S&P Core Guide Preview: Beginning | 2

Before the omniverse, a sea of nothing called the void preceded all existence—a vast, boundless container, empty and alone, stable, and unchanged. There were no worlds; no events took place. Deep in the void, however, floated a seed of potential that lay dormant and unnoticed. As many things appear to arise from the confrontation of opposites, the first moment emerged from the first confrontation—when once there was nothing, there was something. This seed of potential cracked open, and from it burst the Fountain, a bright swirling cloud, amorphous and diaphanous, that expanded and grew to span a great distance. The void was no longer empty.

It was this awakening of the Primordial that changed everything. The Fountain filled the void from the center as if it were a basin, both built and filled simultaneously, a rippling liquid pool that spread across the blackness. Soon that ever-night of void would be practically extinguished, replaced by an immense field of matter and energy infused with the power of the Fountain. Within the fundamental sphere of the omniverse, life, light, and matter sprang into existence. The Fountain flowed, creating a current within the pool that spread outward from the center of the sphere. Monads—discrete universes—spontaneously came into being, each one a globule suspended in the pool like bubbles. The space would soon be replaced with new monads, appearing to creatures born within them as vast stretches of land, air, sea, stars, and blackness.

The current generated power as it circled the Fountain—undifferentiated at first, but glimpses of shape and form would occasionally eddy in the rivulets of luminous liquid. The omniverse developed at rates that mere mortals could only imagine. What would seem like seconds from one perspective would pass for lifetimes and generations of the creatures created within the universes that sprouted from the celestial nursery. The spinning and spreading of the Fountain happened of its own accord, not by any will of its own, but as a consequence of its momentum. While the Primordial touched every monad, the power was tremendous and omnipotent—but it acted on instinct like an animal maintains its survival.

As a caterpillar sheds its chrysalis and becomes a butterfly, a latent awareness was waiting to emerge. There was a second stage of differentiation: first, there was something, and then that something became someone with hands to shape and a spirit of imagination to envision what those hands would shape. Like a child on the beach making castles out of the sand, it wrought many creative works with no sign of tiring or stopping to rest. It wasn’t the first time the Primordial would increase in complexity, and it wouldn’t be the last. The Primordial demonstrated both body and spirit, but each would further develop, differentiate, and grow in complexity, like organs within organs, all ultimately serving the being they belonged to. The differentiation and the complexity would develop along three axes: substance, fluid, being, and sense. There was an inner layer, one of ether—the spirit of the Primordial, the spark. The spirit of the Primordial would reveal itself along these axes as Fire and Earth, which for a time swirled like magma; as Water and Air, hanging thick and heavy as vapor; as Light and Shadow, brilliant rays streaming from behind a mask; Life and Death, decaying flesh feeding new growth. Each

coupling would uncouple but remain tethered along the axes, poles that pulled one way or the other but never really ever enemies. Air would always dance beside Water, Fire beside Earth, and so on. But just as mortal beings have both spirit and body, so too did the Primordial, and its faceting into the Powers revealed both a layer of ether and a layer of materia. Stature and Vigor, Cunning and Poise, Knowledge and Understanding, Competence and Discernment. Together, these sixteen Spheres of Power would touch all things throughout the omniverse. The mortal species, children of the Primordial, would forever after speak with it as such.