[Ed note: This is the background to my incipient Planescape campaign. I’ve been kicking around these ideas for several years and, with the acquisition of Tales From The Infinite Staircase, I felt compelled to actually write them down. The original version was a simple explanation of what had happened, but there’s this Planescape tradition of the unreliable narrator and... well, next thing I knew, this was the result.
A Tale In The Dark is in 13 parts, which will be posted intermittently as I transcribe them. The sequel, imaginatively entitled Another Tale In The Dark, is of a comparable length and will be posted once I manage to write it down, assuming there’s interest.]
A Tale In The Dark
I. Of the Narrator
Sit yerself down, cutter. You’ve come far, yes, and you’ve journeyed bravely and, what is more, wisely. I’m not an easy one to find. By design, I assure you, and when you’ve supped your fill you’ll be glad of it.
Gold, is that? Magic, too? Precious and powerful, but no. I’ve no need of trinkets and baubles. True power has but one currency and I’m rich enough it in already: knowledge.
I suppose you could say I’m giving you this for free. Even the addle-coved know there’s no power comes without a price, though. One day, cutter, the price will come a-calling; and the deeper you drink, the more you’ll pay. Trust me: there’s a reason I burned my name and shrouded myself in secrets between the cracks in reality. Some darks are better left dark, some chants are better left unsung. Learn that, cutter, and you might survive my “generosity”.
But if you’re willing to listen, I’ll spin you a tale of the death of the powers and the birth of the gods, of the ‘loths’ love and the trust that fuels the Blood War. A tale, as the old saying goes, of “a time before a time, in a place that is no place, of beings who don’t exist.”
There’s just one warning:
Everything I say is a lie.
II. Of the Ages of Existence
In the beginning...
That’s a dangerous way to start. “In the beginning”, we say, as if nothing came before. We should not be so presumptuous; or should we? Reality is so much more than the limits of our imagination, and yet the lessons of the Titanomachy show that our minds proscribe reality quite precisely. But I race ahead of myself.
“In the beginning”, then – and Baator take the consequences – were the ur-powers. Powers of a magnitude unimaginable in today’s sophisticated Cage, powers the size of planes, powers who were planes, powers on whose bodies we little mayflies dance and die.
We cannot say their names now except in mockery of their former glory: Ouranos, Father Sky. Gaia, Mother Earth. Erebus, the Darkness Between. Tiamat, the Great Dragon. Ymir, the World Giant. The Demogorgon – no, not that scrawny baboon-faced pretender, the real one – Demiurge of Life.
All that is, was they.
In an unfathomable age gone by these behemoths lived in alien majesty, unparalleled in might and power... and yet, as is the way of things, they were ultimately slain. As the last ur-power came crashing down, their corpses serving as worlds unto themselves, their children-murderers inherited their mantles of power and the multiverse was forged anew.
These new lords too were awesome in their majesty, arrogant in their might, the epitome of that which they would be named: power. And yet they would fall as their sires fell, slain by their children, who would break the multiverse asunder and remake it in their image; and so the cycle continues. Who knows what beings will come in time to challenge these children-murderers we call gods? Will Loki at Ragnarok unleash some ultimate unspeakable doom, or will Chronias’ illuminated secrets spill open at the Last Trump? I cannot say, nor does it matter; none of we mere mortals will survive to see it.
Taken aback at my blasphemy, cutter? Didn’t have you pegged as the pious type. Or is that just a healthy fear of the retributive divine? Either way, fret not. You can comfort yourself with this simple fact:
Everything I say is a lie.
III. Of the Might of the Second Epoch
The ages of the multiverse are three, as they should be: ur-power, power and god. [One cannot help but wonder if, in the next Epoch, there will be a Rule of Four, with four-sided triangles merging to form the new Unity!] Of the first age we know nothing but corpses, husks of their former glory. Of the second, but one name truly remains:
Titan.
Oh, there are others out there still faint-remembered. The proud Vanir and mighty Jotun, forgotten Ea and El... but they are mere shadows. Only one name still strikes fear in the heart of berk and blood alife. Only one force survived the Fall, waiting in frozen malevolence for their chance to reorder the multiverse and revenge themselves upon their wayward children.
Titan.
When you think of the Second Epoch, then, think of a multiverse in which the greatest powers were the Titans in all their exultant glory. And not just great in might, great in spirit as well: the ultimate manifestations of unfettered good. Joyous, boisterous, destructive, uncaring... demanding of worship and fear, lavish in gifts and punishment, all meted out according to their own passionate whims. Pure, chaotic, good.
If that pikes your mind, well, you begin to understand just how much the multiverse has changed. And yet, it has always been this way. Therein resides the lie.
IV. Of the Powers
The Titans were not the only powers, of course, though they were the greatest. [Witness the naming of the planar pathways if you don’t believe me, berk.] The Vanir ruled Ysgard by the jovial might of their arms, though they are nearly the last old powers we remember. Other planes were similarly endowed; our lack of names notwithstanding, from the heights of Celestia to the depths of the Abyss the powers ruled then as they do now: kindly, cruelly, capriciously, judiciously, the entire motley panoply of philosophies we call the Outer Planes.
The powers. Not the gods.
Who were they, then, these gods-to-be who would one day wrest control from their forefathers? Lesser versions, for the most part. Hopefuls, up-and-comers, filled with ambition and passion and whatever else it is that occupies an immortal’s life. And the multiverse was no more at peace then than it is now: powers warred with powers, the old slew the new and were slain in turn... ever-changing order, as it had always been, and these upstarts should have simply taken their place and been forgotten with the rest.
But this... for the first time in forever, something new. Something that hadn’t been seen since, well, the powers wrested rulership (and life) from their sires. Something was coming that would change everything beyond measure, creating an era of angels and insects, gods and dust, and everything between. Something that the great powers were powerless to stop, for all their might.
We enlightened folk look back on Kronos, greatest Titan of them all, and laugh at the simple callowness he showed in devouring his children. We are fools, all of us. We know nothing. Kronos knew, and was terrified in his knowledge. He moved Olympus and Prime to stop it and, after the Fall, he dedicated himself to eternal vengeance against it.
Kronos, you see, knew the power of an idea.
Even if the idea was a lie.
V. Of the End of the Old
Each plane took its own path to the great conflagration, and I have time or skill to recount them all. The legends which remain to us – Greek and Norse, Sumerian and Babylonian, Egyptian and Faerunian – shall serve as exemplars (“lies”, if you will) of the descent into ruin.
One common theme resonated throughout the multiverse, though. The challengers sought to change views, expand horizons, and invigorate the principles they held so dear. The old guard, in turn, looked down upon their children – in hate or in love – and saw a threat to the existing order and the sanity of existence.
This was the same story as any attempted revolution, played out millionfold every night on the Prime alone. And yet it was new. How?
The simplest explanation – though a lie, always a lie – is that the challengers heralded the death of a paradigm. The very definitions of good and evil, order and chaos, were under assault from those who would personify them, and the multiverse would shake from the force of their blows.
It began slowly enough. Disputes ending in blows on peaceful Elysium. Armies falling into disarray on the Lower Planes as commanders took time to personally educate their underlings on the finer points – and spikes, and whips, and blades – of “evil”. Strange, unnatural alliances between law and chaos against each other. Powers devouring their children or raising Hell against their sires in an orgy of incestuous violence. A multiverse falling into madness, schisming spasmodically until the only recourse was war.
War between the defenders of the old and the vanguard of the new. War between powers, war between mortals, war between existence itself.
Total war.
And the future gods lost.
Looking out over the multiverse today, how can this not be a lie?
VI. Of the Birth of the New
Let me repeat: the challengers lost. Badly.
From the furious excommunications on Celestia to the open war between Titan-led Olympus and the phalanxes of Zeus, from the ruthless genocides of Baator to the unholy slaughters of the Abyss, the rebels were beaten, broken and killed. The elders were too deeply entrenched in their might and too steeped in their ancient treacheries to be overthrown by these striplings, and so the revolution was crushed.
And that should have been the end of it.
But it wasn’t.
History doesn’t lann who had the brilliant inspiration, though that hasn’t stopped ambitious priests from trying. The Greeks claim it was Zeus, and point to the naming of the conflict for proof. The Egyptians claim that only Thoth could possess such clear insight, but that Osiris and Set were the first to make the attempt. The Norse claim Odin wrested the secret from the Tree of Knowledge, and that was the true cost of his eye. The Faerunians – well, who cares what they think?
Are you ready, cutter? Are you prepared to plunge into Pandemonium’s shrieking heart, rend the veil of ignorance, and pay the necessary price? Then let’s open the balor’s gift and look inside.
What did the children discover? What terror could overthrow a Titan? What force could remake the multiverse anew?
Belief.
Belief in a lie.