Long ago, in the land of Lunayru, there lived a man (if, indeed, he could be called a man) of strange powers who dearly loved to bring happiness to people. This man, Jonah, knew the Truth of the golden goddesses and existed only to do their will. However, after many eons of serving the goddesses in Lunayru, he began to resent his kin, for he was jealous of the one who lived in the blessed land of Hyrule while he was forced to live far from that favored land of the goddesses. Many more eons passed and evil slowly grew in Jonah's heart, for he was no longer satisfied with the role he played in the goddesses' plans and wished to return to Hyrule. So Jonah, although he knew the Truth of the goddesses, made a plan to rebel against them. Over many years he slowly spread doubt to the hearts of all those in Lunayru and they lost faith in the goddesses who had created them. Instead of worshipping the three golden goddesses above all others, they began to worship as the greatest of all deities the four guardian giants of Lunayru, who had long ago disappeared to the four corners of the earth in order to protect the land. The people of Lunayru built great temples to the four giants and told new myths about the giants' greatness, saying that the giants had created Lunayru instead of the three golden goddesses.
Eventually the people became so faithful to the four giants that they believed them superior to the three golden goddesses and grew arrogant enough to blaspheme them most vilely. Jonah, who had been spreading doubt in the goddesses from the shadows all of these years, finally emerged, manipulating the religion of the Four as a prophet and commanding the people to build a great tower that would reach the heavens so that they might defeat the goddesses using the power of the giants and prove their superiority. So the people built a great stone tower that reached into the heavens under Jonah's orders, not knowing that he was planning to use the tower to open a path in the heavens that would return him to Hyrule.
The goddesses were grieved at Jonah's treachery and the faithlessness of the people and decided to punish them. Din, with her great, flaming arms created the light arrows, filled with the light of justice, and shot one into the bloodstained emblem at the entrance of the tower, inverting it so that instead of reaching the heavens it now reached the pits of hell where an ancient evil awaited the people. The people, not knowing what awaited them, entered the temple with Jonah leading them. Inside, they discovered a mask of great and terrible power, and, thinking they had reached the heavens, thought they had discovered a way to make themselves as gods. The people began to fight over who should wield the powers of the god and much blood was shed over the evil mask.
In the end, Jonah, whose arrogance had grown and who had decided that he would rather become a god himself than serve the goddesses any longer, put on the mask and used its powers to make the people serve him. The evil in the mask was called Majora and it whispered its name to Jonah to take for himself, for the evil in the mask quickly became one with the evil in Jonah's heart. The people were afraid and served Majora as he asked, changing their temples to reflect Majora's image and worshipping the ancient evil. Jonah, satisfied that he was no longer a servant and was now a god, wished to follow the golden goddesses into the heavens and remain there for eternity; but the mask had an evil will of its own and had been feeding off of the jealousy and anger in Jonah's heart to grow stronger. Soon Majora grew strong enough to break its seal, and so it cast off Jonah to wreak mayhem throughout Lunayru.
The days grew dark and all was chaos throughout the land as Majora spread madness and slaughter with its evil power. The people were afraid and called out to the four giants, but the giants could not hear, for the goddesses had put them to sleep and made their ears deaf to the calls of the Lunayruns. Yet the people did not repent, for their hearts had been hardened through the years of faithlessness, and so the goddesses continued to let Majora ravage the land. One day, just as the people were about to give in to despair, a wandering mercenary of tremendous skill appeared, having heard of their plight. The mercenary offered to defeat the evil Majora as a test of his skills, for he was a man who delighted only in battle.
The battle raged for three days without cease, and on the morning of the fourth day the mercenary finally emerged from the battle victorious. The beaten demon was sealed once again into the mask and the people rejoiced. They were grateful to the mercenary and, having learned nothing, began to worship him as a god. The prideful and mischievous mercenary accepted their praise as his due and lived for a time reaping the benefits and abusing the privileges of his godhood. But the goddesses saw the people's blasphemy and grew angry; so they sealed the arrogant usurper's soul into a mask- where he was doomed to wait powerlessly for eternity for his lust for combat to be fulfilled only by another's hands.
Yet despite the sealing of the mighty and fierce deity, the land of Lunayru continued to grow rife with faithlessness and petty squabbling. So grieved were the goddesses at their people's continual waywardness that they despaired of them ever returning to the Truth and turned away from that land, which became known as Termina- for it was doomed to end. And yet there was still one small hope: whispers that some day one from the blessed land would come to Termina and redeem that cursed land….
But that is another story….
Author's Note: Jonah is not an OC- I tried to hint at who he was with the first line and I figure most of you will read into the subtext about his identity with no problem, but I just wanted to clarify that Jonah is meant to be a person from LOZ canon whose backstory and name I filled in with my own ideas. Kudos to HylianDan, too, whose Zelda theory about stone tower temple ended up fitting perfectly with my own headcanons about Majora's Mask! His article's an interesting read and can be found here: articles/the-stone-tower-why-termina-was-doomed/