It sure seems like the beginning of something…although I’m not sure that it is.

In the beginning, there was nothingness. And in this nothingness, there was God. For millennia, God was content. And then he wanted more. So God created the stars and the planets, and he was amused.

But time again wore on God, and he grew bored. So God created the world-less Angels, bound up in his very essence, servants made out of his own body to do what he willed. He commanded them all with unflinching loyalty, sometimes even orchestrated wars among the choirs to see which were stronger. But the angels could do only as God commanded, and soon he grew bored.

One day, in a fit of frustration, God raged at his angels, and asked them if they never had thoughts of their own. In this way, God accidentally gave the angels free will. But God was amused, and all was well.

Soon, however, not all angels were content to do God’s will. The true story of the wars of heaven is very different from that which we think we know. None of the angels thought themselves to be “greater” than God himself in strength or wisdom…but all of them thought that God was unreasonable, and cruel. So they sought to undo everything he’d done.

Lucifer created the concept of entropy, setting in motion a series of events that caused the universe God had created to begin to fall apart in front of his very eyes. Suns went dark, black holes devoured even light, and plants broke apart into tiny bits of matter…God tried to save his original creation, but all of the angels lent their power to Lucifer, and all God could do was slow the process, not stop it.

But even as Lucifer was striving to directly destroy all of God’s work, his compatriot the archangel Gabriel had an idea he thought was far greater. Gabriel thought the best way to show God the error of his ways was to outdo him in creation itself. On one tiny planet, Gabriel created thousands of new life forms, trying to outdo God. Only on his very last try did Gabriel accomplish what he really wanted to do: he created a new choir of angels. They had few of the powers that the choirs created by God had, but they were beautiful, and they were Gabriel’s own. These were the early humans.

God was furious at Gabriel’s new creation. In a rage, he turned on his own angels. At first, he sought to send them into the oblivion of un-creation, taking the idea from Lucifer’s own concept of entropy. Of the hundreds of thousands of angels created by God in the beginning, only the three hundred most powerful soon remained to stand against him, all of their brothers and sisters having ceased to exist.

In desperation, the angels fled to Earth to make a last stand, led by Lucifer and Gabriel. They rallied their creations, the humans, to help them stand against God, in an army led by the archangel Michael. But God did not seek to destroy these last of his original children…he had a far greater punishment in mind for them. As the humans tried desperately to defend their own creators, God bested the army in battle on the plains of the lone Earth continent. Every time an angel fell, it rose again immediately, in the form it possessed when it was first created. God’s final punishment was to deny the greatest of his angels their memories, and their free will. They would be his servants again.

You see, God had watched Gabriel’s new choir of Humans very closely since their creation, and he liked what he saw. They had all the free will that had led his own angels to become more interesting, but they lacked the individual depth of power that had given the ability to stand against him. From these humans, there was nothing to fear.

Or so God thought. Gabriel had given them one gift that God himself could not fathom, and soon there would be another war in heaven. You see, the humans could reproduce, an idea that had never occurred to God. The consequences of this, in combination with the relatively small power of creation given to every human by Gabriel, would be a greater problem than even the war led by Lucifer.

The humans remembered God not as a creator, but as the entity which had slain their angelic defenders on the plains of battle. As the population grew, those humans passed down the legend of Gabriel to their children. God punished those individuals who spoke out against him too vehemently in public, but this only made the opinion of the people for him even worse.

The human warrior priest Yetuvon watched his father fall to God’s wrath, and he decided to act. God must not be allowed to walk all over humans anymore, Yetuvon called to the people of the human cities. He called for them to band together, to combine their power, until they could stand up to God himself.

Working together, bending all of their will towards one goal, the humans created the Djinn. Each tribe poured their efforts into one, and so it was that the djinn numbered 300…for each tribe of humans had been founded by the survivors of the great battle, and each of them had banded together based on which of the angels had been their patron.

The djinn were powerful individually, and even more powerful when they worked together. They blocked God at every step. Furious that he had lost control of Earth, God sent in the angels to destroy the djinn. But to his horror, God discovered just how powerful the humans could be when their population was allowed to grow large enough. The djinn were too strong for the angels to kill them.

Trembling with rage, God sent the angels on a new mission. They were to destroy the works of humans whenever they could find an opening in the defenses of the djinn. Kill any humans they could. God ordered them to rend the very ground asunder if it would help them reach their ends.

So it was that the human tribes were forced to make a decision that filled them with great sorrow. They ordered the djinn to kill the angels, so that they might not hurt their children. And the djinn proved up to the task, and God had to watch as the last of his original children fell to the powerful, and altogether tricky, djinn.

But God could learn.

The djinn were smarter, stronger, and wickeder than his angels, but they also had the fatal flaw that the humans had been unable to remove from their nature. The djinn had free will. God thus sought to bribe the djinn, offering them far greater things than the humans could in reward for their obedience. A djinni named Zhakrin seemed to listen.

Zhakrin was the djinni created by the tribe of the archangel Michael, the largest of all the human tribes, and thus the most powerful. Zhakrin was more powerful than half a dozen of the other djinn combined. He was the one who dealt the blow that ended the existence of Lucifer, the angel that had led the challenge to God.

God told Zhakrin that he could have anything he wanted, so long as he would cease his protection of the humans. And Zhakrin agreed, without even telling God what it was he sought. For Zhakrin sought to take God’s place, by killing God if necessary.

Some of the djinn followed Zhakrin immediately, as he was their leader. Others stood in protection of the humans. A great war broke out, but with both God and Zhakrin on the same side, the plight of the humans was dire. For a thousand years there was no peace, until Zhakrin whispered his final idea in God’s ear. “Kill them all,” he said, “and we can create new life that will serve us both.”

God sent the great flood, with Zhakrin’s help. All of the remaining djinn that were loyal to humanity perished trying to save their creators from the rising waters, but most of the tribes were entirely wiped out. However, they did foil the plan of God and Zhakrin, as some of the humans and animals survived, and they abandoned their old tribes to band together to try to create one last guardian. In this,
they were helped by Zhakrin’s own ambition.

Seeing that God was weakened by his efforts to push the make the floor waters rise against the resistance of the djinn, Zhakrin chose this moment to plunge his great black sword into God’s neck, while at the same time focusing all of the strength he had to shake the power of God apart. God’s aspect shattered, and was no more. But the entropy of Lucifer could not undo God itself, and the pieces of God’s aspect floated throughout the universe, never resting. By chance, one of them landed on the earth itself. The great-grandson of Yutevon, a man named Gerrard, gathered the humans around this artifact, and together they sent all of their remaining angelic essence into it, leaving only enough in themselves to allow them to continue to produce new life. Out of their essence, mixed with a piece of God’s own, rose the final creation of the humans. They called this djinni Rien.

Rien was different. He wasn’t as powerful as Zhakrin, for by this time the humans were few in number and unable to create such powerful beings, but he had one thing that they had been unable to give the original djinn, and that was God’s essence. Rien was immune to the entropy that ravaged the universe, and thus could not be destroyed as the other djinn were. Rien was also filled with great love for his creators, and would do anything to save them.

Zhakrin was filled with the cleverness given to him by the humans, however, and would not be as blunt an opponent as God. He sought to fight Rien through means other than force. Sending forth those djinn loyal to him in the guise of normal humans, Zhakrin began to systematically destroy all knowledge of the creation of the djinn. He killed those old enough to remember the war. He killed those who had witnessed the birth of Rien. He destroyed any books that mentioned them. Finally, Zhakrin started to walk the Earth himself, in many thousands of guises, guiding the path of the humans away from true knowledge of their history.

His names were many. To the Hebrews, he was Moses. By leading them from their captors, Zhakrin gained their undying attention and loyalty. As Alexander the Great, he brought Greek culture, already under his spell, the other civilizations of the world. As Julius Caesar, he attempted to do the same by spreading Rome. And as Jesus and Mohammad, he had his greatest successes.

Rien thwarted him at every turn, although he was always a step or two behind. Rien called himself Nebuchadnezzar, and brought the Babylonians onto the Hebrews in an attempt to destroy their culture before it could spread. Rien destroyed the Alexander aspect before his empire could be consolidated. Rien spoke a thousand lies to the conspirators that would kill Julius Caesar. Rien brought the fury of the Roman authorities to bear on Jesus…but it was too late. Zhakrin had finally found a movement that was unstoppable. No matter what he did, Rien couldn’t stop the spread of Christianity. And after his Jesus aspect was destroyed, Zhakrin thought up a plan of his own.

He couldn’t kill Rien, so Zhakrin and his djinn built the greatest prison ever created. The place would be a holy shrine to Zhakrin, and under it, there was a chamber built and consecrated by the blood of two of the djinn that sacrificed themselves for the cause. Above, the greatest shrine in all of Christendom would be filled with the faithful, sending their will towards Zhakrin, and reinforcing the strength of the magical prison below even more.

Fighting with Rien until he was weakened, Zhakrin forced him into his new cell, and sealed the doors.

To this day, Zhakrin and his djinn manipulate humans slowly, guiding them along a path that will one day see them giving their very existence to allow Zhakrin to gain what he’s always wanted: the full power of the ancient God. Only by uniting humanity to his banner, and his alone, can he accomplish this. The free will given to humans by Gabriel has slowed his progress, but he has all eternity to complete his mission.

And the human’s last hope…he is still imprisoned, lying under the building that was once known as Hagia Sophia, the greatest church in Christendom. There are few who remember him, and none that do know where he might lie…