Prologue (Excerpt from The Thought of All, a Thalan children’s book)

Upon the endless expanse two twin lovers, Strife and Temperance, together made war.

They are Axioms, constructs of pure conceptual thought and idea. Strife, the warmaker, destroys all in his path while Temperance influences and guides his fury. For an eternity the two do join together, waging war on others like them and claiming the very essence of those who fall before them; spoils of their eternal war. And so this transpires until the fires in Strife’s hearts begin to wane. Temperance in her endless wisdom, recognizes the need for rest but for Strife, war was all he knew and he was incapable of respite. Temperance, sensing their impending ruin, places her brother into a deep sleep however Strife’s nature can not be subdued and even through slumber he rises and continues to battle.

Not to be dissuaded, Temperance fashions from her horde the Axioms of Creation, Destruction, Alteration, Transmutation, and Conjuration, and combines them into a single seed. Knowing this seed would need light to manifest she plucks one of her many eyes and cast it into the sky. The sky, however, was too vast and she realizes quickly that her light would only shine half of the time. Fearing the seed’s death she plucks out her lover’s eye, still blinking, and casts it to the far side. That light, although not as powerful as hers, provides enough illumination for the task ahead. Finally, she reaches out beyond the expanse, pulling down and wrapping the seed in a thread of primordial chaos. With all Axioms harmoniously joined the seed begins to glow and she is pleased.

It is ready to be sown.

Gathering all her power, knowledge, wisdom and willpower, she once again places her twin in a deeper sleep. Using now forgotten lore, she carves upon his flesh a codex of design. A grimoire of rules crafted to protect and maintain him while in slumber. With the codex complete she plants the seed deep within his heart and there, under the light of twin eyes, it takes hold. The seed and his spirit bond and as it starts to sprout, a web of roots began to spread throughout his being, binding him to the ground. From his form a colossal tree of Axioms takes shape and she calls it the Dreamleaf.

With the Dreamleaf in bloom she lies down beside him, placing her hands upon his many heads as they both drift peacefully into torpor. She exists there with him, comforting and inspiring, transforming herself into a realm far from his; separate yet connecting.

The Dreamleaf, now unfettered from the limitations placed upon it by its creators, continues to grow. The Axioms of its creation coalescing to form life, death and all things known, dispersing throughout its roots and branches.

And so this did continue for a time immeasurable.

The Ages: As passed down by Thalan elders

The Age of Dreams

Before the realms and planes existed as we know them today there was but a single great domain, and at its center grew a tree of unimaginable size and beauty. This magnificent place, known as the Dreamleaf, was a perfect utopia of life, love, peace, and harmony. The planes of the elements and the astral realms overlapped one another seamlessly and, combined with other realms, created a perfect conjunction of balance and purity. Within this domain, magic flowed along the rivers of the Dreamleaf’s trunk and rained from the sky upon its branches and roots. This was not the magic that is commonly seen today. This arcane power was the truest source of all things: Axioms. Not simply magical symbols or an esoteric alphabet but instead the purest forms of ideas and concepts that would become the building blocks of everything, including the common spheres of magic used by the mortal and immortal races today. All this was held together by the power of the Dreamleaf. The energy of these magical Axioms flowed through, extending outwards into a perfect web of intersecting lines which surrounded the utopia high above the Dreamleaf’s branches, and deep below its roots. This was known as the Ley Sphere.

Here, in a time before mortals and gods, the true Thalan lived in peace and harmony with the Firstborn Dragons. The greatest and most knowledgeable of the Firstborn, the Blue Dragon Doranth, was their guardian. standing vigil at the base of the Dreamleaf and dispersing its conceptual Axioms throughout the realm as he saw fit. For time immeasurable this was the way; the Firstborn and the Thalan living in harmony with Doranth as their caretaker.

The Age of Reverie

On a day unlike any other in the Dreamleaf, the first of the Gods arrived. It is not known exactly how or when he appeared but he called himself Salam and, like Doranth, he had a thirst for magic. Salam settled among the Firstborn and Thalan under Doranth’s watchful gaze, and for a time he lived in peace and happiness, basking in the magic of the Dreamleaf. As he immersed himself in the cultures of the Thalan and the Firstborn, Salam began to discover the secrets of the Axioms that flowed so freely around him, coursing through every living thing. With his discoveries he began to shape the magic, crafting new Axioms and guiding and molding its course to ease the hardships of living and himself.

Though Salam was not considered a being of evil or darkness, his thirst for knowledge, and his desire to pursue and push the very limits of the magic around him, worried Doranth, who had never experienced a being like him. Seeking to protect the Dreamleaf and its inhabitants, the Blue Dragon used his mastery of the Axioms to restrict the ties between the magic that flowed through ley sphere, impeding access to the new god.

Robbed of his limitless access to the magic, the god grew frustrated with the meager amount of power now allotted him. Vexed at what he saw as an unwarranted punishment at the hands of Doranth, Salam sought to circumvent the Blue Dragon’s control and thus devised a plan to remove the bonds that hampered his castings. To accomplish this he would need to find an open, unguarded pathway to the true source itself, the archive where Axioms were stored.

Obsessed, the god devoted his every waking moment to his studies, dissecting and examining the many living things of the Dreamleaf to find the source of their power and trace it to its origins. In order to avoid the domineering gaze of the Dreamleaf’s guardian, Salam was forced to carry out his work in secret, using only the innate celestial magic that made up his being, a magic that was foreign to the Dreamleaf and unknown to Doranth.

It took time and great effort but through his study the god discovered that the magic he could access was but a ghost of the true source, diluted from something far more powerful. This source was the truest measure of the Axioms themselves and it sprang from a single location that coursed along the ley sphere surrounding the Dreamleaf.

Observing the ebb and flow of these lines within the ley sphere, Salam traced their power to their origin at the heart of the Dreamleaf. There, where the trunk met the roots and the sun and moon shined as one, he discovered the mouth of a massive cavern.

Entering, Salam had inadvertently discovered the lair of Doranth and, to his dismay, the dragon slumbering at its center. Surrounding the sleeping Firstborn were the objects of the god’s search; Axioms, suspended in midair along the craggy walls of stone. What had eluded Salam for so long was finally here, floating within his reach.

Extending his hands he lightly touched the wall allowing the power to flow through his fingers, and in an instant gained access to far more power than even his celestial mind could dream of. As if an alarm had been silently rung Doranth’s eyes snapped open, and raising his mighty head, turned his gaze upon the thief before him. Without hesitation he opened wide his maw and unleashed upon Salam his devastating breath, a weapon he was loath to use in any but the most dire of circumstances.

A spiral of pure anti-magic, capable of unraveling Axioms themselves, spewed forth from his gullet and flooded the cave, rushing towards Salam. Having access to magics untold, Salam hastily summoned a circle of magic protection, the spell proving to be far more powerful than anything he had cast before. Despite the unrivaled power of the circle it was instantly dissipated by the force of the anti-magic that hurtled towards him. Doranth snapped his jaws closed on the attack and his lungs swelled as he prepared another devastating breath, this one intended to be far more powerful than the first. Unleashing the second wave of his attack, the spiral of anti-magic edged closer and closer to the Axioms that flowed along the walls, causing the cave itself to begin shaking, dust and stones raining from the ceiling and scattering across the floor.

Salam, however, had not been idle.

Summoning another circle of protection he imbued his new creation with his own divine magics. Celestial magic, being foreign to the realm of the Dreamleaf, resisted the Firstborn’s onslaught, but only momentarily. Despite Doranth’s inexperience with celestial power, the spiral of anti-magic began to wear away the protections of the divine ward, causing it to warp and buckle, unraveling under the pressure.

Having exhausted his devastating breath weapon a second time unsuccessfully Doranth summoned then all the destructive power known only to the Firstborn. Insufflating for a final strike Doranth unleashed an annihilating attack, not designed to destroy the magic of the God, but utterly obliterate it. Seeing this Salam was left only two options: enter and potentially merge with the very tangible Axioms before him and risk the unknown, or remain and die.

As Salam became one with conceptual thought it is said that mind grasped an understanding of all things. For a fleeting moment the god knew what it truly meant to be all powerful and all knowing. Every secret revealed itself to him, every thread of creation bending to his will should he wish it, his to nurture or destroy.

The Thalan believe that Doranth had a single duty: to protect the Axioms of magic which was, in essence, the heart of the Dreamleaf. Should he fail to ensure the Axioms were not misused or corrupted, he was to destroy it all and begin anew. With the final breath he had intended to use in the obliteration of the god, Doranth turned his destructive power upon the true source of magic itself. As the spiral of anti-magic disintegrated the Axioms, the literally ideas that formed existence, the world began to unravel.

One by one the realms were wrenched from their harmonious balance, shattered and scattered to the far reaches of the Dreamleaf’s branches and roots. In their wake the Firstborn that had called the Dreamleaf home were banished among the planes, their existences tied to the lands upon which they fell. The protective sphere of ley lines fractured, it’s remains falling to the realms below, and as the lines struck the ground the magic contained within flared and pulsed wildly. The unstable power warped any living thing it touched, twisting many into horrific and monstrous creatures that still stalk the realms today.

Among all this destruction Salam, being apart of many of the Axioms themselves and the source of Doranth’s magic-nullifying destruction, was torn asunder. His divine essence escaped into the minuscule amount of magic that struggled to remain in the realms, dispersing through the shattered ley lines. Rebuilding himself would be possible, but it would take the god an eternity to achieve.

Thus the world was shattered, the structure of conceptual magic, the Axioms themselves corrupted or lost, and the Dreamleaf began to die.