Here follows the text of 'A Brief History of the Old World' a detailed account of the birth and death of the old world by the scholar Argos Kalanthos.
===Creation=== First of all, as I'm sure you know, there was no world. Instead there was the Void, a primordial soup of realities and possibility. Everything exists at some time within the Void, but there is no causality, causes have no results (or even vice versa). It is a seething chaos in which anything and everything constantly appears only to decay away once more. It is the ultimate source of all energy but it is purposeless, formless and without meaning until it is shaped by Will. Amongst those things that are formed and destroyed from moment to moment are Wills. The vast majority of these are insane by our standards, but some, for the brief instant they exists, are the same as you or I. As the scholar-sorcerer Prim wrote, "Three [Will's arose that withstood the ravages of the unmaking pandemonium] and as one they gave themselves form and to shield themselves against the dark they sealed these forms within a sphere of order; a crystal orb of light and stability to stand against the ravages of what lay without. Yet they were not alone within the void for countless other Wills were there and seeing the light they fled to it, for within it there lay the chance to endure and escape the cycle of unmaking. So the Three made for them forms like their own and placed them within the cage they had made of their Will. There to watch them, there to…" This was the origin of the first Trinity and the creation of the old world. The Trinity arose spontaneously within the Void and created the world within it as a crystal orb. As the late Lady Kassandra demonstrated the sky was false and the stars painted on. To make the world live and breathe required a Trinity, for there must be both unity and the expression of differences. The wisdom to make, the power to make it breathe, and glory and perfection for which to strive. (Though one might theorise that a different trinity, or more than three, might also function if unity might still be achieved.) ===Humanity=== So the Trinity had created a world, and by a collective and continual act of Will maintained it against the erosion of the Void. My knowledge of the next set of events is slight, and somewhat theoretical, so if it becomes critical I strongly suggest that you seek out Wisdom. The Trinity created a great city and populated it with the first of their creations. Whether they drew in Wills from the Void or if these were mere brute animals I do not know, but whatever the case these creations were the prototypes of the biology with which we are familiar. But the Trinity were not satisfied with their work and so they buried it beneath the world, and started anew and this time created the people we know. The city existed still, hidden beneath the world, and was only revealed after the deaths of the Trinity. Now the Wills with which the Trinity endowed the people they created were drawn from the Void. But only the grossest characteristics of a Will may be known even by a god. For no Will may know the desires or motivations of another. Perhaps they could sort meek from ambitious and sorcerer from mundane, but I think the evidence is scant in support of this hypothesis, and whether they could or not they simply selected those Wills that seemed sane. The first Wills they drew in from the Void themselves, subsequent Wills were drawn forth by the processes of human procreation. Now this left the old Trinity with a problem, for they could not know the minds of the people they created and they could not control them (except through the same physical restraint and punishment that the Lady Bella dedicated herself to opposing before her ascension). So, the Trinity sought about for another means of control, for I think they knew their own weaknesses and that the sorcerers that entered into their world could slay them. That means of control was destiny and of that more in a moment. ===Rebellion=== All was now ordered as the Trinity desired, and for thousands of years empires rose and fell, men and women lived and died, and the Church organised the worship of the Threefold Divine. The sorcerers of the world served the Church and became its Saints. The final generation of Saints was born, though they did not know that was the case, and the mightiest amongst them was Micah Germanicus. He fell in love with a woman who was not a sorcerer and they had a son. (My research indicates that it was rare for the sorcerers to marry outside the Convocation of Saints, or for the Church to allow them to procreate.) The woman was known to many of you, her name was Corin Gauss, the Healer, and her son was Michael who for many years served the Misericorde. Micah learned that his son had a destiny. The gods had chosen him to sacrifice his life in service to the Church. Holding the baby in his arms, Micah swore that he would not allow this. It was then that the rebellion was born too. Micah was persuasive and at his words the other Saints forsook their obedience to the gods and rose against them, arguing that destiny was no more than a cage and a denial of free will. I have learned the names of some others of those who rebelled, amongst them were Athelston, Lucius and Dominika and a man we knew for a time as the Hanged Man. A brief aside, the relevance of which you will hopefully see, but Dominika was married to Athelston. Dominika was a sorceress and amongst the most powerful of the Willworkers who rose in revolt, Athelston a sorcerer of no more than middling power. Either before the war, or during the initial skirmishes, Dominika also gave birth to a son. One could speculate that this gave her the sympathy to join Micah in revolt, but I have no evidence for this idea. This son was a sorcerer too and he would survive the Willwar. He was Rayne, now Wisdom. ===Sphere and Behemoth=== Even as the sorcerers fought the Willwar they divided into factions, divided not over how to fight the war but instead over what was to follow when the Trinity were defeated and all destinies undone. Micah lead a faction that rejected all means of control, and rejected the gods entirely, viewing them as slavelords. They were utterly dedicated to achieving true freedom. Athelston and Dominika were members of another faction that believed in the cause of free will, but rejected only the old Trinity and not all gods. Perhaps it was this faction which discovered that when the gods died the Gods-Sherds would be left behind. They prepared a device of horology and sorcery to receive the gods-sherd and, once attuned, to become a goddess of freedom and chaos. One that would take up the task of maintaining the world but feel no need to control its inhabitants. The Will they summoned from the Void after the most exhaustive of winnowing processes and placed within the Arkhen Sphere. The final faction saw opportunity. With the death of the old gods new could be created, gods who could control the world and remake it as the this faction saw fit. I do not know if the Hanged Man led this faction or was one of its members, but he created the Behemoth and its Iron Men in answer to the Arkhen Sphere. If the Behemoth had seized and attuned one of the sherds it would have risen as a dark god of control and domination. ===The Death of the Trinity and Birth of the Disjunction=== There came the final battle of the Will-war and the gods proved more resilient than the sorcerers had foreseen. They died and it seemed the gods would live, and the rebellion would be naught. I think it may have been Micah Germanicus who took the next and fateful step. He realised that the gods were bound to the old world and invested an immense amount of their power within it. So he tore at the world and pierced it and beyond it was the Void and into it he cast the gods. Unprepared and weakened the old Trinity were unable to resist the chaos and were swiftly unmade. The breach in the world remained, the gods were dead and their Wills no longer maintained it, and the Void rushed in. The interface between the old world and the Void was the Disjunction, the unmaking blackness. I believe that the Disjunction did not, however, destroy what it touched. Instead, without the Wills of the Trinity, the world they made began to decay and it fell apart itself. And so the Will-war ended and the world began to die. ===Before the First Convocation=== Dominika was killed in the final battle of the war, and Athelston came to deeply regret his part in events. He visited the Arkhen Stone a number of times but his mind waned and his memories were lost, and soon the visits stopped. He took on a new persona, that of the Professor, who some of you might have met, and became obsessed with flight and flying machines. He forgot his son too. Lucius repented of his actions too, but he strove to take what actions he could to save the world. He began to study what could be done to save the world and determined that if a new Trinity could be raised then they might either make a new world or renew the old. He called the first Convocation at the Tower of Trap-town, to announce his findings. Unknown to him Micah Germanicus had also survived, hiding himself amongst the Circus, and realising that Lucius planned to create a new Trinity and fearing for what he had achieved, Micah struck him down with immense sorcerous chains. So began the events that gave birth to the new world and the ending of the Disjunction.-Argos Kalanthos, Librarian of Kyrine-That-Was