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A Complete Guide to the Cosmos - Power to the Athanatoi! (Part Two)

by Giulio Caroletti

Contrarily to the Draeden and Dragons, races in the true sense of the term, the Athanatoi were individual immortal and very powerful beings, but were "technically" sterile. The Athanatoi retained a certain ability to "create and shape thoughts", thus altering the Cosmos, creating new demiplanes and planes, re-shaping the nature, creating new races. In creating new races, however, they were less successful than their masters, and were only able to create "incomplete" four-dimensional beings, mortal races that suffered the weight of Time and ultimately died, planets and moons that were eroded and transformed. This happened because no Athanatoi was able to have a complete control on its creature or on the parts of nature, and all the other Athanatoi influenced with their thoughts and actions the work of the other. In the same way, mortals interacted with the others and were free to war each other, and erase races and destroy places in the Universes. Mortal life was born.

The Mortals began to worship the Athanatoi as superior beings, and the Athanatoi discovered that the Mortals who worshipped them in the Prime Plane, that had retained the strength of Belief, enhanced their powers. The Athanatoi, however, were even more surprised by the incredible power of the Prime when some powerful mortal heroes managed, through their will to survive death and the worship as superheroes by their race of origin, were able to ascend their rank. Depending on the Multiverse, the Athanatoi had different reactions to this situation. Some reacted with indifference, others hated these "parvenu-immortals"; others created a strict chaste system to prevent the new gods from learning of the origin of the Multiverse.

And this is the end of the Old Cosmos, and the start of the Cosmos as we know it today: there are ancient gods, mortals that can become gods, outer beings and dark sinister secrets, hidden by layers of lies forged by godlike creatures to hide the truth from the grasping hands of any creature, mortal or immortal, that wants to reach the ultimate meaning of the Cosmos and of Life...