Dead Sleep Dreaming

         Once, many ages ago, before Nihaz and Sarn had their fateful battle, indeed, before those two even existed, there lived nameless beings of unspeakable power, of infinite horror and madness most terrible. These beings were capricious, cruel, and worst of all, eternal. They gorged themselves on the terror and agony of mortals, which they had created purely for the pleasure of torturing them with fears and hells that would drive the hardiest orc past the brink of insanity in mere seconds. 

           For untold millenia, these 'gods', these Originators, (for there is no name in any language of mortals that we may call them, save for R'kyllk'sothyth-Mryhth'throglikjkk, and that is but the closest any Orc, Gibberling, Arisen, man, elf, goblin or June can hope to come to the sounds produced by that nameless name, and so we give them the title of 'Originator') ruled unopposed, for who was there to oppose them? All that existed was either an Originator or mortal, and no mortal, then or now, was a threat to an Originator any more than the the merest grain of sand is a threat to the mightiest dragon. As such, rivers ran crimson with blood, mountains of corpses were piled upon each other, and entire planets were consumed in an instant, once the centuries of torment and misery inflicted upon the populace were completed to the satisfaction of the particular Originator. No being hoped for change, and indeed, few beings could even entertain the concept of a life without the Originators, for they had never known any thus. This would have continued on for all eternity had not two Originators, for lack of a better word, evolved: Nihaz, our god of Darkness, and Sarn, our god of Light.

          These two realized, after only a scant millenium of discussion, that if the universe in which the occupied continued at the current rate, the Originators would eventually grow tired of feasting upon the woes on sorrows of mortals, and turn their hungering gazes upon one another, ending all realms of existence in the horrid process. 

           And so, Nihaz and Sarn worked together to forge a spell that would send the Originators into an eternal slumber so long as the two of the lived, for they could not kill that which was already dead. This spell reduced the power of both Nihaz and Sarn to a fraction of what they had once been, to the point that we know of today, and transformed the slumbering dead gods into what we now call the Astral. That is why the Astral destroys all it touches, and sometimes actively fights against we who now inhabit it. It is why the demons exist within the Astral, and are able to wreak destruction and sow terror among all. They are not the servants of Sarn, so much as they are on loan to him from the Originators that spawned them. It is why each and every one of us harbors the potential to go beserk and kill all around us in intensely violent ways, and to partake the flesh of other sentients, and to war and rape and pillage and kill. Our flaws are a result of the Originators' influence over our thoughts and actions, even as they lay in their dead sleep, dreaming. They are the source of the monster in your closet, the shadows in the woods that creep upon you, the nagging thought in the back of your head that something is watching you. They are the darkness that lies all around you, and they are the darkness in the corners of our minds and in the pits of our hearts.

          And should Nihaz fall to Sarn, or Sarn be killed by Nihaz, the survivor will not be able to maintain the spell that allows us our lives, and the Astral will dissolve, and the Originators will awaken from their dead sleep, and each and every one of us shall suffer an infinite number of pains and sorrows and miseries and deaths for all eternity, with no respite given, lest our agony and torment lessen. And there will be no savior come to save us, for They will most certainly torture and maim and violate Nihaz and Sarn for their transgressions in ways that even the sickest mind among us could fail to conceive. And we will be forced to endure every milligram of pain that those two endure, in addition to our own, for the sick and twisted pleasure of the Originators.

          There will be no hope, no joy, no happiness, no love. Only torment, unyielding and unceasing, infinite and eternal. This awaits us all, should the Originators ever awaken from their dead sleep.

           And they will awake.