Title: Trinity
Author: Nopporn Wongrassamee aka The Evil Author
Summary: The real history of the universe.
Disclaimer: The characters and settings belong to whoever owns them. I'm just too lazy to look up who they are.
Book 2 – Exodus
Illyria died as many Old Ones before her had, in dominance battles with each other. Her would-be successors battled each other to take her place. Such was the order of things. Several factions took it upon themselves to cull the masses of humans and mortal races derived from them.
They proved unequal to the task.
For eons, the battles of the Old Ones had been steadily reducing their numbers. At the same time, the number of humans and other mortal races had been growing to fill the void the Old Ones' deaths have left behind. Moreover, the Old Ones were incapable of truly working together, making their efforts at extermination haphazard at best. The mortals however worked together naturally, and banded together even more when faced with the Old One's onslaught.
The mortal races formed the Great Alliance. Many races were part of this Alliance. The four most prominent members of this Alliance were the warrior Asgard, the wise Furlings, the canny Nox, and the oldest strain of mortal humanity that the others were already calling Ancient.
The battles were great and many and fierce, but the Alliance prevailed. Old Ones fallen in battle were imprisoned on Illyria's old throneworld, for even dead, it was possible for an Old One to rise anew. The prison was originally fashioned by Illyria to hold her fallen enemies. The Ancients made use of this prison as well.
The Old Ones who had not fallen to the Alliance fled to the upper and lower dimensions. The Great Alliance rejoiced in their seeming victory, but the Old Ones' parting blow would destroy them.
The Old One known as Ouroboros was clever. He cast upon the Asgard a curse that did not seem to be a curse: envy. The Asgard were mortal, secretly envious of the Old Ones' immortality. To that end, they developed the ability to copy themselves forever. But in time, their endless duplication of minds and bodies proved flawed, ultimately depriving them of the ability to have children and renew themselves. Time and entropy would whittle away their remaining numbers, and still does so to this day.
The Old One known as Goa was less subtle. He cursed not the Furlings, but their partners the Uld. The Uld were symbiotic serpents, peaceful repositories of the Furlings' knowledge, culture, and wisdom. Goa's curse changed the Uld from helpful assistants into domineering tyrants. Almost overnight, Furling civilization crashed into oblivion. To this day, the cursed symbiotes are still known as "Goa's Uld".
No Old One cursed the Nox. However, watching their friends and allies fall into chaos had its effects. Using their great magics, the Nox hid themselves away from the rest of the universe. They remain hidden to this day, showing themselves only to answer the rare plea for assistance.
An Old One whose name is forgotten inflicted the most devastating of plagues upon the Ancients. The plague spread like wildfire, scouring galaxies clean of the humans. The Ancients tried to cure the plague, but to no avail. But they discovered ways around the plague.
Fearing the plague, one group of Ancients on Illyria's old throne world decided to run before the plague could reach them. They gathered in Atlantis, a city constructed specifically to evacuate them. Once gathered, Atlantis flew to a nearby, uninhabited dwarf galaxy. For a time, they prospered there.
Several colonies of the Ancients initiated drastic quarantine procedures, cutting themselves off from the plaque. They survived after a fashion, passing their names off into legend: Kobol, Krypton, Tollana...
Another band of Ancients developed Ascension. This had several advantages. They could become something the plague could not touch. Their personal power would become magnified, a match for any Old One. And lastly, they could now pursue the Old Ones to whatever dimensions they had fled to.
But the majority of humanity was left to the plague. Everyone died except in one place. On Illyria's throneworld, humanity had evolved. Here, they were still the most genetically diverse population to be found anywhere. Most died, but is soon proved that those with minimal or no magical ability proved resistant to the plague. Ruthless natural selection turned the remainder of humanity into a nonmagical race but for remnants like the Immortals, the lesser demons, and the Slayer.
For an eon, the universe was quiet.