Chapter 0
Prelude
Aveia was a world that could be described many ways, but the best way to many was a single word: Violent.
Its history, from the moment of its creation, was rife with war and atrocities, suffering and injustices. Humanity, along with its adjacent neighbors, the Stickish, squabbled for every resource, every plot of land, and every slight, perceived or real. More often than not, the end result was war. Someone had to die to solve most conflicts, and what better way to justify your killing than with a little state sponsorship?
Even now, in the modern day, with amenities and privileges unfathomable even 100 years before, the driving force behind progress and regress alike was the same: War.
For many who live on Aveia, war is simply the status quo. It keeps politicians in power, it keeps soldiers employed, it keeps the economy booming, and it keeps the money flowing into pockets. Most people had soldiers in their family, if they weren't one themselves. It was seen as a rite of passage, the transition period from childhood hormones to adulthood responsibility. And, besides, it was steady pay, free shelter and meals, and guaranteed fitness. It was just how it was - the army was the biggest employer in most nations, followed by the police and the industrial sectors, usually.
The Stickish were creatures not unlike humans - most of the differences between the two species were superficial. The Stickish were typically taller, with skin tones ranging from very bright gray to almost pitch black. They were typically skinny - finding an overweight Stickish person was all but impossible. Almost exclusively they were found in one place: Fernalis. To summarize thousands of years of history, they fled there to escape slavery and oppression from the world super power, Fractania. They had been the majority in the nation until recently, when a surge in human citizens sparked new race tensions between the two species. And while having a Stickish president helped keep things calm, it was still tense, and it wasn't unheard of to have clashes between respective nationalists believing they had the right to be the majority in the country.
Most nations enjoyed huge swaths of land and resources. This was due mostly to the way the world worked - the small and weaker nations were consumed by their bigger, more powerful, more industrious neighbors. Any breakaways were typically swiftly and brutally crushed, and the guilty parties made to never see the light of day again, if they were lucky enough to be spared.
Most countries had adopted political, philosophical, and religious ideologies that helped them stay afloat in the world. Whereas we on earth largely enjoy some level of democracy, Aveians had few such luxuries. They may have been treated to elections in some countries, sure, but they rarely mattered. Fascism, nationalism, militarism - that was the name of the game. It wasn't pretty, but it kept your nation from being referred to in the past-tense, and to most, that was enough.
And why wouldn't it be? A nation meant stability, an identity, and something to work for. That, and your gods, of course.
The gods that Aveians did or did not worship were very much real. And they were more human than they cared to admit. The most powerful, most respected, most feared, and indeed even the most beautiful, was Akriveia, the Goddess of Purity and Holiness. She created everything in her universe in an attempt to make something perfect: The perfect galaxy, with the perfect solar system, with perfect worlds with perfect countries run by perfect people. But after millenia of failures, she began to lose her grasp on what perfection was, and her creations began to become… unhinged. As if that wasn't bad enough, she was prone to fits of rage that often left entire galaxies destroyed along with all creatures, big and small, dead in her wake.
The other gods were prone to violence too - often over the subject of humans. Each planet had its own gods, but Akriveia seemed to favor those that governed Aveia more than any others. To this day it isn't known why. What is known is that many of the gods weren't fond of humanity or the Stickish. As Akriveia became more and more frustrated with her creation, she began taking her anger out on planets more slowly, through the way that she had seen so many beings destroy themselves and others before: War.
In simplified terms, Akriveia waged war on Aveia, and ignited a civil war among the gods: The Loyalists fought for Akriveia, and the Humanists, as they came to be called, fought against the Goddess and her madness. But it was a losing fight. The Humanists were heavily outnumbered, and with the war on the planet too, they had very limited options for help.
There existed a stopgap for occasions such as this, though it was never expected that it would need to be used against the Most High Goddess. Two gods, named Judge and Jury, were tasked with keeping the gods in order - all gods, on all planets. They had existed for as long as Akriveia had, though never revealing themselves to her until much later after her madness began to take hold. Judge and Jury existed solely to review the actions of out-of-control gods and sentence them to punishment. This punishment could range from a temporary revocation of powers, to loss of godhood, and in some cases, execution. Only, gods were strictly forbidden from killing each other, lest they take on both the powers and the responsibilities of the slain god, resulting in any one deity holding too much of either.
To get around this, Judge and Jury instead were to select a mortal to carry out execution instead. The mortal, willing or unwilling, was blessed not with particular powers, only the ability to slay the intended deity using whatever weapon they are most comfortable with, as well as being able to perceive the Heavenly Palace that surrounded every planet. This happened dozens of times throughout history, with mixed results regarding the mortal's success; most of them perished.
In the case of Akriveia, though, the mortal succeeded, though the war left the Heavens in ruin and Aveia shattered. The Goddess who was responsible for all of creation and everything within it was dead. The world's superpowers had mostly collapsed or depleted their manpower. Some areas were left uninhabitable. And generations of people were left with scars that would never ever heal.
And then, just as the dust was settling and the pieces were being picked up, a mysterious gate appeared in the Fernalian capitol, Madrigal…