Creation Mythology

I’m working on the worldbuilding for the new story I’m writing, and I don’t really want to split my attention off it too much, so worlds for the Atlas have… not been happening.
I should probably have just said ‘I’m taking a week off’, come to think of it. That would have been a good idea.
Anyway, I didn’t really want to do this, but I decided to publish some of the mythology I’ve written for that world here.
A few things, before I do.
Mostly, I’ve wanted everything in the Atlas, to be ‘do what you want with this. It’s actually  the main reason I didn’t want to publish this here. Because this one is a bit more ‘mine’. I’m not actually sure how copyright and stuff like that work, practical skills have never been my strong suit - but I’m pretty sure I can still claim intellectual property rights to something I first created here.
Same way, this is not part of the multiverse of the Atlas (I’m assuming that the fact that there is an Atlas multiverse should be pretty obvious by now, but I might be a really bad writer). I kind of wanted to keep everything on ‘The Atlas of Impossible Worlds’ to… well, to the Atlas of Impossible Worlds (Though I may include more reproduction of in-world works in future…). I wanted to give you some kind of content, though, so here it is, three myths from the people of this world.

1

In the beginning, there was naught but chaos. There was neither land nor sea, for those bonds which bind matter to matter, which make things solid, had not been formed. All existence was the incomprehensible dance of titanic energies, bound by no rules the mortal mind could follow.
But change is the nature of chaos. And so, one day, there emerged the first god, Raíli, from the chaos. And Raíli was different than everything that had come before, he had will, and purpose. And too, he had the ability to shape the chaos according to that will.
And the first thing he forged from the chaos was Rihtae,  his staff. And that staff was formed  pure from the raw stuff of chaos, bound to solidity by Raísi’s will.
And with Rihtae as his tool, Raísi forged the world. From the chaos, he pulled Fire, and bound it to solid form, and it became stone. And so Raísi made the ground beneath our feet. But echoes of his creation spread out beyond where he had reached. And so was formed the Outer Darkness, that is creation’s shadow.
Then from the chaos he pulled Mist, and bound it to solid form, and it became water. And so Raísi made the seas, the lakes, and the rivers. But echoes of his creation spread out beyond where he had reached. And so formed the great storms, that rage throughout the Outer Darkness, of which the storms we know are mere shadows.
Finally, from the chaos he pulled Decay, and bound it to solid form, and it became life. But echoes of his creation spread out beyond where he had reached. And so were formed the great beasts of chaos - ravenous, unpredictable things, each utterly different from the next, save only for their savage nature.
And so, the world was made. But Raísi looked upon it, and he was not satisfied. For though he had forged order from the chaos, still in all of creation, and in all that lay beyond, he remained the only being with a mind or a will.
He thought upon the matter for seven days, and seven nights. But there was nothing in creation from which he might forge a being like himself - he was unique.
But on the eighth day, he had an idea. There was something from which he could forge beings like himself - his own self. And so he wove his own divine essence into his creation, and in those parts which that essence touched, awakened minds and wills alike unto his own. And thus, he created life.
But even here, the echoes of his creation spread out beyond where he had reached. And this is how the demons came to be - foul mockeries of humanity, wedded to chaos.

2

When Raísi had made the world, and peopled it, he was content, for a while.
But alas, his world was not secure. Again and again it was ravaged by things from the Outer Darkness - by beasts and by storms, and by demons. He saw that if nothing was done, his creation would soon be undone. And he was weak. He had given so much of himself to his creation, he could not fight them off directly. But still, he had Rihtae. And though  the power of Rihtae is the power of chaos, and though Raísi was loath to use it, it was a tool with which he could command his creation.
And so from the earth and stone, Raísi raised up a great wall, that rose beyond even the clouds*, to bar the even storms from entry.
But the creatures of chaos do not all obey the laws of our reality. They flowed and through around the wall, like a dark tide, through gaps that should have been too small for them.
The wall was useless, and so Raísi let it fall. And in its place, he raised up a dome of water across the sky, deeper than any sea. And when the sky is dark, one may see into the depths of that sea, and see the things that were trapped in the water of the dome when it was raised - and these we call the stars.
But though the dome was solid, demons have a malevolent cunning, and powers which even Raísi lacks. Through arcane paths, from time to time, they passed what had seemed an impenetrable barrier, and brought with them things from the Outer Darkness.
And Raísi was still weak - though the incursions were fewer now, he still could not fight all of them at once.
And so, he once again split off a part of his self - but this time, he did not weave it into his creation. Rather, he broke that part into shards, and those shards he embedded into chosen humans. And it was by this method that the first of the new gods were created, to guard the world from those things which passed the great dome of the sky.**

3

For a time, the world was perfect. The demons were kept at bay, and neither age nor death had cast their shadow over us.
But there was one god, the unnamed god, who was jealous of Raísi, and who wished to rise above the other gods. And so, one day, he stole away Rihtae, and carried it with him to the outside.
The unnamed god was cunning, and he knew that even with Rihtae, he had no chance against Raísi and the other gods. And so, with Raísi’s power, he struck at the dome of the sky, and opened in it a tear, through which chaos was allowed to pour into the world. By this method, he hoped to distract the gods, and to assume supremacy over them.
But Raísi was not fooled. Despite the problems the hole might cause, he knew that if the unnamed god  was allowed to continue to hold Rihtae, far worse would come.
He pursued the nameless god across the world. And, at the far edge of the world, Raísi caught up with him. They fought for fully a year and a day, before Raísi was able to overcome his adversery.
He took back Rihtae, and cursed the unnamed god. That his name would be stricken from him, that he should forever wander the mortal world, and that he should never again have power to command another.
But as they had fought, the hole had remained. And, having remained and widened for so long, even what power remained in Rihtae was not sufficient to close it entirely.
Instead, he narrowed it down to the merest pinprick, and the gods scribed it around with every protection of which they are capable. But still, through that pinprick, chaos pours into the world. Thus was formed the Sun, and it is for that reason that, under the Sun’s glare, water turns to mist, flesh rots, and the fruits of the earth light aflame***.



*Annoyingly, the current President has made anything that sounds like ‘build a wall’ come off as a political metaphor. But honestly, whatever its issues as a way of keeping out migrants, it is probably a reasonable response to marauding half-created things from beyond our reality. I am also willing to consider it a reasonable measure against marauding Mongol hordes and marauding Scots. A highly controversial political stance, I know.
**All of these stories have variants, which are tolerated to varying degrees. For example, this story has a version in which the gods created first and the dome of the sky after them - in these versions, the gods are unable to hold back everything that comes from the Outer Darkness by themselves, and Raísi creates the sky as his third and most successful attempt. This alternate version  is considered less than flattering to the gods, so whilst it is not expressly forbidden (as some stories are) it is rarely told.
***Many people, hearing this, might question why, if this is true, one cannot set fire to a stone. To which there are two answers. The first is that that is what the people of this world consider lava to be - it doesn’t catch alight the way other things do because other things are not pure fire, but merely have fire in them, which escapes when they are burnt. Lava, on the other hand, is stone in the process of turning wholly back into fire. As for why it’s so much more difficult to make lava than it is to boil water, the consensus is that fire, having been bound first, was also bound most strongly.

Sylva

When I'm doing these, I have a whole list of things I want to say. But I never want to make these introduction bits too long, so it usually just ends up being the last thing I happened to think of.
Anyway, I was working on a short story recently, and decide I could probably make it a full novel-length story. And so for the last while or so, I've been world building for that.
I tend to go into a lot more detail in my own worlds than I do here. Say what you like, few of these worlds involve me spending much time worrying about what local councils look like in random countries, because even I know that's kinda boring.


The forest world of Sylva was once a paradise. The gods bent nature itself to their needs, and fulfilled all that was requested from them. The trees themselves grew into homes, exotic food and drink were there for the taking, and even disease was unheard of.
Needless to say, this didn’t last forever. For one day, a tear opened in reality itself - a pinprick at first, but it was growing quickly.
And the gods, as was their duty to their world, fought against them - by magic and by trickery, by every means that was available to them. And to start with, they were successful - they were quickly able to halt the growth of the tear, but beyond that, their power was limited - for fear of what might happen to their wards, they were unwilling to open the tear any further, and so could act in only the most limited way upon the world beyond it. And so, the gods and the things from beyond the tear settled into a kind of stalemate.
But for the people of Sylva, that alone was a tragedy. For all of their existence, they had been looked after by their gods, and now their gods were distracted by other things.
But humans are adaptable creatures - although they had not experienced such things before, they quickly learned to live with their new situation. Though the gods did not have nearly the power to spare they once had, they did not abandon their people entirely. And with the help of the gods, the people learned to build houses from wood, to grow food from the earth, to weave clothing, and to make for themselves all of those products of civilization that had once been given to them.
But no sooner had they adjusted to the new situation, than it changed again. For, somehow, the things on the other side of the tear evaded the gods, and came to the people of Sylva, and spoke with them.
But, though their bodies looked human, their words were strange, and the people of Sylva could not understand them.
And the things from beyond the tear were angry with the gods, who had defied them - and they struck them down. They had done… something. Noone knew what. The gods were powerless against them. And, seeing their gods fall, the people of Sylva fled from what little they had managed to build. And they were glad that they had done so. For, with the gods dead, the things came bodily through the tear. They built strange structures, they scarred the earth with mines, and burned the forest. Some people stayed behind, and fought them - but what hope could humans have, where gods failed? Those who left have not heard from them since.
But for those who left, there was a new life to be built. Having had only a scant few years to learn to fend for themselves, the people of Sylva could not, as yet, build boats that would take them beyond oceans. And so, they became a nomadic people, keeping far away from the buildings and strange vehicles of the outsiders. For their own part, the things seemed content to leave people alone, so long as they were not interfered with. Why should they care about these creatures, who posed no threat to them.
It scarcely mattered, anyway. However adaptable humans might be, the change to a nomadic lifestyle took its toll. Where once they were a teeming multitude, those numbers have quickly been worn away by the everyday dangers of even the safest world - dehydration, starvation, accident and malice.
It has only been a few decades since they took up a nomadic lifestyle, but the people of Sylva are scarcely recognisable. They have lost almost all that their gods taught them, and from birth, children are taught to fear the things from beyond the world.
They are a hard people, and suspicious of outsiders (not that those outsiders can give much explanation for where they came from). And though they may have banded together for survival, the fact remains that there is little people will not do when food is scarce - even with their constantly diminishing numbers, even within the single group that they have mostly remained, there have been wars. Factions, rivalries, and grudges have developed. Small groups have started to split off and make their own way, and it can only be a matter of time before the entire population splits into many parts - and before each inevitably finds that it is easier to find food for a small group, than for a large one.

Dammerung

I definitely have certain... Repeated themes... I come back to a lot. It's always slightly annoying since, even if I'm not always original, I do prefer not to repeat myself too much.
Then again, given the number of worlds I'm writing (even with all the days I miss), revisiting things sometimes is probably inevitable.


For hundreds of years, the world of Dammerung has been bound, more or less, by the strict laws of mundane reality.
But only more or less - because, centuries ago, there was magic. And though that magic has long faded from the world, the artifacts it left behind remain, somehow, functional.
Even the most minor and commonplace of them are able to shape empires. Take, for example, fire crystals. If one sings to them precisely the correct syllables, they do exactly as one would expect, catching aflame without need of fuel or oxygen.
The fascinating thing about the flame crystals is that they violate conservation of energy - to such a degree, indeed, that for the last several decades it has been possible to play a recording of the required song using only a portion of the power that it is possible to extract from the heat of the fire.
Although the power output per unit time is, obviously, extremely limited, this allows fire crystals to be used as portable power-sources, for devices which need to operate constantly for extended periods without the opportunity to refuel.
Other commonplace magical items have similarly important uses. There are flutes which summon small woodland animals from thin air (to be used as a food source), and stones which sing lullabies whenever something near them moves (often used in security systems).
Indeed, commonplace magical items are probably the most useful, even though rarer artifacts might have more obvious power. And there is a very important reason for this - sustainability. Even the newest of these objects are hundreds of years old. Over time they are liable to be lost or broken. Even things like fire crystals, which remain reasonably commonplace, are far rarer than they were a century ago. More forward looking nations have already, on occasion, chosen to start wars to secure abundant supplies of them. It is, generally speaking, unwise to base any particularly vital part of one’s society upon something completely irreplaceable. In Pala, there is a crystal which allows the user to see any thing or place they desire. But a nation which relied upon the knowledge gained from it and neglects more mundane means of information gathering would risk being blinded utterly by a well-placed rock.
Empires have fallen because they were too reliant upon the magic of items they could not replace. Famously, the Ghengi Empire, which fell almost four centuries ago, and which owned the majority of the known world at the time. The Empire was so successful in part because of the ring gates, twelve large bronze ring, the smallest of which had a radius of more than ten feet across, and which allowed people to travel instantly between the rings. It transpired when one was cracked in a riot in the imperial province of Daré, that the rings worked only if all twelve were intact - or maybe the one that was cracked had simply happened to be the ‘master’ ring. Noone knows. But whatever the case, the Empire found itself suddenly deprived of the ability to quickly transport its armies - the majority of which were now stranded oversees, months from home and with limited supplies. The empire found itself unable to prevent its own richer provinces from declaring independence, nor even from expanding their own borders. As more and more provinces declared independence, the authority of the emperor dwindled, and he found that there was little he could do to maintain order. Until only eight years after the riot at Daré, the Empire’s capital city of Ghenn was sacked, and the Emperor Anthony killed.
As a result of this, and of other similar incidents, modern ‘civilized’ nations (defined broadly as those nations which occupy the same land the Ghengi Empire once did) are rarely willing to rely upon any magical artifact they cannot replace. Which, itself, means that the impact they have on society is generally limited.
The world today is esseintially tripolar - as in many worlds, there are a  handful of secondary powers, and numerous lesser nations (most of whom are in some sense dependent upon a more powerful nation), but there are three powers capable of shaping the course of the world. Of these, two claim liniage from the fallen Ghengi Empire - one because it occupies the city of Ghenn, the other because it was founded by the Forlorn Regiment, a group of Imperial soldiers who found themselves stranded in the Reimal Islands when the Empire fell.

Fairies

This is late, but honestly that should be pretty normal at this point.
This, by the way, is the second time I've had to use an idea I had before this blog started.
This one comes from way, way back - I'm pretty sure I'd already written a story about these fairies when I was fourteen.

 They were called ‘fairies’. They lived in hives, and each of their hives was, broadly speaking, a hive mind. Or rather, several hive-minds… there is no entirely appropriate human word for it. Each hive has hundreds of bodies, and each one has hundreds of minds. It is simply that the minds are not connected to the bodies in any way - a single fairy, escaping from a destroyed hive, is enough to carry all the minds that live there away, and to seek refuge in  another hive.
As a fairy hive ages, the minds in it fracture and split, until eventually when the hive has enough bodies, it will split in two, with around half of the minds splitting off, taking about half of the bodies, and setting up a new hive somewhere else.
Fairy minds, not being tied to mortal bodies, can live theoretically forever. Which means that, in spite of limited intelligence and attention span, the eldest fairy minds are more knowledgeable than any other race.
Which often makes people feel rather guilty about killing them.
You see, the fairy minds never die, which means that unless an entire hive is wiped out, the number of fairy minds will only grow over time. And they become what can probably best be described as ‘acutely claustrophobic’ if there are too few bodies per mind.
And so, the fairy hives are constantly expanding across the surface of the world like a cancer - and the term is not random. Despite their small size, the sheer number of resources required by fairy populations, if they are left unchecked, is simply unsustainable, and they inevitably displace other creatures living nearby.
And so, despite the knowledge they carry, the other civilized races are often forced to cull any fairy hives they come across.
Which has, quite naturally, led to incredible hostility from the fairy towards the other civilized races. To them, the murder of the last member of a hive is unforgivable, meaning as it does that one is willingly snuffing out hundreds or thousands of intelligences.
The kingdoms, therefore, which border lands held by fairy tend to be closely allied - working together to hold back the fairy hordes, and to defend themselves from external threats. And there are external threats. Those further from that border tend to be quick to condemn the practice of wiping out so many lives, especially when they are housed in a fleeing body. And whilst the majority are sensible enough to realise that they would prefer not to have to deal with the problem themselves, it is not uncommon  for someone to use this ethical lapse as cassus belli, and to invade. The alliances between border nations helps to discourage this.
For their part, the fairy rarely unite - indeed, they often fight amongst themselves,  considering such clashes far less serious things than would any other race. But fairy can breed unimaginably quickly, and a single swarm can attack with what seem to be millions of bodies - all directed by a single mind, and without the least fear of death. Such great swarms are not common - but nor are they particularly rare, and it is often a struggle for the border nations to drive them back. Indeed, fairy lands have expanded considerably over the last century or so, despite their disadvantage in military technology.
As a result of the fairies, a significant part of the structure of society depends upon how close one lives to the border. A human, an elf, and a dwarf will often have far more in common than any of the three would have with a member of their own species living a dozen miles closer to the border.
Those societies far from the border tend to be fairly typical examples of the societies of their respective races, and the rare fairy who wants to travel in the lands of other races is generally allowed to, so long as they do not try to settle there. It is said that hundreds of years ago, before fairies were considered so much of a threat, they were one of the most integrated races - hives often sent a small number of their bodies to explore the world, which allowed the entire hive to see and experience new things.
The border kingdoms, meanwhile, are very different. They are heavily fortified places, with a patchwork of architecture - each race working together on those things at which they are best. The citizens, too, tend to have weapons close to hand - especially nearer the border - and most kingdoms require citizens to train with those weapons daily.
Although they are constantly wary of the fairies, not only are relations between the kingdoms far closer than they are further from the border, so to are relations between the races - whilst a human elsewhere in the world might be very suspicious of an elf and of elven customs, one living in a border kingdom  would be likely to treat them with just as much respect as another human would.

Procidos

It was, ultimately, a matter of simple mathematics. There was a finite amount of drinkable water accessible at any one time. The population of needed more than that if all of them were to survive. And so, some of them, inevitably, had to die.
At first, it was a minor problem - the discrepancy was small, and deprivation is hardly an unknown problem in any world. But people stubbornly continued to be born, and so the problem continued.
It was not very long, of course, before a legislative solution was proposed. Regardless of distribution, there wasn’t enough water to go around - but that was no reason to allow the situation to be any worse than it had to be. The Conference of Masoel set down rules as to the division of drinking water, so that none would be wasted, and so that as few people as possible would have to die.
But the rate at which people were being born showed no sign whatsoever of slowing down. And worse, the quantity of usable water seemed to be steadily decreasing - noone knew how. The people of Procidos were facing a slow, but seemingly inevitable end.
And that is when the Conference of Masiel made an important decision. There simply was not enough water to distribute it to all of the population. And so, thy gave up on trying. Instead, large sections of the population were not given any water. Instead, they were painlessly euthanised - it was considered better than allowing them to die slowly of dehydration.
And, with this decision, came one important change - that someone had to decide who the water went to. Someone had to decide who lived and who died.
The Conference was desperate to prevent a mass panic. The world was unstable enough as it was, and this policy was unlikely to be popular, to say the least.
And so, a strict policy was agreed upon, according to which the water would be distributed throughout the world. A test was designed - one which was intended to test who was most likely to be able to contribute in some way to solving the problem of the water shortage - those with an aptitude for science, engineering, or magic.
It was, as has been said, simple logic. The number of people who could be kept alive was finite - but if the water problem could be solved or slowed, deaths would be prevented in the future - which was clearly desirable. It was common sense that no human life could be considered more valuable than another. That was the principle upon which their society was built. And it was precisely because no person was more valuable than any other, that some people had to be valued more than others.
And it worked. Generations later, hough noone has been able to solve the problem, the reduction in the amount of drinkable water has significantly slowed due to magical and technological advances. At four or five years old, children are tested for their aptitude in areas considered important to the water-preservation issue. The tests have evolved - they test the children not only for and aptitude for the 'main three' diciplines, but for all the needed infrastructure, from leadership to manual labour. The best in each category are spared and allowed to grow up, the rest are euthanised to spare them from the slow death of dehydration.
Adults, too, are often weeded out of the population - those who are lazy, or ill, or injured, those who can't or won't do the work they have been assigned, are denied water, and their lives end. The simple mathematics is that the better the population works, the more water can be provide, and the fewer people will have to die in the future. To save lives, people must be killed.
Needless to say, not everyone is particularly happy with an arrangement in which children and the disabled are regularly murdered by the state. Utopia itself, they  claim, is not worth the spilling of innocent blood - let alone the authoritarian regime of the New Council of Masoel, which claims authority over the entire world.
The rebels have organised, into a group called Spera, and their actions have progressed from legal protests, towards terrorism. Attacks on euthanasia centres are becoming commonplace, though they are most often at night, and the casualty rate is generally low.
Except, for the tragic attack at Modios. Instead of an attack on the equipment at midnight, rebels stormed the building in the middle of the day, The storming itself is not something which will be described here, but the workers there were branded as mass murderers, and executed.
In response to that attack, the government has introduced new measures against terrorist activity - increased phone-tapping, armed guards, all of the traditional paraphernalia of a state which feels itself under seige by forces it cannot identify. The sides are preparing for war, and not only iis the cost likely to be astronomical, the damage to infrastructure and the deaths of talented people is likely to lead to the end of uncountable future lives - with few actual soldiers having  been selected, it seems likely that they will soon have to draw upon those who were assigned to a different role. The Council of Masoel is worried about this fact enough that it eager to achieve peace, and is willing to offer concessions to Spera. But they will not budge on the issue of preserving the lives of those most useful to society, because that is, they believe, the only way society will progress.
To their credit, the members of Spera are not lacking their own plans - though many joined Spera because of horror at the mass murder the government carries out on a regular basis, and though there is no official party line on the issue, a number of factions have developed within the Spera, each with their own idea of what should replace the the current system, and between which there are... occasional clashes.
There are two factions which are:
Firstly, the Amaoros who believe that the current system is overly elitist, and that the government should not have ultimate authority on the issue of who lives, and who dies. They suggest the introduction of a lottery system.
And as secondly, the Zalen, who believe that the government should stop water rationing at once, believing that, regardless of the potential benefit, no government should ever participate in the killing of its own citizens, especially on such a massive scale.
The newest recruits to the Spera, tend to have an opinion on the matter, being constantly exposed to the various philosophies of the factions - whether they want to be, or not.

The worlds of Yoth.

I remain awful at scheduling.
I had legitimate and probably obvious difficulty focusing on writing yesterday, but Monday and Tuesday were just me continuing to be incompetent.
Now, I am kinda tired.

In the beginning, there was nothing save Yoth. Then Yoth, from the nothingness, created the heavens and the earth. And he looked upon his work, and was proud.
But as time went on, he began to question it. Sure, it was a very nice world. But it was flawed. He could do better.
And so, he swept that world away in a wave of fire, and all who lived there, were no more.
Again and again, Yoth recreated the world. And again and again, he wiped it away. By water or by ice, by plague or by drought.
Until the twelfth world. In that world, lived the Monae. And as the world ended, the Monae looked about themselves, and saw that the ground was cracking, and falling into nothing. And they knew that their end was coming.
And so, by combining their powers, the magi of the Monae created a tutelary spirit named Sophia, who would endure from this world, into the next.
And Sophia did survive. And taught to the people of the thirteenth world the secrets from the twelfth. And learned, in turn, the secrets of the thirteenth.
But Sophia did not know of Yoth, and so could not save the people of the thirteenth world from Yoth's boredom.
And so, the thirteenth world came and went. And so did the fourteenth, and the fifteenth, and so on, and so on, for world after world. And as the worlds passed, Sophia endured, and Sophia learned more and more of the nature of the world. Until, in the twenty-eighth world, Sophia and the Pleromae who were its people had learned enough to put together a reasonable picture of the nature of Yoth. This was too late, ultimately, to save the twenty-eighth world. But once again, Sophia endured. And so, what Sophia had learned, the people of the twenty-ninth world came to know.
And so, knowing of the worlds that had come before them, and under the guidance of Sophia, the people of the twenty-ninth world sought to keep Yoth diverted with his creation, so that he would not decide to wipe it away as he had those he had made before.
The twenty-ninth world lasted longer than had any world before it. But they were imperfect. And so, in time, [] did indeed become dissatisfied with this world, and its time passed, and the thirtieth world came to replace it. But still, Sophia endured, and still, Sophia learned.
The world is now in its thirty sixth incarnation, and Sophia has become a master at the art of satisfying the whims of Yoth - and so has shaped the society of the thirty-sixth world. Yoth is vain, and so they worship him as savior. Yoth requires entertainment, and so, in a thousand ways, they entertain him. They fight great wars, planned out decades in advance. Their politics is designed not to help the people, but to provide theatre, their art is writ large. The word is, in short, a great endless play, performed under threat of death, for a mad, genocidal god. Who will, in time, inevitably grow bored with them once again.
And what’s more, the endless years have weighed heavily upon Sophia, punctuated as they have been by the ends of so many worlds. The faithful spirit has, at last, succumbed to madness, and seeks at times not only the end of this incarnation of the world - but of all worlds. And though the people of the thirty sixth world can hope, at least, that Yoth shall remain as undeterrable a creator as he is a destroyer, they still cannot ignore Sophia's madness.
For, terrible as Yoth might be, he has, indeed, always acted according to his nature. Though worlds may come and go, from Yoth will always come new life, and new hope. It is Sophia whose whim might doom a hundred future worlds, simply by withdrawing from them. Neither is Sophia powerless in this incarnation of the world - for that spirit knows every thing which happens, and may talk with mortals of these things - or lie to them about them.
And so, the people of the thirty sixth world must attempt not only to appease their cruel god, but also to ease the suffering of the spirit who has guided them - even as that very spirit swings wildly between working for their destruction, and for their salvation.

Phantia

I think I finally managed a reasonably short one!
Mostly because I'm tired, which really cuts down on the 'constantly thinking of stuff to add' issue.

The Hall of the Dead is, metaphorically, the center of the world. More literally it is (unsurprisingly) where one can find the dead (or the important dead, anyway - the rest are scattered across the infinite featureless .  plane beyond the Hall).
The dead, in one sense, are completely unable to influence  the world - that sense being the physical sense. The dead can’t even communicate with the living without help from someone on the outside. But the thing about the dead is that there are a lot of them. And some have been around a very long time.
And so, the dead have money, they have experience, and they have knowledge. It shouldn’t really be a surprise that they’re in charge of the state of Phantia (which escapes being called a continent-spanning empire by dint of the fact that it doesn’t have an emperor). Few governments are able to take on the entire rest of the country in an all out brawl, so their physical limitations are less of an issue than they might be.
Instead, necromancers exist as a kind of civil service in Phantia, communicating to the people the wishes of the dead.
One might expect, given what normally happens when a small group claims to speak for the rulers, that their decrees might be a little… diluted. However, it is a fact of the universe, and no less so in Phantia, that everyone dies eventually. Fear of what might come afterward seems much more immediate when ‘what comes afterward’ is a few seconds of simple chanting away, and capable of informing you exactly what it is going to do to you if you don’t start listening.
Not that they can do much directly. For the spirits of the dead to hurt each other, or even to cross the barrier that separates the Hall of the Dead from the plains beyond, they need to be empowered by a necromancer. But death lasts an eternity, and the dead can hold a grudge that lasts eons. The chances of them finding someone to carry out their threats eventually are high.
Of course, not everyone is deterred from infinite worldly power by possible future consequences. So until a few hundred years ago, the necromancers would occasionally quietly launch a coup, and start substituting their own orders for those the dead had been giving.
The problem each time was that not all necromancers work for the government. And whilst one might be able to trust one's own students and heirs to ignore promises of wealth, and protect one from the wrath of the dead, independent necromancers were less certain. And attempting to get rid of them was not only impractical, but made what was being done rather obvious.
So the coups never lasted very long, in the grand scheme of things. A few decades at most, before the current crop of necromancers were gently reminded of their place by the agonised screams of their predecessors.
But a few hundred years ago, things changed, and not in favour of the necromancers. A newcomer to the Hall, named Alexos came up with the idea of splitting the service into branches. Now, there are nine such branches, each with a grudge against all the others, and kept in a kind of working harmony only by the threat of mutually assured destruction. An alliance between all of them has so far proven impossible, and lies about what the dead have actually said tend to be interpreted by the other branches as attempts to seize power.
As for the dead themselves, their main concern is power. For the simple reason that those whose main concern isn't power, tend to be ejected from the Hall by those who are more focused on it. They rule well enough - to avoid being overthrown, to gain favours from the living, even to satisfy their own egoes. But this is not their main concern. Their main concern is the Byzantine politics of the dead - it is making gains in their own positions, whilst weakening their enemies, or even throwing them from the Hall entirely. They seek power, not for any purpose beyond this: that they need some way to pass eternity.