Genesis
Chaos was the first semi-conscious being in the universe. It existed in the very moment before quintessential forces and ideas existed. Before matter, before time, before space. What we now know as the universe came into being when Chaos exploded apart in a big bang. Time became organised, matter formed together and space became measurable.
Many mistakenly think this was the death of Chaos as a living being, but that is not the case.
Living Chaos and Death of the Living
Chaos spread across the galaxy, slowly dying. They spread non-linearly through time and space, penetrating all society everywhere.
As other living creatures came into being, a remarkable thing happened. Every living thing was touched by Chaos, which granted them a soul. The first living beings would have been tied strongly to Chaos, but as they produced offspring through generations, those new souls owed their life to their parent/parents. From Chaos came life, self-sustaining life. But from Chaos also came death and the fate of a soul.
Souls are remarkable things. They hold within them memory, power and more than anything - a lifetime of strong emotions. Gods came to understand that souls could power their own abilities, allowing them to wield Chaos as a more potent power. But the gods interrupted these souls, plucking them from their true journey.
The true journey of a soul is that it returns to Chaos. It becomes a part of the very fabric of the universe.
And that is what Chaos is now. Is it the primordial pre-universe being that it once was? No. Chaos is billions of souls, mixed together to make up an intangible force that permeates through the entire galaxy. It does not have a single will, but billions. It has no single goal, it has billions. Sometimes it Is logical but sometimes it contradicts its very self, for that is its nature.
Resurrection and Reincarnation
When powerful masters of Chaos, or godly clerics summon a creature’s soul back to their body or another, their soul is pulled from the fabric of Chaos and returned to the material world. They will not remember the profound experience of being Chaos, as no mortal ever could comprehend it. Instead, their brain insulates itself against this and removes the memories.
Threads of Chaos
And all life is tied to Chaos. It is like every piece of life is tied together by a strained, expansive web of strings, or threads. Every vibration of a thread is carried through the web, having small or profound impacts on all other life. When powerful individuals rise, when great calamities are wrought, powerful vibrations are carried and it is felt by millions, billions throughout time.
And when great connections are forged? When lovers find that they are truly soulmates, when families create unbreakable bonds or when lifelong friends endure a hundred hardships to become legends? Those threads between them are woven and rewoven over and over, thickening the thread between them, inexplicably tying their souls together for the rest of their life.
This can even happen between enemies. Between any two individuals that hold significant emotion, memory or conflict. Rivals, mortal enemies seem to always cross paths again and again not due to circumstance or chance, but thanks to the thick threads of Chaos that tie them together. Some call this fate, but in truth it is something much more.
Diviners and prophets think of the future in both overly complex and overly simplified ways. They see the threads between living beings and can see who or what someone will be drawn to as such. This means good prophets and talented diviners can be correct in their predictions of the future, but their work remains as estimations. No-one will ever truly know the future, not unless they remember it…
Chaos Born
And so, we come to Chaos Born. First let us address that Chaos Born are rather ironically named. In some ways every living being is in some way born of Chaos, but certainly not every being is a ‘Chaos Born’.
Chaos Born are some of the rawest entities in the galaxy. They are the closest to Primordial Chaos of any alive. When Primordial Chaos exploded, concentrated pieces of Chaos were sent through time and space, which was non-linear at the time, and embedded themselves in certain fortunate, or unfortunate, beings. This means a first-instance Chaos Born could come into being in ancient times as much as another could come into being when interstellar life had become the norm.
It is important to pick up on the idea of ‘first-instance’. Chaos Born, unlike others, do not return to the fabric of Chaos upon their death. Nobody knows why, some theorise their souls are too powerful, that they would imbalance the harmony of many-minded Chaos, but this is just a theory. Whatever the reason, the souls of Chaos Born do not pass on, but instead pass into another life in the form of reincarnation.
When a Chaos Born nestles in a reincarnated being, they do not immediately remember their past life, nor hold the same power they once did. This comes with time and with the awakening of powerful emotions, often through trauma. Once a Chaos Born does remember their past life however, they emerge as one more powerful than their last life. They hold memories often of another time or place that allow them to know pasts and futures that they should not.
Chaos Born also have immense power granted to them by Chaos, powers over time and space, or life and death, raw undiluted power of dread or even, in rare cases, power that ties two different Chaos Born together in a marriage of ability and thought.
Finally, Chaos Born are so vitalised by the soul of Chaos within them that they do not age in the same way mortals do. They often reach the full development and necessary maturity of their species, the peak of life, before stopping aging.
When reincarnation, immense power and extended lifetimes are brought together, it means that Chaos Born are terrifyingly dangerous prospects that are exponentially increasing in danger. With that in mind, it is no wonder that throughout so many civilisations Chaos Born have been hunted with extreme brutality.
The Arcane
One of the less tangible aspects of Chaos is its production of the arcane. One way or another, Chaos allows some living beings to interact with the universe around them in profound and unnatural ways, through what we would call magic. For some beings this comes naturally, while for others it requires years of study and precise incantations and gesturing. Some people believe that through the arcane, Chaos truly exerts its own will, granting its force to chosen individuals to see good or evil play out.
Others believe that the arcane is an accidental product of Chaos. When the fabric of the universe is made of so many souls combined with the dying primordial force that existed before all things and brought the universe into being, surely there is accidental by-products of such a reaction. The arcane can allow beings to pluck souls from the fabric of Chaos, to intercept their journey to it and use them for their own will. It can allow holes to be torn in the fabric of Chaos and one day could even allow Chaos itself to be destroyed. Surely, that is not by the intention of Chaos? If it were, then only more questions are raised.
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