[Mage: The Awakening 2e] Scelesti Creation Story

Out of Character (OOC):

Chronicle: Mage 2: The Dethroned Queen
Venue: Mage: The Awakening 2nd Edition
Chronicle Storyteller: Jerad Sayler

Assistant Storytellers: Hannah Nyland & Alex Van Belkum

Everything and Nothing

By Fobax of the Black Zodiac
Source: Chronicle Gameplay and the Left-Handed Path sourcebook for Mage: The Awakening 1st Edition

A Scelesti Creation Story

I will tell you what I think is a true story of the beginning of creation, without the filters of human myths and orthodox Awakened thinking. It is considered blasphemous and even starting to tell it gets regular mages to try to kill or report you on sight. It does sound like Abyssal propaganda and maybe that is what it is. But I believe it. This is what the most knowledgeable of the Baalim will say…. Okay… here we go.

In the beginning, there was everything and nothing. Light. Darkness. The sea of infinite chaos. Chilling fire, mutilating love and hissing babies born from hearts within the rotting ribcages of their future deaths, spread across the space that was not space. Fecund chaos spawned endless intelligences of flesh and wind.

Many Scelesti call the universe’s first, innocent children the Annunaki, but give them other names according to their cultures and mythic traditions. They’re titans, archons, Hundun’s offspring and more. The Baalim call them The Great Dreamers, The Eldest, The Elder Gods, The Great Old Ones, The Sleeping Ones, The Dreaming Ones, the Innocent Ones, the Pure Ones, The First Children, The Black Dragons and a hundred other names.

It was Chaos’ nature to create whatever they willed—and they willed everything, without the restraints of logic or compassion. Intelligence includes the power to classify, separate and exclude. The Annunaki named their work, and each name defined what it was not. Once the innocent ones discovered this power, Creation’s original riot retreated into defined dominions. Cut from infinite possibility, these realms dimmed and withered, so their masters made names for processes that would give them life again: cycles, energies and mechanics

Law made the primordial dominions predictable and stable, but their lords ached for the original All. Unwilling to sacrifice intelligence, they looked upon each other’s demi-universes and each thought, If I make them mine, I will be God. Prior to the hour of realization, “God” was the only concept absent from the Void, for who could create what was endlessly created? What could rule Chaos

Most Annunaki rejected the idea of a fixed throne in the heavens. Seeking freedom, they relinquished discriminating intelligence in favor of an endless dream and merged with their creations. A stubborn few formed an alliance, regulating their combined realms under common codes. Jealous of one another, they divided God’s crown among ten Arcana. They could share His power, but never capture it completely—it would flow through the Supernal Pentagram ever after. Like light cast on a rough, dark ocean, the Supernal reflection gained shape and form on the backs of the dreamers. Those who would be God made their universe of Law on the waves: a skin of brilliant particles over the deep. The Supernal as you know it, supported by the sea foam on top of the Abyss.

The well of all souls,the Principle, poured into the Pentacle from above and flowed through the Supernal. The Ten Golden Dragons of the Arcana built a machine to dream for them, to maintain the phemoral world and the shining dust emerging from the darkness.  The Ten Black Dragons appointed their own Golden Lord of Nightmares.  Reality as we know it, below the Supernal and insulated from the sea, coalesced.

So then the Fall happened...

In that ocean, the innocent ones slept until the day that shining dust gained intelligence of its own, when humanity also imagined being God. The Supernal Light flickered; the Eldest Dreamers stirred as the Celestial Ladder fell, and the Exarchs harnessed their dreams to make a black moat around the Supernal. But the brilliance of mortal dust not only divides and names, but considers the unnamed, unrealized possibilities that wait below the surface. Humanity dreams of the Dreamers, and the Wicked dream most deeply of all.

The Baalim say they invoked the Annunaki while shards of the Celestial Ladder still flashed in the night in a slow, far fall upon Atlantis. For a time, the Abyss erupted to the edges of the world. Unknown constellations invaded the sky. Time twisted; wrinkled men born a day ago made war with thousand-year old youths. Knotted, scaled things fell to earth like meteors and whispered secrets from their craters, Acamoth and other sleeping Abyssals that infested reality in those brief seconds. Supernal beings also found themselves forever trapped and changed, separated from the light forever.

Sleeper poets sang of an age of monsters and the punishing flood that slew them. Culture heroes taught them how to survive the world’s new laws—to sow, reap and herd through sweat and strain, not prayer and oracle bones. It was a return of the Time of Nightmares.

They remembered true magic, though: how at one time, pointing spears at a rune could bring a successful hunt, and how the gods rewarded those who pleased them. They hungered for the chance to worship again. Accompanied by wonders, visiting Scelesti said the gods would only heed holy, purified men and women now. These pilgrims claimed that role and promised to preside over the necessary rites and sacrifices.

Thus, the Baalim take credit for bringing the concept of priesthood to the Fallen World, and note that even their enemies have exploited it ever since. The Accursed claim they ruled early cities as sacrosanct kings—and were loved for it. Who knows if that is correct or justification for how Scelesti justify what they do.

Thus the Scelesti Kingdom of Kish enters the story. Of the people of ancient Kish in Mesopotamia, Sleepers said, “All of them were lord.” By giving them Acamoth Investments, the ruling Scelesti made their subjects mad demigods. Kish crumbled under their care, all were lords, and none cared for farming and artisanship.

Their Scelesti priests led the first holy wars to enslave needed labor and supply the Annunaki with sacrifices. Consumed with the desire to rebuild what they lost, the rest of the Atlantean Diaspora paid little attention to the Scelesti. Only Accursed armies laying siege to their eldritch fortresses inspired them to march forth. They repelled the Kishites using their enemies’ methods. In Akkad, Ur, and Larsa, they said they represented new gods, willing to fight Kish’s aggression.

Under Awakened guidance, these city-states vanquished Kish’s warrior-demoniacs and Wicked princes. The spiritual ancestors of Pentacle and Throne mages founded Kish anew and rewrote

Its legends. The old lords became Tiamat’s children, fated to be crushed by Anu, Marduk and the other gods of civilization.

Organized Scelesti use titles and customs inspired by the legends of old Kish, though they freely admit that reconstructions have eclipsed true lineages. The Accursed believe the Kishite eon gave all mages new life—without it, the Awakened would have cowered in their ruined outposts, leaving bones and curios for a world without the Pentacle. The Scelesti summoned them from hermitage and taught them how to survive the Fallen age by guiding Sleepers.

To some of the Wicked, this justifies every sorcerer or Sleeper they corrupt. They have given something immeasurable to the world, and they deserve their reward.

I went a little further than I intended but now you see what the Acursed feel is the true history or origin and creation. The Annunaki came into existence in the formless chaos before reality even existed, prior to a spiritual version of the big-bang. Their endless slumber and dreams create the Abyssal realms, nests for lesser entities to breed, infest and intrude into the more concrete realities.

It is said that the Supernal Realms are supported by a thick foundation of chaotic dream-foam excreted from the Great Dreamers.

The Supernal realms needed enough possibilities to support their truths. It is said in rare and blasphemous texts that the Old Gods of the Supernal Realms were Annunaki that decided to enforce laws and rules on their realms and over time, making them more concrete, more True. There substance drew them together like huge masses and gravitational pull but none of these 10 Supernal Annunaki could overpower the others and were held in balance. They lost their ability to "dream" and restricted their power by defining it. That means that the Supernal Realms are literally and metaphysically on the "backs" of the ten known Abyssal Annunaki. Should they awake, they could devour physical reality and break apart the Supernal Realms as well.

We come from primordial chaos. The Supernal and our reality. The Golden Lord and her Black Dragons have sleeping eyes that are full of envy... and hate.

The Abyss didn't get created or let in when the Fall happened.  It was always there.