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 3 – Interregnum
An age of darkness spread across the universe.
On the Upper Planes, the Ascended Ancients stood victorious over the Old Ones. But battle was infinitely easier than the task that now confronted them. The framework of the cosmos was in tatters and needed rebuilding lest the universe fall into chaos.
On the Lower Planes, the lesser demons and surviving Old Ones eyed the victors with awe and worry and avarice.
On the Middle Planes, humanity was all but extinguished but for a few beacons here and there. And even there did they suffer. Kobol and Tollana could not sustain themselves in isolation and fell to barbarism. It would be millennia before they could rebuild a civilization that even approached what they lost. Krypton survived isolation by becoming regimented and ordered, sacrificing innovation and imagination for stability.
Only Atlantis grew; but remembering the plague, they seeded new worlds mostly with strains of non-magic humans, hoarding such powers for only the elite. They called the non-magic humans "Muggle". And therein lay the seeds of their own destruction.
On the upper planes, the Ascended created a civilization in their image, a human civilization. Here, the rule of law prevailed, not the rule of whoever had the most strength. The demons who remained were forced to abide by Ascended law. Most found it not to their liking, but the three known as the Wolf, Ram, and Hart saw ways to exploit it to their advantage.
Thus did Ascended civilization grow. The Ascended had children, and those children had children. Soon, whole generations had been born who knew nothing of and cared not for the trials of mortality. The affairs of mortal humanity were nothing to them.
But a few looked upon mortal humanity and grew interested. Some pitied those left behind. Others chafed at the laws of the Ascended and sought to territories to rule where those laws had no sway. Still others looked to grab treasures left behind, most notably the world jewel that had originally spawned humanity.
And thus was the fall of mortal humanity complete.
On Kobol, the Ascended known as Iblis came and offered enlightenment and happiness to whoever would follow him. What he gave instead was chaos and conflict, for it amused him to set bands of Kobolians against each other. In the end, Kobol was devastated, the survivors fleeing in thirteen waves. Twelve founded their own colonies; the thirteenth sought the legendary birthworld.
To Krypton came the Ascended who would one day be known as Jasmine. She came not as would-be savior or conqueror, but as tourist. She studied and admired the orderly civilization Krypton and basked in the worship her mere presence provoked. But her mere presence disrupted Krypton society as her worshippers soon flouted their roles and duties. There was much war and conflict for generations after her visit before order could be restored. But by then, it would be too late; the terrible weapons used had changed their world, starting a chain reaction that would eventually destroy it.
On the birthworld that would one day be known simply as Earth, humanity was at its most primitive. Many factions of demons sought to control this shining jewel. But they were forever running afoul of each other. And whenever one faction seemed about to prevail over another, the Slayer appeared, drawn by their power and destroying their works.
Atlantis and Tollana were not touched. The civilization of the Ascended looked upon the actions of Iblis and Jasmine with horror. Laws were passed that forbade the Ascended from playing god with mortals. Many Ascended went to other pursuits, but some sought loopholes.
Wolf, Ram, and Hart discovered that the law prevented them only from acting directly against mortals. They assembled a power structure of middlemen; demons that were not at the level of Ascended but could still take orders from them while being able to act against mortals. Others followed their example. Soon, the middlemen were unleashed upon the Earth, seeking to gain advantage by bargain and contract rather than tooth and claw.
Jasmine discovered a loophole in the law. By going through a faux cycle of birth and death, she would temporarily be a "mortal" in the eyes of the law while still retaining her powers, leaving her free to act. The process was too rigorous and complicated for most Ascended to bother with, but Jasmine mastered it.
In their isolated galaxy, the Atlantians knew nothing of such momentous events. They prospered and grew and spread. Then one day, they came across a world that held demons, soldiers left over from the war with the Old Ones. Time had taken its toll, and the Atlantians no longer recognized the demons, but the demons were long-lived and remembered the Atlantians' ancestors. Unprepared, the complacent Atlantians were quickly overwhelmed. The elite magicians - the ones who could actually fight the demons – were to few and slain where they were found. The Muggles were kept by the demons as food to be farmed. The last magicians hid their city of Atlantis and fled back to Earth.
What the Atlantians found on Earth was a primitive wilderness, populated by even more primitive Muggles. At first, the Atlantian exiles attempted to recreate their civilization. But without the advanced technology they left behind, their too few numbers were steadily absorbed into the general population. Those descendants of Atlantians slowly forgot their origins until Atlantis was just another bedtime story. But they continued to refine their magic. They had to in order to compete with the demon middlemen offering the Muggles magical services.
And thus had humanity reached its lowest ebb. They might have remained that way, stagnant, isolated, or prey to demons. But the road back to greatness was opened for mortal humanity.
And it was all because of the Goa'uld.